Barry Beckham

Ken I would love to have a face to face discussion with you, so I could call you a fruit cake and you would know I said it with a big grin. An Audio Visual is not an art gallery ( it could be) but in its truest form it captures a mood and can generate an emotion in the viewer. The very LAST thing that should happen to that show is for the viewer to stop and start it and destroy the flow of the Audio Visual. In a book style show it can be either way, authors choice. Yes, of course in the past I suggested people temporarily changed their resolutions to view a slide show, but not just mine. It is absolute nonsense to create images at one resolution and have them played back at another that destroys the quality. So, far you have dispensed with the A in AV and back then some of you were dispensing with the V too. Absolutely crazy. I even had one member pushing pins in a dummy of me when I stupidly suggested that resolution and format of an AV is important. Fortunately we don't have to adjust resolution any more because the PTE program has moved on, but I am really surprised that you of all people are unaware of of the need to do that at the time. I wasn't asking people to cut off a finger, or poke their eye out with a sharp stick, just temporarily change the resolution so they saw the slide show as the author intended. How daft of me to want to see a good quality image when I could watch it broken up with artifacts. I didn't criticise Ron's book show at all, where did you get that from? Perhaps you are confused and mean Trailertrash, but I didn't criticise that either. I suggested a change of the settings because you you either have a manual show or an automatic one. If you leave the settings so it is neither one or the other the result is exactly what happened. The viewer changes the slides manually before the author intended (why would he have made it automatic) and the sound is then out of synch. Part of me hopes that your just poking fun at me and I have stupidly risen and taken your bait, but something tells me that isn't the case. Xaver If your right, I think I will give up AV and take up knitting, I am already halfway there having thrown away the A already. I have just posted my latest V here and the good news is they can be knocked out at 4-5 shows a day http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/newv.zip

Ken turning off manual control is a big mistake I want to look at the author's picts unless there is speech involved sound is of little importance I assume you have your tongue firmly in your cheek when you say that and If your not joking, then.....Quite frankly I am amazed, shocked even. If your serious, It would indicate to me that you don't understand AV at all and from the Grand Daddy of the PTE forum its like being told there is no father christmas. Please tell me that in the forum of the best AV software around, your not telling people that the A in AV isn't important. Come on Ken, you of all people can't say such a daft thing as that on a forum like this.

Because I have watched your show a few times and the first time I used the buttons to tun the pages, the synch of slides to music goes astray. If you let the show play in its entirety it does play fine, so you need to synch your music to slides and/or prevent viewers skipping through the images. As it is now, everyone who does help the pages turn quicker using the keyboard will hear the music end at a different point. Try it yourself, start your show and hit the right arrow button quickly and you can be at the end of the show before the first music has really got part the way through. In most shows if you do that the music and images stay together as the author intended.

Ron I watched the show again and unless I am going daft the show has been programmed and by that I mean it has been set to run automatically. It has not been designed as a viewer controlled show. Especially as Trailertrash mentions we wanted a DVD. Because your aware of the book template I think you assumed it was a user controlled show and because Trailertrash has not prevented user control you were able to turn the pages, probably quicker than it was designed to run. TrailerTrash The pipe music at the end finishes abruptly and there is no problem with that. I wouldn't fade that as the abrupt stop of the pipes sounds great, but then another piece of music starts as the book cover leaves the screen and it's that piece of music that ends suddenly ? It almost seems as though that last piece is in error? Can I also ask why you would want to make a DVD for your Camera Club? I assume you mean to show the DVD at the camera club and if so, why a DVD? Why not show the original exe file that would be infinately better quality Addition Just watched it again and the penny has dropped. The template was designed to allow the viewer to turn the pages and if that mode of operation was used, then you would need one or two pieces of music and there would be no way to fade the music out. Here, the show has been programmed, so I think the box to prevent user control should be unticked or it just confuses matters. The music and images don't seem to be in sync, so if you use the arrow keys to skip along the slides the music doesn't stay with the slides and plays independantly. In that case it will end in all different places depending how quick the viewer skips through. So, in the project options main tab you should tick the box to Synchronize music and slides. In the advanced tab untick the box that says permit control of the show using keyboard. Now you can program your show so the music ends when your slides end and the viewer can't screw things up by skipping through quicker than you intended.

I thought that show was a programmed one, but I may be mistaken,

Somewhere I always said I wanted to attend and never did, not likely to now being so far away. It all works quite well in the book form, just a nice balance of information with the images. Just fade your music out gently at the end and your done. As it is, it stops rather abruptly Its easy to do in version 6.5

George You can govern speed in two ways, one is to give a longer gap between slides. You have to do that to some degree with animation of any type. You can also adjust speed by going into the Objects and Animation screen and reducing the movement of the clouds between the blue animation start flag on the left and the end flag on the right. Your trying to capture the charm of gently moving clouds, they actucally don't have to move that much to achieve that.

