bmccammon

Thank you, gentlemen.

Hi Lin. Thanks for the lesson and example. Can you please tell me how you accomplished the "mouse over" effect on the buttons? Thanks

Delete post? How does one delete a post to this forum?

Igor... your persistance is remarkable. I read through most of the forum topics and try to follow along as situations arise and are dealt with by the forum community and by you at Wnsoft. It's really hard to not imply critical or petty tone to some of the comments and I'm always amazed at how civil the forum remains. I appreciate your steady progress toward a stable, functional program in light of the wide variety of comments and requests. Thanks for your continued support to the forum. best wishes, Bruce

The link to beta 9 is pinned at the top of the forum index page.

Brian: thanks for your guidance. I try my best to stay on top of spyware and needed system protection. Recently my system has had a variety of weird characteristics... slow, Wacom tablet driver didn't load, etc. I followed your link to XoftSpy and purchased a copy after running the free scan. It found many files of concern and quarantined them. AVG and Adaware have been run regularly on this system and I was blown away by the number of files XoftSpy found. They threw in a free copy of RegCure with the purchase. I use a product called Registry Booster and, again, thought I was being well taken care of. The RegCure program found over 900 links, files, and lines that needed attention in the registry. Good grief. After making a recovery point I had the RegCure "fix" the files it found. After rebooting I can honestly say that this system has not run as fast or as well for at least 1.5 years. So, that's my long way of saying "thanks". And my wife wonders why I troll these forums so much. Best wishes, Bruce

I saw one topic in the forum and it was removed fairly quickly. I've had no problems with email coming from the forum... knock on wood.

I would venture to guess that the vast majority of PTE users rely on JPG files for their shows unless there is some special purpose or need (eg, transparency). I have to believe that if there was a better format that reduced loading in PTE and produced a better, smoother, more reliable show then we'd all be using a different format. If I'm incorrect I'd sure like to learn the "better way". Best regards, Bruce

I recommend that you NOT use BMP files as your source files for the show. Why not use JPG, cropped to 1024x768 with a compression level of about 7-8? That produces high quality images, small file sizes and works well in PTE. Good luck with your show.

I won't answer your original question but I will offer another "solution" to mass slide "scanning". You can buy a slide copier adapter for virtually any digital camera. I had a Nikon 995 and used an inexpensive attachment that served as a slide stage and light diffuser. I copied over 1000 slides in a weekend and came out with JPG files that rival flatbed scanning. Granted, scanning with a dedicated slide scanner provides the best result but I didn't have the time or resources to pursue that. I'd surely look into direct re-photography of the slides along with the projection method recommended by Conflow. Either are a compromise to the dedicated slide scanner but I think that 're-photography' of the original slide produces great results. Good luck.

The demo opens quickly for me in both IE7 and Mozilla. Mozilla opened to a full screen presentation with a rather dull appearance... somewhat blurry. IE7 opened in a smaller, new window that appeared better but had the same appearance as in Mozilla when expanded to full screen. I think it is great to see a leveraging of skills and products, Lin. I hope you and Panos continue to collaborate. Best regards, Bruce

I am building a slideshow using PTE v5 beta 8V and using The Dom/Panos' photoalbum (v1) template. The show starts with a small album object and show title that pans/zooms to a readable size but one that allows the viewer to still see much of the album (#1 attachment). As I prepare to move into presentation of the images for the show I zoom the album template more so that it covers almost all the TV safe viewing area (#2). I want to use this exact album size and location for each of the next slides so that the impression is that each image appears in the album frame, does what ever I want to with PZR, and then dissolves into the next image. But the problem is that randomly the template jumps back to the smaller size used at the beginning of the show (#4). If I close the Object and Animation window and move to the next slide in the show (or previous one) and then back to the one that had the smaller album template the problem is often cured. That is, by moving one slide forward or backward the larger album template appears (#3). Sometimes moving backward or forward causes each of the sequential slides to have the smaller album template. By persisting and moving backward or forward many times I am able to get all the images to have the proper album template (the large one) in place for the show. You can see in the attached images that I am using the template and the image as separate objects in the Object/Animation window. Attempts to use parent/child dependent objects has not been successful for me so far... I have a lot to learn. Any ideas on why PTE v5 beta 8V would randomly resize objects and then "correct" the random sizing just by moving backward or forward in the slide sequence? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You can batch crop or size in Irfanview. The screen to allow the actions is in the "advanced options" section after "start batch operation with selected thumbnails". Good luck

Don't forget that "beta is beta". Many PTE items are not yet fully implemented in version 5. I'm curious.. what's not to trust with the "start preview from current slide" option? I've never had it fail to do what it is supposed to do.

I am sure you will find the people on this forum very helpful and responsive to any question. It is a fairly unique resource to support PTE. Best wishes in the new year!

Hi Squeaky. One way to do what you want is to simply right click on the thumbnail of the image in the slide sequence (selected/added images) of PTE. Then click on "start preview from current slide CTRL-R" at the bottom of the popup window. If you are in the Timeline view you can click on the slide number to highlight where you want to start and then click on "preview" in the lower right corner (Version 5)... not on "view" in the upper right. Either way allows you to start from a point in the slide sequence. Good luck.

