Barry Beckham

Lapiovra I have only just read the issue you have with creating a DVD and I have just downloaded your zipped sample. I created a DVD using your sample in the usual way using PTE 8 beta 7 and played it back on my 60in Plasma TV. What I saw was what I expect to see in a slide show made for DVD. What I mean by that is that the quality of the images were not as good as we would see on our PC or on a TV running a HD video of the slide show, but they were about what I expected. That is normal and it's why DaveG said he does not make DVD's for that reason (image quality). Neither do I for the same reasons unless they are family snaps where the quality is not the be all and end all. I assume that different TV's may render DVD pictures differently and I well recall DVD's I did make a few years ago were awful. No fault of PTE, it was just DVD quality, but now I notice a distinct improvement. Perhaps its the Plasma TV that has given me this improvement. It might handle the images better, but I am guessing here. I am currently making a memorial slide show for someone at the moment who can't really handle anything else but a DVD. The quality of that is OK and no different to yours, but if they were high quality landscapes I had spent time creating, then I would not be so happy. Also the DVD slide show I am making does not contain animation and that will certainly make a difference to the perceived quality. However, I will make versions for PC, Mac and Mp4 in case I can play them on the memorial day, because they will be far better quality than a DVD The quality I saw in your example was much the same as the slide show I have just been making. Its what I would expect from images that started off at 1920 pixels on the long side and for DVD use have to be reduced to 720 pixels. Again, that is no fault of PTE. It's just the resolution of DVD's I am wondering if the flickering you're seeing is more of a shimmer and probably slightly worse on animated images. You certainly wouldn't be the first to be disappointed enough in the quality of a DVD to believe there was some error in the software or settings, or that you had done something wrong. I have received a great deal of emails on that subject over the years and I am wondering if the DVD quality has caught you out too. I can't be sure of course, but we do get quite used to the quality of our still images and our flat screens and DVD quality can be a shock sometimes.. If you have the time and you want a further test, you can send me a DVD you have made so I can play it here to see if it differs from the one I made with your sample. You can find our contact details below. If you would like to do that I can give you feedback via email if you wish http://www.beckhamdigital.com.au/store/pc/Contact-E-mail-Phone-d10.htm I think you may already have been given the best advice and that is to find a way of playing either the exe through a laptop or an MP4 through a stick or again a laptop. Sorry I arrived at the party late, hope this has been some help. Regards Barry Beckham Digital

Yes, I have been having a bit of a laugh here with the Mac issue, but most of you have missed my point. Its not the Mac v PC issue at all that makes me smile. I have no doubt at all that Macs are great computers. Its human nature that I find funny, which feels the need to turn tools to do a job into objects of desire with bragging rights. Then those who see every sentence that contains Mac and PC as a challenge against their chosen way of working and feel compelled to respond. Some of you need to lighten up and get out more :lol:/>

The voice of wisdom has spoken.

Tom In fact you also make my point because it IS the end of the world for some Mac users. Only those who have an inferiority complex that buying and OWNIING a Mac helps them to alleviate. :rolleyes:/> I made the suggestion a number of times when I have been asked about PTE and Mac, suggesting that many Mac users use software to make the program run on a Mac. I also recall dummies being thrown out of prams on a number of occasions. Mac users who become quite offended when you make that suggestion. Many have this weird and unnatural view of their computer and they are not going to soil their superior product by putting nasty windows software on their machine. Tuff luck then I say :lol:/>

Crossfade You make my point for me by being just a bit too quick to begin the defence of the Mac. As I said it was probably all down to my inexperience anyway. I know that. I am just sick and tired of the rant from Mac users who seem to think that they have some superior product. Well, demonstrate that to me in a way that will impress me and make me eat my words is all I am saying. But if you approach me and say Macs just work. Make sure there is nothing pointed and sharp within my reach. :lol:/>/> Lets take this a few stages further. Lets debate what is best Nikon or Canon, Ford, or Toyota, Vulcans or Clingons.:rolleyes:/>/>

I have just come back from a simple job of copying some images from a Mac to a USB Stick or portable drive for a memorial sequence. I assumed (wrongly as it happens) that with my experience of computers it couldn't be difficult, but I gave up in the end and wrote the images to a disk. Even that didn't pop out on completion, I had to find out how to eject it. The Mac could see and read the files on the stick and the Drive, but would not let me copy those Jpegs to them. Now I am sure that is all down to user error and my inexperience with a Mac, but how difficult should it be to copy a few Jpeg files for someone who is computer literate, well I thought I was. A lady recently joined a Camera Club and wanted advice. Told by the resident Mac user that this is what she must have, she buys the Mac. Then she finds out it's only her and Mr Mac who owns one (and he actually knows diddly squat) Every time she turns to a club member for some technical help, they can't help because she is out of step with everyone else. A computer is just a tool to do a job, no different to a hammer, but it seems that the Mac has taken a place alongside the car in your driveway. It has become bling, a must have toy that you can brag about. Well, I am not impressed with the name Mac or the bragging. I am impressed by what Mac users produce, so more lets see more output and less Mac talk :rolleyes:/>

Peter Great Idea and perhaps to select more than one track with Ctrl+Click within the timeline

I am thinking of dumping all our PC's and moving over to Mac's. I am looking forward producing much better slide shows and much better pictures on them. :rolleyes:/>

Ron Can't do that !!! What actually suggest that their precious Mac be soiled by disgusting PC software. Oh dear some Mac users would have a hissy fit at the very thought. :rolleyes:/> I am joking of course and I have already suggested that, but not every Mac users wants to do that.

