PGA

Lin, Your existing PTE Licence allows you to install it on two systems. As I understand this proposal of Igor's, the Internet access is required only to validate a newly loaded licence key. Once both systems have had their licence key loaded, thereafter both copies of PTE will continue to work with no further need to access the Internet. I do not see how this scheme will impact you at all. At home, the desktop system will continue to work; away from home the laptop system will continue to work (until it runs out of battery power). regards, Peter

I'm of the same opinion as Barry, Judy and wideangle on this. It's no big deal. Perhaps, if it had been called "online registration" rather than "online activation" it would have raise fewer objections. Peter

It sounds to me as though you are storing your images on a removable storage device (DVD, USB memory stick or similar). This device is not present when you re-open the project. Peter

Having now had time to download the Zip file and investigate the sound files in a little more depth I have discovered that there is a mixture of both 22.05KHz and 44.1KHz sample rates. Both Cooledit and Audacity can struggle to do the right thing when you ask them to mix together different Sample rates. It doesn't surprise me that PTE is struggling too! I very much regret that Greyspider has broken the first "law" of digital sound editing: make sure all the input files have the same sample rate. To explain what can happen if that law is broken I'll use Audacity as my frame of reference. If I start assembling the soundtrack in Audacity by opening one of the 22050Hz items, Audacity sets 22050Hz as the sample rate for this Audacity project. When I come to export the final soundmix, Audacity will "down-sample" all the 44100Hz items - with consequent degradation of sound.If I start assembling the soundtrack in Audacity by opening one of the 44100Hz items, Audacity sets 44100Hz as the sample rate for this Audacity project. When I come to export the final soundmix, Audacity will "up-sample" all the 22050Hz items - with consequent degradation of sound.Using files with different characteristics is always going to produce problems of some kind or another. I have used sound quality as my example. Other problems can be expected, as has been discovered by Greyspider. I am certain in my own mind that, if Greyspider goes back to to the original sources and downloads fresh copies, ensuring that all files have identical Sample rates, are all either WAV (for preference) or CBR MP3 (next best), then he/she will have no further problems with soundtracks. Peter

Dave, Please don't mis-quote me. I did not recommend "converting the tracks to wav". I pointed out that MP3 is not a format that is suited to "work in progress"; it is a "delivery" format. I then generalized and suggested that, in order to preserve the best possible sound quality in our AVs, WAV format should be used throughout the build process until the very last moment. A conversion of the existing 22.05KHz MP3 files to 44.1KHz WAV would involve massive interpolation of sound points (To all intents and purposes, every other sample point will have been created by the user's computer rather than by the original sound engineer). That is likely to introduce unwanted and probably unpleasant audible "artefacts" (It would be analogous to zooming a JPG to the point where it started to pixellate). Speaking now as one who does try to obtain the best possible sound quality, my way out of this problem would be to buy CDs to obtain all the music items and then use Windows Media Player to rip the desired items to WAV files. Those would be added to the soundtrack and I would let PTE v8 convert the soundtrack to a single MP3 file when it publishes the EXE file. Peter

Greyspider, Having carefully read and digested this entire thread, I think some clues might have been overlooked. In Gary's post showing the MediaInfo data, one version of the sound file (yours) is clearly showing as VBR at 22.05Khz Sample rate and the other (his) is showing as CBR at the same Sample rate and at 48Kbps Bit Rate. There have been problems reported on this forum in the past when using VBR MP3 files. There have been problems reported in the past when using 22.05KHz Sample Rate. As an aside, 48Kbps Bit Rate is an MP3 quality level that is suitable only for Voice. The minimum Bit Rate for music is generally accepted as being 128Kbps. Many AV workers prefer to use 192, 256 or even 320Kbps Bit Rate for MP3. Whichever way I look at that MediaInfo data it tells me that these MP3 files are not, in anyway, "standard" music files. I would strongly recommend re-acquiring these files as CBR, 44.1KHz Sample rate (which is CD standard), and at least 128Kbps. One final point, MP3 format should be regarded as a "point of delivery" format and not as a working format. It is a Lossy compression and every save compresses the already compressed data. Thus the "total loss" builds up steadily. If you are looking for the best possible quality of audio, use WAV files as the input to PTE. Then, in the Project Options > Audio tab, tick the box to have PTE Convert tracks to MP3 for the EXE. That is to say, make the conversion to MP3 the very last act and have it happen just the once. Peter

Because different codecs are being used for the EXE version and the DVD version. Peter

To my certain knowledge the forum accepts files with extensions of .zip, .jpg and .pdf. It may accept others but those are the ones I have used successfully myself. I've never heard of .rar. Perhaps the file format is the problem as far as being able to upload it to the forum is concerned. Peter

Just a thought Lin, could it be that Moderators are expected to show no favoritism towards any individual, and thus are barred from Like by the forum software? That would have a certain kind of sense to it, in my eyes. regards, Peter

That's great news, Igor!

That error could, perhaps, be caused by your filename having "non-standard" characters. Make sure you are using only alphabetic and numeric characters and try again.