Sorry, but you have gone too far the other way. Its now far too slow. You shouldn't have to massively increase the slide show length to accomodate slower animations, just restrict the movement of each sky a bit in the Objects and animation screen, The speed of any animation has to balance with your music and it now lags behind. The main title is on the screen for ages and I thought the slide show had stopped. It also seems that you may have used the same images from your previous show for a much larger slide show because on my 1920*1200 monitor the image quality is not so good. I am not sure what resolution you made your images but if your going to target a 1920*1200 or 1280*800 resolution (16:10) Then your going to need the images somewhere around 2400*1200 or 1680*800. You need that extra width to create your gentle animation and retain the quality. Your drawing attention to the clouds so they need to be reasonable quality. It could be that your images are being enlarged to fit my screen, to fix that, go to the Project options > Screen tab and tick the fixed size of slide box

That was much better seeing it as an executable file. Moving clouds are one of the few natural occurrences that I think are convincing in a slide show, but the animation must be slow and I think yours was just marginally too fast in places. This technique involves making a number of cutouts so the clouds can be animated behind the foreground rocks. The problem is that when we do this we are drawing attention to where the clouds meet the rocks and the cutout needs to be good. It looks like you have used an automatic or semi automatic technique to select the clouds and you have missed a clean edge in a number of areas. Once spotted they draw the eye and the only way (generally) to get good enough cutouts is to either do it manually or finish the cutout off manually. You need to take off those liitle areas still clinging to the rocks that shouldn't be there. If your familiar with layer masks use one of those and a soft edged brush. Alternatively the eraser with a soft edged brush. The rock edges will then look clean and natural. Do you think a sequence like this may look better in a wider format? The shape of 16:10, 16:9 or 3:2 may enhance the skies and the animation.

I made an attempt to watch it on Youtube, but found it too small and too painful to wait for the download to catch up, why not post it in all its glorious exe quality via mediafire or Beachbrook You do need to make a correction, you have a spelling mistake on your opening title. Its easy done, I once made a small show of a place in Yorkshire and never spotted I left the K out of yourshire:blink:.

Sorry for being daft Ken, but what have you done?

Well, why not give it a go, we will never know until its tried

Andrew Well, put up your shows and ask for constructive comments, test the water and see what you get back Ken That idea was too clinical, OK for a competition, but not here and it was never taken up which indicates others had similar thoughts. When I first joined a Camera Club I sought out a couple of people whose images inspired me and I went to them for some advice to see what they did to get the quality I wanted to achieve. I still think that is the best option. Forums are great at their best, but dire at their worst. Too many cooks etc

Try refreshing your browser, your probably going to a stored page on your computer that you have been to before. Go to the page and hit F5

Andrew The answer is it cannot. You cannot make one format fit another without distorting the images. PTE will enlarge the 1920*1200 image on a 1920*1080 screen until the top and bottom touches the edge and then it will stop. This leaves black vars either side. Try this test, create a blank image 1920*1080 and a different colour one at 1920*1200. Drag the latter into the former and use the transform tool locked to constrain proportions and you will see what I mean.

Peter Yes, the proof for me was some years ago (pre digital) when I went into the loft to do some plumbing and had to move stuff around and found some of my old B&W images. Oh my god. at the time I made them I thought they were pretty good, but finding them some years on was a bit of a shock. I had obviously moved on a fair bit and its only when you see it displayed to you in that way that you appreciate your progress. I agree, its not easy to be self critical, but I have always felt your sucess is not always based on what you show, but on what you decide not to show. Andrew But Barry, they're allowed to be OK but not great. I understand what your saying, but too many people are far too quick to settle for OK in my view, with a little more effort perhaps a lot better than OK is within their reach. I am often amazed at how quick some authors churn out their slide shows. It doesn't alter the fact that some will say they welcome comment, when they only really want positive comments. Its why I rarely comment now, but I watch quite a few sequences. I like to be entertained and we all look for inspiration from others, but to do a real constructive criticim is risky. I recall watching a quite nice slide show once, but felt it lost a lot of impact because the lighting and shadows were really harsh. I wondered if the author was aware of the shadow and highlight control in Photoshop, because I knew from my demos it doesn't get used much. Well, you would have thought I had insulted the persons mother and I was firmly put in my place and told that the author wanted the images just as they saw them. The high contrast reflected that part of the world. One or two other members joined in agreeing with the author, so I think I backed away with my tail between my legs. However, the facts are, that what the author captured was not what they saw at the time and they were all wrong. My mistake was assuming that posting a slide show automatically invited comment, especially from an enthusiasts forum like this.

