Barry Beckham

Hello Cici I must admist that I have agonised for a couple of days over responding to your slide show and making a comment as the others have. I am also surprised that there have only been 4 people who have made a comment for you and I think you can draw some conclusions from this. Far more would have downloaded and watched your show, so why so few comments. Those comments given are all very good ones. Your avatar shows you as a man of senior years, so I guess you know that it requires almost no effort to say "That's nice", more nerve to give contructive feedback. (no criticism of the other four contributors) Remember too that we all have our own likes and dislikes and that is why any feedback you ever get, you can choose to take it or leave it, especially mine The building is quite stunning and is a good choice for an audio visual sequence but 9 minutes is way too long. We are enthusiasts on this site and as a result you are probably going to get a better than average chance that we will sit for the 9 minutes and watch your sequence. I would suggest those who are less enthusiastic will not and they will reach for the escape key. I think you have enough good material for 3, maybe 4 minutes and by reducing the length your show, you will be improved in two ways. A shorter show will be far more watchable and you can take out some shots that are repetative in the sequence and again the show will improve in my view Commenting on an authors choice of music is always an odd thing to do because music is so personal to us, but I am sorry to say it didn't work for me. I think if the station had been an old style one like some of the main city stations we see all over Europe with those huge curved roofs, the cathedral style music would have worked much better. My first thoughts on seeing the station was that it is very futuristic and more modern choice of music would have worked better for me. The titles and use of animation at the start was good, but you need to adjust one set of letters that go off the screen on the left and the right. The other animation while clever, doesn't add to the impact of the show and can easily be missed. It is also a little fast perhaps. The show appears to have been made at 1024*768 pixels, yet I can see quality issues in the even tones in some images. It suggests that a camera with a small chip has been used or you have cropped the images a little too small. The station looks like the perfect place for a wide angle lens approach and I often put my camera on self timer and place it on the floor is such places to get a viewpoint that is a bit different. I think the sweeping shapes would be emphasised and more powerful with this approach. My agony has been that unlike the other contributors here, the sequence didn't work as well for me and with so few comments made (all positive) it would almost look as though I was being contrary for the sake of it. I hope my contructive comments are taken in the spirit they are given.

Yachtsman1 Barry your reply is somewhat one sided as you sell music. That is making an awful big assumption and sort of suggests that because I sell royalty free music on behalf of the record labels my views cannot be trusted, or am I now making too big an assuption too I wasn't being critical of you or the post, but from my own experience music generated in this way lacks the very ingredients we need for a sucessfull slide show. I doubt the cost would be a big issue to most people if the product was good, but just think for a moment how can it be. I also believe (not sure) that these packages are aimed at those with no musical knowledge. Those that do would choose something completely different. In our hands (ie those of us who do not play a musical instrument) the music we produce will not have that impact we need. If it did there would be thousands of smart kids in bedrooms churing out superb music. Apart from an odd isolated case there are not. As I think I have said before AV is made up of two core ingredients, visuals and sound. We have to work darn hard to get visuals right, don't let the second part slip through your fingers by using substandard music. Having said all that and with the numbers of people visiting the forum, can someone prove me wrong. I would be delighted to be able to write another post soon saying, I was wrong in my earlier views, but I doubt that will happen will it. There is an old saying for fisherman that much of the shiny tackle and lures in the tackle shop is more to catch the angler, rather than fish. Why is it my thoughts turn to that saying when I think of this type of software.

I think I picked this probelm up a few weeks ago with an animation I was making. I assumed it was operator error, but this post makes me wonder if I should have paid more notice. I was doing exactly what Denwell describes, bringing opacity of an object with a shadow up and down and I could see an effect on the picture that was coming into view. I couldn't recreate it now, but if it shows up again I will save the effect. Just worth being aware of

I wouldn't touch this with a bargepole. I know the theory sounds great but I tried the Sony version a while back and the results are exactly what you would expect, adequate, good quality music, but lacking in the very ingredient we need for Audio Visual. Its the same ingredients that make some music dire and other music delightfull, same notes, different order. I would love to be proved wrong, but this software has been around for quite some time and if it is so great, how come we never see it used? Anyone got a sample they have made that they can post on Mediafire to make me eat my words? Ther's a challenge

try here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw4.htm

My problem lies in the fact that I'm not a technically minded person, and when I see some of the styles etc that you guys apply to your shows I wish I could do that too but it just wont happen. You can't allow yourself to be defeated that easily, many of the most pleasing effects are in fact easier to create than many people might think. I always think software is like learning to drive, at first we just can't quite get the hang of it, then suddenly we are doing it and when we look back we can't even decide when it was that the penny dropped. Some of the complex animations on this forum can be demanding and don't even try to keep up with the Dom, on the technical side of animation, well, I think everyone accepts he is way out in front. so sometimes I go back to producer to try and emulate what I see. Well, if I can cut the diplomacy for a while, don't, dump PSG its rubbish stay with PTE and learn just a little more about it and you won't look back. Since when can anything worthwhile be learned in 2 minutes and the learning is fun too. Remember, all the fancy software in the world will not hide the fact that a slide show is just not very good. No transitions or animation you can ever dream up will make a bad picture/idea good. Concentrate first on a few standard shows without animation and use the old standard fade/in/out and you will see what I mean. Many of the effects that do retain charm and add to our shows are created in our image editors anyway.

