johndigi

Thanks, Dave. I'm working my way through the help files and tutorials. Much is coming back to me and the newer stuff is very cool!

Hey All! I was a PTE user from 2003 to 2009 or so. There was a period when I had no need to create shows and then I switched to a Mac. I once again will need to create some shoes and I looked at some Mac software. But, after looking around, I decided that since I have Parallels on my mac, I'd take a look at PTE again. Wow - a lot has changed! It seems to run great on the mac. The basics are still very similar to what I remember. But I feel like I'm starting from scratch again (I forget a lot these days!). I'll be looking at the tutorials and I'll probably be here asking questions! It is good to see some names from the past - Lin Evans was especially helpful and it's good to see you are still actively involved!

Lin, Once again, thanks for all your help! Your answer was my understanding until I read the 5.5 User's Guide, which seems to say the opposite. I did some animations with non-linear transitions as you have described, and the effect was much better than linear. With linear the zoom seemed to jerk at the beginning - this is much better. John

Hello, In the PTE 5.0 User's Guide (bottom of pg 43) it says that when making non-linear transitions, you should separate the keypoints by clicking on the scissors icon. In the 5.5 User's Guide, it says in the Linearity section (pg 32) that you should NOT separate the keypoints or the transitions will not be smooth. I'm confused - that happens a lot It seems logical to me that you would not want to separate the keypoints but I am a rookie at this so I know there is an awful lot that I do not understand. Which is correct? Or am I reading something incorrectly? Thanks in advance for any clarification! John L

Thanks, Lin! I should have realized that.

In the "What's New" section of the PTE Version 5.5 manual, it says that PTE "Supports all kinds of AVI files imported to the project". But there is no other reference in the manual and, after searching the forums, it does not appear that PTE can do that. Is this a mistake in the manual or is this a feature that will be added by the time version 5.5 gets out of beta? John L

Thanks, Peter. I do understand that, but the show I'm working on is just a simple "This is your Life" kind of thing for my Father-in-law's birthday. There are a few animations and I want the other slides to start & end with his favorite couple of songs. The exact timing of each slide, as far as matching the beat of the music, is not as important as that it ends exactly with the end of the music. I'm not trying to creat a technically perfect show, just some slides with a few animations that are synchronized as far as total length with the selected tracks. I'll just do the synchronizing manually and then trim the music to fit, but it's not what I would prefer in this case. I was just hoping that the ability to lock the duration would be a user selected option for each project, so the user could decide which way to go. Wel, maybe after I do this one the way that you are suggesting, I'll be so pleased that I won't want to go back Thanks again for your input! John

I would love it if I could set the duration for individual slides and lock those durations. When you let the software automaticaly sync the slides with the music, it would keep locked slides at their individual durations, and adjust all "unlocked" slides to finish at the end of the music. Currently, when you auto-arrange the slides to sync with the music, and individual slide durations are ignored and all slides have the same duration. This feature would be very helpful when you want most slides to be the same duration and synchronized with music but a few have pan & zoom effects that are of a longer duration. John L

Thanks, Lin. I use Audacity and have used it in previous shows, so your suggestion will work for me without too much trouble. I was just hoping that there was a way to mark a slide as "locked" so that the auto-arrange (sync to music) feature would keep those slides at their "locked" durations. Maybe a future enhancement? I'll put a suggestion in the "Ideas & Suggestions" forum. John

In the past, all the shows I have done had the music synchronized to the music and equal time for all slides.- very easy and worked very well. I am working on a show with some animations (I LOVE the PZR features!). I want those slides to display a little longer. Also, I will be manually setting the timing of certain other slides to sync with te music. Then I want the rest of the slides to be spread out so that the whole show finishes at the end of the music. I have looked in the manal but I must be missing something. If someone could point me in the right place, or point to a tutorial that will shoe me how to do that, I would greatly appreciate it! I am using 5.5 beta 5. John L

Lin, As Mary said, the images from the cataloging software can reside all over the hard drive. I agree with Mary that it's not a showstopper but personally I would rather not have to copy the images to one folder to create the slide show. But I like PTE so much, the inconvenience is a small price to pay! By the way, having just upgraded to version 5.1, I wanted to try pan & zoom animations. I found your "PZR for Smarties" video tutorial and it was great! THANK YOU!! John

Wow! That was fast! Thanks so much to all of you who replied - I appreciate it! I guess I'll stick with creating a fresh folder and copying the images there, and zipping them when I'm done. And I will check out the 5.5 beta - although there is so much new stuff in 5.1 that it will take some time to digest! John

Hello, Is it possible to drag images from my photo cataloging software (I use Idimager) into PTE? I want to create a slide show based on certain catagory labels displayed in Idimager and drag them into my PTE show. My folders are arranged by date so the images are all over my hard drive. I know that I can always copy them to a new folder for the slide show but I was hoping that I would not have to do that. Thanks. By the way, I have not created any shows for some time. I just upgraded to version 5.1 and i LOVE the new features! John L