Now that PTE6.5 has been launched we have updated our Starter Disk aimed at newer users of the software and I chose to use PTE for the first of the tutorials on the disk.. I have included that first section here. It is a tutorials slide show relating to image size, which may help some and it also contains a series of short demos made at the 5 popular resolutions and formats. So, there are 6 PTE sequences in all. I hope the benefit of the 5 demos will be for viewers to be able to see these different formats and how they appear on their screen. It may demonstrate that the larger slide shows play back perfectly well on smaller resolution monitors and projectors. The show is at the top of the page for PC and Mac and is called Image Size

There are always many ways to look at any subject. On the one hand its nice to have someone comment on your slide show or pictures knowing that they themselves are an accomplished photographer or AV enthusiast. However, my grandmother has never driven a car in her life, but she can spot when one is being driven badly, so despite my earlier comments to seek out who you want to make comment, everyone does have a view and you don't need to be an expert carpenter to know the guy who hung your front door did a rubbish job. This is about the politest forum I have ever seen and there is no history of nasty comments from what I can see, but then again most of them are pretty bland one liners. Here is the problem I say something about a sequence that maybe through my own poor English I don't explain fully, or the author finds a slant on what I said a million miles from what was intended. Do they reply and ask for clarification, no, they make an assumption that the comment was a deliberate nasty one and reply accordingly. I am distraught that my words have not been understood and try to explain, but its too late, we are past the point where peace talks can break out and there is the classic reason why you don't see comments on slide shows. There is no point pulling punches here in this post as no individual sequence is being discussed, we all want a favourable reply to what we post and if we have spent a week on a slide show and it is not seen in the same way we see it, it is a huge disapopointment no matter what your skill level or experience. What is the point of taking offense because one person does not feel your slide show is the masterpiece you do. Your never going to please all of the people all of the time and although we may try hard we can't produce a masterpiece every time either. An example is the many slide shows I now never play or show at my demos, why, because I thought they were really good when in the full glow of the creative process, but months and years later I realise they are OK, but not great.

Ralph What a can of worms you have opened, but Peter does sum it all up rather well. To be a judge you have to be a politician, but to be a politician you then need to sit on the fence. As Peter says you try hard to be positive, while keeping comments constructive, but sometime that is almost impossible. Sitting on the fence also means that the comments will be bland and almost useless. The answer? I don't have one, I wish I did. Most people are so concerned about causing upset that they say little at all that helps the author. In fact if a show is posted that perhaps is not quite to the usual stanadard you will notice fewer comments. Simple answer is it's easier to say nothing than risk the wrath of the person who only really wants adulation. If you want real comments, don't put your show up for general comment at all. Post it for general interest to all, but just ask one or two members for the real feedback your looking for, either privately or in the forum if you wish. How do you find them ? Simple, look at what the members produce in their own slide shows and approach those who your happy to receive feedback from.

I recently posted the following I have continually found it fiddly and annoying to place my cursor into the selections in the music > Customize options. I place the cursor and drag and nothing happens. I find myself having to do this a few times before it pickes up and highlights the value so I can change it. I use a wacom Bamboo graphics tablet, but I just tried it with a USB mouse and it is still a bit tricky to highlight the value I want to cjange. Has anyone else who uses a tablet noticed the same. In the fullness of time I have found the solution. You have to click into the little boxes in the right place and then the values highlight automatically. I find if I click on the right side of the box all is well. Previouslu I was used to a touch and drag and when you do that, the fiddly problem occures. So, solution found with experience

Roel Over the last months and especially in the past few days I have been using PTE 6.5 extensively and I have not had any of the issues you describe. I also think I am right in saying that most of the other regulars here havn't either. That tends to suggest that whatever is causing the issue is on your PC. Why not try a new Mp3 grab from one of your CD's. Windows Media Player will do that for you and then see if it will select that new track. Its a place to start

I have noticed that the fade out (I use 15 seconds) seems to fade a bit too quick right in the last second or two of the fade. It just isn't quite a sweet as the fade we get with Audacity and it sort of ends a little too abruptly, especially if you listen with headphones. Can it be made to fade out a bit better. It seems to need a linear fade to start, but a slow down at the end, if that is possible.

Sorry to remind you Eric, but you never saw the point of creating a slide show at 1024*768 and then playing it back at 1280*1024. If you don't like it, don't use it, but it has to become a part of PTE at some stage.

When you go into video builder, untick the box bottom left which says Create menu. I have not tried it, but the "Next" option then takes you straight to the final DVD creation screen and I guess that will bypass any menu pages and play the DVD automatically

Igor I feel like a Jackass, the disablement of the acceleration was done accidently and as I never turn it off, I never thought to look for that. I am releaved in some way as I thought I had found a a problem in 6.5 Do you have a padlock so I can lock that little box shut :-)