Jeff, As I recall, when you add the mask container you get prompted as to which mask to use. At that point you can choose Rectangle, Circle or "from a file". You need to take the "from a file" route. Peter

Jeff, Have you ever stopped to consider just how stupid your club is? (If you're an officer or on the committee, then please accept my apologies, but this is not a personal attack on you). Your club demands that the projected images be sized at 1400x1050 yet they have a projector capable of only 1024x768. Where's the logic in that? And do they really check all the submitted entries to confirm that they adhere to the rules? Would they ever notice if someone submitted something that was at a different resolution? Do the club members realise that, by having their carefully prepared 1400x1050 images projected through a 1024x768 projector, their beautiful images are automatically being degraded, i.e. losing sharpness, by being downsized? There should be no rules about image sizes. All there should be is a "Guidance" statement that digital images and AV sequences will be played back through a projector whose native resolution is wwww x hhhh pixels. Leave it to the members to then choose the aspect ratio and dimensions that they will use. My final point: any club still operating a 1024x768 projector is a dinosaur of a club. And we all know what happened to the dinosaurs! A good quality 1920x1080 projector no longer costs several thousand pounds to buy. There are several on the market priced below £700 and the cost is continuing to fall. I bought myself an Acer at the start of the year. It cost me £650. I see that Acer now offer at least two models priced under £500, one of which is the model that I own. Peter

I think you are confusing "Video clip duration" and "Slide duration". They are two different things.

Jeff, I don't see any mouse pointer - no matter how much I try and get one to show itself! But I'm viewing your second load-up. Lin and Ken were probably viewing your original load-up. You have some lovely autumn colours and flowing water there but I felt that one or two images seemed to be a little over-exposed in the highlight areas. Some quick tweaks in Lightroom or ACR will sort those out. I also noticed that your "frame" around the base image doesn't quite cover all the pixels. Along the bottom edge and down the right hand side I could see perhaps one or two pixels of the underlying image peeping around the edge of the frame. Finally, do you need such broad, pure white borders around your inset images? Perhaps a narrower border in a mid-grey shade would work just as well and be less visually intrusive? Thanks for sharing this with us. It made me regret not getting out more last month myself! regards, Peter

Download, install and run this little utility on your home machine and it will extract your PTE key. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15623351/PTE%20KeyCopy.zip

PTE, in v8, allows us to create the following “customized” entities: Toolbar Profiles, Templates, Transitions and Slide Styles. Via Settings > Preferences > Templates we can nominate which folder PTE should use to store customized Templates and Slide Styles. I believe PTE should also allow the user to nominate which folder(s) to use to store customized Toolbar Profiles and Transitions. These options could be added to the Templates tab of Preferences and the tab could then be renamed to Folders. regards, Peter

Ralph, I also use Windows Media Player to rip tracks from CDs - but I rip to WAV format (which is also lossless). I try never to work with MP3 because this is a heavily compressed file format. If you load an MP3 file into a sound editor (in my case Audacity) do some edits on it and then export it as an MP3 file, you add a second lot of compression to the first. This can result in poor quality sound. If you rip the same file as a WAV, take that into such as Audacity, do the same edits and then export as a WAV, you preserve all the original sound quality. Before you download your tracks as MP3, check what bitrate they are going to be. Many downloadable tracks come as only 128kbps. To get sound quality close to that of WAV files (i.e. CD quality) you need 320kbps MP3s. Peter

In Audacity you could try Effect > Normalize on each clip and then export each clip to a new file. The Normalize effect will set the peak levels of all the clips to the same value (raising or lowering the level of the rest of each clip in proportion). Any significant difference between the clips after normalizing will be the natural dynamic within each of the clips.

Clipping on a waveform indicates that the sound file has been badly engineered. Usually it indicates that the original signal has been recorded at too high a level. Alternatively it can indicate that the gain has been raised to too high a level during mixing. There is no cure for clipping once it exists. It has to be avoided at every phase of the sound engineering process. It is usually accompanied by audible distortion of the sound. This may not be apparent on typical PC loudspeakers but will almost always be apparent on good quality hi-fi loudspeakers. If you have not altered these files with a sound editor (e.g. Audacity or Audition or equivalent) then the original recordings have been badly handled but the original sound engineers. One final point. PTE does not change the shape of the displayed waveform to reflect any of the changes (fades or envelopes) that you might apply to the audio clip. It always shows the original waveform. regards, Peter

Gary, Could you please explain why achieving a small file size is so important to you? I suspect that most of us make our sequences and accept that whatever the output file, whether EXE or MP4, the file size as delivered by PTE is the output size we have got to live with. Or am I peculiarly unique in not caring what the output file size is? After all, disk space is cheap and the output file is always going to be too big to send via e-mail as an attachment. So why worry? regards, Peter

This topic is an excellent illustration of the point I made last month. What you are all offering Gary are workarounds. Yes, the function to do what Gary wants is already present in PTE. But it is not readily apparent to a new or inexperienced user just where to find it, or how to build it using the many components of PTE. Gary is neither a new or inexperienced user, and yet he has struggled with this. What he is asking for is an improvement to the user interface. PTE already let's us build our own transitions and slide styles. Perhaps we now need to be able to build, and share, custom objects that can be placed on and added from the O&A window's toolbar.

I suspect that the problem may have been caused by the choice of bitrate. When exporting an MP3 file from Audacity the available bitrates around the 100 mark are 96 and 112. 102kbps would appear to be a very non-standard setting. Peter

I agree wholeheartedly with this idea. However, I would amend the request slightly: I would like to be able to highlight a group of audio files in their track or tracks and then move them as one group.

The very fact that you two gentlemen are having this discussion about a convoluted "solution" to a simple problem is, to me, proof-positive that PTE's design is fundamentally flawed. PTE should provide the intuitively obvious function of moving, in either direction along the timeline, and whilst preserving synchronization between them, any number of audio clips spread across any number of tracks. That should be achieved by the simple expedient of selecting them all and then dragging and dropping them as a group. Why make life so damned complicated! It is these arcane work-arounds that get PTE labelled as a complicated piece of software to use. Let's get back to basics and "KEEP IT SIMPLE". If it isn't simple now, get the design changed so that it is! Peter