Barry Beckham

Eric Your right of course, I have a mate who is waiting for the development of the car to settle before he moves on from his horse and cart The good news is he has great roses

Yachtsman What are you talking about. Adding a Blank slide was part of 6.5 that is on general release to the public. You make it sound as if there is some risk to using it. Get on board for goodness sake DG, good point I like anything that speeds up workflow

I think most PTE users did the same, but that isn't necessary now. A right click from the slide list and you can create a blank in seconds within PTE

Snapcam You can only add a blank slide while in the slide list (the images showing as thumbnails across the bottom) If your in the timeline the option appears but is greyed out There are many purposes where a slide show may need to fade to black (or any other colour) Most use a blank at the start and end of their slide shows so they have a blank to start from and blank to fade down to

Ron AVCHD - Is that the All Vehicle Chain Drive option

Sometimes it may be useful to identify a utility to do this sort of thing. I use a piece of software I have used for years called HypersnapDX, I was surprised and pleased that it worked fine on my new W7 64 bit machine. Its just so simple to hit Ctrl+W to grab a window or palette from any program - Ctrl+R to select any region and Ctrl+F to grab the entire screen. Save the grab to where you want quickly and easily

Yes, your probably right

No, it was before I stated to add Quicktime movies to the disks and they was PC only. His beef was that I had the audacity not to make a dedicated disk for Mac users. Unless he has come back since then and purchased on line he bought nothing, we was just a Mac Moaner. I have had this a few times

Tom By the time that all happens I would be pushing up daisies I think Crossfade Exactly, but I had one guy email me who took his time to tell me what a crook he felt I was. My crime was not providing my video disks in Mac format. Apparently it was my sworn duty to do so (it says it in the Apple Mac Bible I am told) and if he had his way I would have been flogged for not doing so. Since then I have lost my usual patience with Mac users who have that attitude, but I have the perfect reply these days. Lets see your superiour pictures:P That usually does the trick. Personally, I would love to try a Mac, but not a 5 minute fiddle in a store, but a real 2 week use doing what I do now with my images. Without that real life test its almost impossible to pick the tool that works as you say. Most people will end up with the computer they use, because that is what their mate uses so they go with that.

You need to read the earlier posts or I will have to repeat the same thing I wrote above. See my post for the 1st November replying to Geoffrey Its just that some folk get too wrapped up in the tools they are using to such a ridiculous degree. Show me a computer that will make my images better, have more impact, become sharper, stand out from the crowd and I will throw away my PC and take up with the new wonder machine. PC/Mac ? just tools to do a job and neither will make a better slide show or a better image. Lets concentrate on the end result and not how we get there.

Well, Mac users have been buying my disks for the past 2 years since I started to include a copy of all videos in Quicktime format and slide shows in Mac format where I can. However, it is just not the same as I can produce for PC's, yet Mac users seem happy to purchase them. So, they are used to them and if autorun isn't a feature of Macs then Mac users are used to searching a disk for what they want. I guess !!! I know what you thought, you thought I was having a pop at Mac users didn't you ? I bet you were limbering up there to defend Mac users No, I only have a pop at Mac users when they whinge about the lack of this and the lack of that, but that would never happen here.

I think the last few posts just about sum up this issue. It would take considerable effort and cost to reach a tiny proportion of the computer market that I can reach anyway if I stay with what I do now. Albeit with a less than slick product for Mac users, but then so what, Mac users are used to that

I have been asked many times if I have any upbeat music in our Music for Photographers range, but have always had to say no. However, I have managed to track one album down and those tracks have been added to our web site today. Please take a look, or should I say a listen to the sample tracks as it may be the style of music you can use. Its the album called Standing Tall at the top of this page http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/royaltyfreemusic_new.htm The samples can be downloaded as a batch quickly and easily in a zipped file. They are very low quality and do not reflect what is on the CD or via download.

The trouble with that idea is it doesn't give me anything I can't do now by just adding QuickTime videos to a Windows disk. Windows users get a full auto boot and interactive menus using Videos for WMP. Mac user have to find the Mac Video folder and play the QuickTime videos manually. Seems that's the best I can do. Tom I used to use PTE buttons for my disks many moons ago, but that way of working is a little amateurish to what I have now. PTE buttons don't have the flexibility for what I want. To create a multimedia disk that viewers can navigate around easily and quickly needs dedicated software and I already have that sorted. For Windows PC's of course.