I'd like to support Al's point made earlier ... "Our biggest problem here is the number of variables and possible scenarios under which shows can be created and then played back on various pc's and various players." I commend Igor and Sergey for efforts to make DVD playback formats work for both 4:3 and 16:9 screens. I think that they can only be expected to do so much to make playback reliable. I'll admit right now to confusion and frustration with my own ability to find a reliable way to crop (size) images for playback on a DVD. I think I have found a combination that works for my personal DVD and TV but here is what I have had to experiment with: 1) picture dimensions - 4:3 or 16:9 crop? 2) MPG or AVI creation software (PTE, Sony Vegas, Proshow Gold) 3) DVD burning software (Sony DVD Architect, Roxio) 4) TV picture format settings 5) DVD machine display settings I've found that I can replicate all of Al's example screenshots (letterboxed top, letterboxed sides/top, no letterbox) using a single show and only messing with my TV and DVD player display settings. My DVD allows me to set 4:3 Aspect (normal, auto, shrink, zoom) and to set "Just fit zoom" (auto, 4:3 standard, European vista, 16:9 standard, American vista, cinemascope 1, and cinemascope 2). GOOD GRIEF. They all produce very different images on the wide screen Panasonic TV. Add to this the fact that burning software I use most (Vegas Movie Studio) allows me to set a "stretch type" (letterbox, stretch to fit, zoom to fit) and the combinations of settings gets totally unwieldly. And all I'm trying to do is settle on a format and group of settings that produce high quality, full screen images on my TV. I think I've found my "magic set" and will test it/them with several programs in the near future. But I come away from my testing with a very strong and new-found appreciation for the complexity that Igor and crew are facing. Oh yeah... I almost forgot to mention that you can get different quality of image presentation by changing the pixel aspect ratio in your images from square to rectangular. Photoshop CS2 has a video action that adjusts pixel aspect ratios of images for video use and ends up with a ratio of 0.9 rather than 1.0. And yes, that does influence how my images look on the same DVD and TV group that I mentioned above. I enjoy and benefit from the discussion in this forum and look forward to the time that PTE and VideoBuilder are in a stable form. That should help stabilize at least part of the variables that we all have to work with. My hat's off to Igor and Sergey. It really is very complicated for the user and it has to be much more so as the software producer. Best wishes for a happy new year to all. Bruce

I think getting shows synchronized to music in Version 5 is a lot easier than "a lot of dinkin' around" as Ken indicates. Select "Timeline, Timed Points, Add Arranged Points" and it's done. Sure seems to work for me in all the betas of version 5. Happy Holidays, Bruce

Welcome to the forum 'snowranger'. It would help if you'd let us know what version of PTE you are using, a bit about the hardware you are using, and some info about the show itself (number of slides, music length, etc.). I'm sure you'll get good advice once we narrow the field down a bit. Bruce

You are correct. The formatting of the license allowed me to miss the "low level..." sentence. Thanks for the correction. B

It is interesting that use of the music for wedding shows is not allowed.

The burning log I created for Igor was sent to the C: drive and is named "burning.log" It is 1K in size. Hope this helps. Bruce

I am VERY pleased to announce that v5 beta 8a worked as I always hoped it would and successfully burned a DVD slideshow on my Dell computer without any problems. Thank you Igor! In case it is of interest or use for others I do have Roxio Easy Media Creator 8, Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, and Sony DVD Architect installed on my machine. I was prepared to remove these programs, run Registry Mechanic per Lin's suggestion and then try to burn a DVD with PTE if my test of v5 beta 8a failed. Now I don't have to do that thanks to improvements made in the beta 8a release Igor provided. Thanks too for the suggestion to create the DVD files on the hard disk and then use Roxio to burn them to DVD. I think that would have worked as well. It is sure great to be able to accomplish all the tasks within one program. Again, thanks Igor and thanks to all who jumped into develop this thread. Best regards... Bruce

Thanks Lin and Igor. I will do as you suggest but it is going to be later today before I will be able to get to it. I'm comforted by 'wideangle's comment that they have the same experience... Yea... it's not just me! Lin... to be clear here --- Vegas is not any part of the problem. Vegas has been my solution for making DVDs using .avi files produced by PTE. My problem comes from use of PTE as a stand-alone product to generate and burn a DVD show. I'll get back to the forum with info this afternoon. Bruce

I have a standard 30 slide program that I use to test various slideshow and DVD programs. I installed v5beta 8 and added the 30 slides. All transitions were set to "fade in". I kept the default 4 seconds for each image. No music. No PZR. Nothing fancy at all. Then I went to "video" and asked PTE to make a DVD. I added the PTE show as requested and the process started. I got to the "starting to burn" point... it took about 2.5 minutes before anything showed on the progress bar but the bar went to 99% shortly after that. Then the DVD tray ejected. I watched the counter continue until the time elapsed showed 10 minutes. Nothing happened. I tried to cancel and found that all I could do was say yes to the message that asked if I really wanted to do that.... over and over and over. There was no response from PTEVideo. I went to task manager and asked to stop the video process which it did after a long wait. Then my computer wouldn't react to any mouse control. I could not get the DVD tray to retreat into the PC. I ended up turning the PC off with the power switch. The PC rebooted normally. I have tried to burn DVDs with every beta version of PTE v5 that has allowed that option and have yet to get one to read or work on any of the 3 DVD players I have (Panasonic, Sony, Motorola). I can use PTE to generate a .avi file that renders perfectly in Sony Vegas. It would sure be nice if PTE v5 could ultimately create and burn reliably on the multitude of burners. It sounds like most other people are having success. My DVD burner is in a DELL 8300 machine. It is a TEAC device and only burns DVD+R. I'm willing to continue to test PTE v5 with hopes that it will end up at a point that works for me. I add these comments only as information for Igor and others. It just seems that such a simple, 2+ minute show should be relatively easy to move to DVD. Sorry that this ended up in the wrong forum section... should have been in the beta 8 thread but I don't know how to move it.