No problem and thanks for the feedback

Igor Are you able to give Mac users any update on when a Mac version of PTE may be available? I still get emails asking me about this and received the latest today, but I don't really know what to say to them? Any update would be helpful. I think it was around 2010 that it first started to be discussed

Every time I hear this I want to scream at the camera club committee for still clinging onto this ridiculous belief that because their projector is 4:3 everything must be made at that format. Barnston. You can if you wish make your slide shows 16:9 format (or any other) and they will play back fine on a 4:3 projector. I have been doing it for years.

Well, exposure is still the be all and end all, even in the digital world. Yes we can bend and shape a wrong exposure, but there is a price to that which most of us don't like much. I like these quick slide shows, shot and made within a day. They capture a moment in time. I was encouraging my wife to get out for a short walk after a hip replacement. Not bad after only 5 weeks from the surgery to walk 1.2k unaided.

A slide show shot and made mostly the same afternoon (yesterday 12th Oct) and evening using PTE8. The images were used straight from a Canon G16 camera at 4000*3000 pixels. Formatting and sharpening of images was all done within PTE 8 and both the music sound track and sound effects were mixed directly on the time line of PTE 8. http://www.beckhamdigital.com.au/store/pc/Page-5-Latest-c100.htm

I have been caught out a few times over the years, by making the assumption (which would be right in 99% of cases) that the issue I am suffering from is software related. On a few occasions after spending ages trying to track down a software problem I found it was hardware related. Could it be something like that? A fault between the ram and the motherboard had me chasing a software issue for a year till I had that eureka moment. Possible?

Yes, I suppose you can, but I was thinking about how I might apply a whole slide show with an edge effect. How good would that be if we could do that with just a few clicks. Something tells me that if I had to adjust the timings I would find a reason not to do it :rolleyes:/>

Slide Styles would be a great way to apply edge effects, lines and special effects to our images. We could apply them to one or all the slides in our show except for one thing. The Duration from one slide to the other is part of the style. So applying an edge effect after making a show would upset all the timings. The edge effects could be applied first of course, but sometimes we want to try options after the show is made. In the Slide Style window I was wondering how hard it would be to have a tick box to turn off the slide styles ability to include the duration. Just leave all effects in place, but no duration changes.

Those "PC Specialists" have made at least 6 PC's for me over many years and they have all been superb for the job. 2 of which are still in daily use and are over 6 years old

I would suggest that is what we want in PTE and as we are so close (ie having to hold the left mouse) perhaps its not so hard to just be able to click the sampler and move anywhere on the screen your in and sample a colour.

Colin No problem, it's hard sometimes to convey what's in your mind with typed words, when the subject is a bit technical. The other day I was trying to express something and wondered if a short video would be better :blink:/>

Colin Yes, I agree it all works fine in Photoshop, but not in PTE. Well, not quite as well. You would expect to be able to click the eye dropper in PTE and then move about the image as you have demonstrated in Photoshop, which was my point. However, as soon as you move off the colour picker in PTE the eye dropper is lost. With Slide Styles now about to be launched and with the opportunity to add edge effects in almost any colour we want, being able to select colour from an image should be easy in my view and it's what I am suggesting. I don't use a mouse so I am assuming that if you tried the same thing in the Objects and Animation screen, you would NOT get the same result as you have with Photoshop. Please try it just in case my assumption is wrong. As I click on the eye dropper in the Objects and Animation screen it appears to select it, but it doesn't. Move off the window to the image and it's lost. Click and hold the left mouse and it does, but how many would think of doing that? Apart from me

When the colour picker is selected, in my case to change the colour of a rectangle, we have a large number of choices from three different styles of picker. Often when doing presentation work, the best colour for text or backgrounds can often be one cloned from the image colours itself. There is a certain visual harmony retained when we do that When the colour picker window is selected (any of the three styles) we have an eye dropper tool to enable us to do exactly what I ask, but it doesn't work quite right. If you click the eye dropper tool and move off the Choose Colour Window, the eye dropper cannot select a colour from the image itself (see attached) If the eye dropper is clicked and while holding the left mouse down, it's dragged off the panel, you can select a colour from the image. (keeping my Wacom graphics pen pressed to the pad surface in my case) Given that it sort of works OK, it would be a nice touch if when the colour sampler tool is selected with one click, it can be moved anywhere on the screen and still function. Without the need to hold down the left mouse or keep the pen hard on the tablet surface. One false move and option to sample from the image is lost and you have to return to the sampler tool for a second go.

Should we not all have the opportunity to set the prog up the way we want it and not be dictated to by the wants of others Sure, but PTE is already moving away from one of it's greatest strengths, simplicity and as I have said many times, some of these issues have no right and wrong answer. It doesn't matter to me how many preferences there are in PTE because I know the software so it's not an issue for me at all, but it can be for the newer user. Igor has to walk the same impossible line I expect every developer has to. The consumer wants the software packed with tools and options and loves it when their chosen software is described as POWERFUL. However, those same options are what make some software hard to learn.

Dave Surely there are just too many of them, it would fill up the software with options that will frighten most casual users away and make it more daunting. In the vast majority of software the defaults reflect what most people use, that's not always the case with PTE. Preferences then need to be kept to a minimum and that certainly isn't the case with any software. Many preferences just get stupid, like Lightroom. It even has a preference to what decorative squiggle appears on some screens. As if that ever helped any photographer create a better picture. I expect it's very hard for experienced users/creators of software to keep things simple, but I think its what should be aimed for. Some preferences are good, some just clog up the system and it's a fine line the software developer has to walk I guess

I think there is a big difference between preferences and defaults. Defaults should be set to what most people use most of the time. Preferences are a different issue.