That doesn't sound very satisfactory and there is a lot that can go wrong with what is a simple autorun interactive disk. The main problem I think I have menetioned before when told off by Mac users for not creating my disks dedicated to them is that I would need a Mac to be able to test links and features, which is what I have done for years for PCs. There is no getting around this, it would be like writing software without beta testing. I just don't sell enough disks to come close to justifying a Mac purchase, especially for the tiny number of Mac users that make up the computer market. No, it has to be a simple process or Mac users will just have to find the videos and work from them, which is what I do now

While we have the Mac users attention. How do I create a video tutorial disk packed with Photoshop videos that will self boot on a PC and Mac including interactive menus and options. I cannot find a way and when I make a video tutorial for a PC the file size may be 100MB, but the equivolent Quicktime can be almost twice that size. I am talking here of large videos at 1024*768 and I will not compromise quality of image or sound. Is there a way to please the Mac users that I am missing.

This is why I like to take all my own kit for a demo and rely on no-one. All I would need is a screen. We have learned that we cannot even rely on a camera club to have a power cable to reach the projection point, so we even have one of those in the car, just in case. I even have a spare PC and Projector if the demo is an all day one.

Well, I think that would make him a bit of a dope wouldn't it. If a lecturer can't work that out, my advice is don't invite him.

Brian Well, I suppose that explains it and I know feel a little less inadequate. The Avatar image was done many moons ago by a friend in the very early days of digital and when I was retrieving images for a recent slide show called the Apprentice I found it. At the same time another friend (That's 2 friends I have) called me the Wizard of Oz. So I thought why not use it.

Why are you still using a Windows computer? Maybe you are still getting acclimated to Australia? Because the computer I use will no difference to my photography at all. As I have said before this debate is like two carpenters arguing over which is the better make of hammer to bang the nails in the wood. Let PC users get on with their PC's, Let Mac users get on with their Macs. Just stop whinging and chest banging about it. Lets see what you are producing with your computer. Lets see some stunning photography and AV's Put up or shut up is the phrase that fits this debate

Brian How the hell do you know all this technical stuff? You must spend your whole life with your head in technical manuals or else you have the most wonderful memory I have ever seen I can't recall if your living is in Computers, but in my world there would never, ever be enough hours for to:- 1. Read all this stuff 2. Understand it 3. Remember it and, no I am not taking the P

Geoffrey I emigrated from the UK to Australia, because I liked the lifestyle that Australia offeres and I knew what the limitations were and what the differences would be between the UK and Australia before I made the move. I didn't get here and then start bleating that this wasn't as good as the UK or that doesn't compare. We pays our money and we make our choice and we do so because we have decided the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Mac users have done the same and they would have to be daft not to realise that the depth of software is not available for macs as it is PC's. However, I am not stupid and accept that this is all part of the charm of Macs and I don't have any quarrel with that at all. I am sure Macs are a great machine, but rightly or wrongly the whole world uses PC's and for what I do I have little choice but to stay with PC's. Quite often though, it almost seems like a complaint from Mac users. How dare PTE not be available for my Mac. To be honest, Mac users should be over the moon that PTE is being developed for Macs and I hope Igor gets back all the time and cost he will have to put in to develop PTE for such a small percentage of computer users. I doubt it is no means certain. Just to be clear: It is not that Mac users wish to 'Run Windows' - Far from it - we wish to AVOID 'Windows'. Yes, that is the common cry and I suspect it is true for the majority including yourself, but there are loads of Mac users out there who run Windows too, so they can enjoy the breadth of software available and there is nothing wrong with that either. It just gets tedious when a guy sidles up to me at a demo, puffs out his chest and in one of those irritating voices says " Well, you know of course I use an Apple Mac, far better than PC's", then proceeds to buy PTE software from me. When I point out that it will not run on a Mac, I am told. Oh thats OK I have wondows installed too. Now this isn't an isolated thing. Never, mind I am sure it just me who wants to shove the disk down the guys throat.

Well, then that is that idea out the window. Not sure why we need a cover slide option then. I always thought this was labelled wrong and should have been cover screen, but perhaps not. I never tried the idea I suggested myself, I just assumed that cover slide (given what you see in the O&A when it is selected) would cover all aspect ratios and just allow an overlap where it was necessary. While it doesn't matter much to me as I would probably not use that option (if it worked) many would

well, I have not done any tests, just assumed the result from past versions and the effect of that setting on the image in the O&A. preseumably you would need to set the project options > screen tab > Size of Slide show at the highest you could expect to need.