Andrew As Lin said, there is no real difference, just in how it is displayed so, your not comparing apples with apples. Your post reminded me of a view I have held for many years that it is often better to settle on one bit of software and then we tend to get the best from that software. Even if that software is reported to be less worthy than others, it is often better for our creativity if we stay with one. It's horses for courses (of course) as some love to use all different types of software and compare them. I am not one of those and boringly stay with a few chosen selections, but what you have experienced is pretty typical when we use different software that does much the same thing. Having said all that, can I ask you a question. I hope I am right in assuming you were first a ProShow Gold user. If that is so, what prompted you to moved over to PicturesToExe

Igor This is an identical problem I wrote about the other day and one we are also experiencing in our on line shop. Something has been changed in relation to the banks I think and the result is some of our customers are not receiving the final email that contains download links. We are having to pay a a fair bit of money to have someone sort it out for us and I hope it will be fixed soon. Now we know about the problem we can send the link manually, but it does take away that instant response we expect these days from on line purchases.

This may be just my experience, but slides shows on battery power, not a great idea. If your going to experience any problems at all, it will be while on battery power. Well, that is my experience anyway.

Well, it was just a suggestion for Igor to make a decision on but DG's idea is a better one. We can insert them directly. We can insert them as a child of a frame We can insert them in combination with a mask. So what, they should still remain at the size you created them, where is the logic of making 40 - 800*600 images and having to visit every one of those images to change them? Who in their right mind wants to make an image at one size and have the software enlarge that to fill the screen. This method only suits the one size fits all way of working and we know for the really best AV's that ain't the way to go. Better to have all the images shown at 100% or better still DG's idea. Having said that, there may be technical programming difficulties that prevent that.

Igor I often create a slide show at 1920*1200, but use images smaller than that, inset images, animated etc. Every time I go into the objects and animation screen I have to reset every image size to 100% via the size position in pixels or it will be expanded to fit the screen. I appreciate I have raised these size issues before. Could that default be the other way round so when we take an image into a 1920*1200 show and the image is maybe 800*600, it is diplayed the size we created it? Or is there some issue I am not aware of that forces things to be like this. B

Justin There some sources of free music, but generally speaking its not going to be that good is it. If it were good, it would sell and not have to be free. Pay a little and get something worthwhile for your project. Sometimes what you have to pay can be as little as $5 Australian. Hardly going to break the bank and the music is good. Have a look here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/royaltyfreemusic_new.htm

Later 7pm Aussie time recieeved this email from Avast Hello, false positive was fixed in new VPS update (091203-1). Sorry for any inconvenience. Milos Hrdy Virus analyst

This is actually worse than I thought, with Avast anti virus software running you can't even open the PTE 6 program, you will need to close Avast protection first. This will have a lunatic fringe frothing at the mouth

Here we go again. The new Virus definitions have just been downloaded for my Avast Virus protection program and it appears to be picking up every PTE slide show, old and new.] I have had to disable Avast to play anything. This is becoming tedious and I have sent the attached mail to Avast The new virus definitions downloaded to my PC this morning contain an error. Avast is picking up every slide show I have ever made, some years old, right up to one I made this morning as having a virus. They don't and it is a problem that has been experienced with other virus programs. The slide shows are the products of www.wnsoft.com and most of the Photographic world use this software, so I expect people are panicking all over the place right now. If you want a quick sample download my show made this morning from the link below and check it out for yourselves. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/downloads/pte6/textonapath/textonapath.zip If you can correct this quickly we would all be grateful Barry Beckham

I think it might be quite nice to make it snow on the sunshine coast of Australia when its 34c

TJR I think Peter has said it all really and I agree with him. In my experience of PTE, which is considerable, I have never heard of one instance of this either. With the greatest of respect to you, some peoples paranoia and fear of viruses far outweigh the actual threat. I would say, ignore some of the scaremongers and relax. If we on this forum who are sharing PTE shows all the time have never suffered a virus problem, what is the issue. Please don't allow an error by a virus protection software program be the cause of an irational fear. Here is a question I always think about when I hear of peoples fear of a virus. How come in some 15 years of being on line I have never had any issues with a virus. Am I just lucky? I doubt it, I just use common sense and a virus protection program and they has worked for me for years.

Just a heads up that a virus issue seems to have reared it's head again, this time with BullGuard. Someone has just reported to me that one of my slide shows seems to have developed a virus overnight Its the same false positive we have seen many times with other virus software and I am sure the new virus definitins will put it right soon, but people will pannick about this as usual.

I did say that you could standardise on 1920*1200 if that was your PC screen resolution, but if it is 1920*1080 use that. Either way they should be playing back fine on a flat screen TV, I guess your using an older TV where the format doesn't fit? Did you tick the little box in the Project Options > Screen tab > fixed size of slide (in pixels)

Tom Yes, some points well made. I agree it is probably higher when you look at multimedia, but over here my gut feeling is less than 25%, but I agree it would be higher than 3

I wonder if the Beta testing of any Mac version will be more difficult for the wnsoft team? I looked up the sales relationship between Macs and PC's on the Internet and it seems to have been stable for the past few years at around 3% for the Mac. Now that still leaves a lot of Macs out there, but not as many as with PC's. The feedback on bugs may not be so quick or efficient as it is now.

Geoff I have asked for the ability to copy settings to one, a group of images, or all images. but accept it has to takes it's place in the Que :-)

Geoff Use Key strokes its much quicker. From the object box in the O&A screen, highlight the text and hit Ctrl+C, skip to the next image and hit Ctrl+V, but as Peter says, watch where the text goes if you have a series of layers there

Igor A couple of questions 1. Can you confirm that existing PTE 5.6 owners can upgrade to PTE 6? 2. Will the creation of an executable file for a Mac require an upgrade key like Video Builder?