Yes but not in PTE. You can use Audacity, a free audio editor (audacity.sourceforge.net). It will allow you to add 2 songs, time-shift one so its beginning overlaps the end of the other, then apply fade-out to one track and fade-in to the other. Then you can save it as a new mp3 and use that in PTE. John L

I'm a very happy PTE user for some time but just began playing with creating video for DVD (previously just created exe shows). When I click on the video button and check the "for Ulead" box, it creates a file with a ptev extension. Then when I navigate to that file in Ulead MovieMaker 4 (while leaving PTE open), I get an "invalid format" message. If I uncheck that box, it creates an avi file (avi extension) and MovieMaker opens it fine. Maybe I shouldn't worry since the avi files looks great, but just what is that Ulead box for if MovieMaker does not recognize the ptev file? Thanks! John L

Igor, Thanks! This is so cool - requested enhancements are already there John L.

Igor, I have to chime in here, too. I have been busy on some projects so I have not downloaded any of the 4.30 betas or even read about the new features - I didn't want to be tempted But when the final version of 4.30 came out, I downloaded it and read the release notes. I couldn't wait to try it! The improvements are huge and I'm sure the new interface will convince many who were on the fence to come over to PTE. Thank you so much for all your work. Most applications would consider this a MAJOR UPGRADE and change accordingly. Thanks for making it a MAJOR UPGRADE but keeping it free for registered users. The initial price I paid becomes even smaller as time goes on and PTE just keeps on getting better. Thank also to all the beta testers who provided such valuable feedback to make the final product so good. Now, one small suggestion for a future enhancement: Would it be difficult to set a default image editor in PTE instead of just using the file associations in Windows? Not a big deal, though. Thanks again. John L

This forum was one of the reasons I went with PTE instead of some of the other products out there (of course, being the best software helped, too!). PTE support and the user community ranks right up there with my other favorite photo software - namely Qimage and IMatch. There are other good products, but support after the sale is really important, in my book. John L

Rodger, I had the same problem w/ Excel 97 on Win XP Home. Try making a change in the file, changing it back, and saving the file before you do anything else. (I think I changed an empty cell on the Variables tab). Then try to enter the directory for the thumbnail program. That made it work for me. Don't know why, but it worked. Hope that helps. When you get it running, you will love Al's Adjustor. It's a great help. John L

John, Your second wish is feasible today in PTE by adding two or more images in the "Object Editor". Thanks, Al. I guess I wasn't specific enough. I meant I would like the ability to have 2 slides up at the same time and being able to fade them independently. For example, slide A is on the screen, then slide B fades in to the right of Slide A. Then Slide C replaces Slide A or even elsewhere on the screen. I can do it by making multiple images in Photoshop, but it would be really cool to do it within PTE. John L

I have been a learner in this forum rather than a contributor, so maybe I don't have the right to offer suggestions, but my wish list woud be: 1) Dark table (actually, everything that Al's Adjustor does) built into PTE 2) The ability to be able to put more than 1 slide up at a time. I realize it can be done by creating images in Photoshop, but the ability to put up multiple slides in PTE would be fantastic 3) Zoom effect John L

I second that! I originally purchased one of the competition's products (Pro Show) because I liked seeing the slides on the timeline. But then I sent a couple of shows to some friends and 2 of them were unable to view them. The response from the vendor was that the PCs did not have the required software. So when I looked at PTE again, discovered the forum, the free add-ons from forum members, the free upgrades, the incredible power of the program, the fantastic support, the ever-improving quality, etc., I uninstalled Pro Show, purchased PTE, and have not looked back! John L

Thanks again for the help, Al. Maybe it wan't so much the value that was in cell B2 in the Variables tab, but just saving the spreadsheet in my version of Excel before running any macros. At any rate, it did work fine after I did that by manually creating the thumbnails. I also tried your suggestion to just use the dark table with full sized images. It took a few seconds to load but then worked just fine. ANY support for freeware is great, and I really appreciate all your efforts in building the Adjustor model in the first place, and then supporting it after. It's a GREAT tool! John L

Al, I just noticed that on the "Variables" tab in the Adjustor spreadsheet, the value in cell B2 is "D:\PTE_Adjustor\Demo\black.jpg". That value was there in a fresh copy downloaded a couple of days ago. What should be in that cell? Since my D: drive is my DVD drive, I deleted that cell. Excel no longer hangs! I now can do everything until I try to use the "Create Thumbnails" button. I have the correct path to easy thumbnails in the dialog box, and exthumbs.exe shows in the "Available .exe files:" box. But when I double-click on ezthumbs.exe I get the following error message: "Run-time error '75'; Path/File access error". Excel does not hang, though. Any ideas what may cause this message? I wonder if it may be related to the now empty cell B2 on the Variables tab. Thanks! John L

Thanks, Al!