Danabw

Thanks very much for your reply, Al. Just got back to it. saw that a new version is out - I'll grab it an give it a whirl. Dana

"Flat out of luck" does sound about right, unfortunately. You'll need PTE and access to the source files (.pte file, images, sound file(s), etc.) to make changes to the shows. Once compiled to EXE form they aren't editable... Dana

Igor: So - can we either remove the "Project Name" setting (since it doesn't appear to provide any functionality that I can understand)? Or - could we provide a setting that we could check off that would tell PTE to always change the project name to match the file name when we save the PTE file? Dana

Thanks, Jim, for the pointer. Igor - can you take a look at and comment on the thread that Jim refers to above ("The Project Has Changed")? Dana

Someone refresh my memory - why do we need a separate Project name and File name? I don't remember the benefit...why isn't the project name updated to match the file name automatically? Can we just abandone the project name altogether - remove it from PTE? Dana

Second Copy is a good data file backup tool. I've also played with Dantz' Retrospect 6.0, which is a flexible and well designed file backup utility. More expensive than Second Copy (aroun $75), but worth a look to compare features if you're looking for a file backup tool. When I had to redo my Windows installation recently it was a tedious process to blow away and then reinstall windows and all my preferred apps. So I was looking around again last night for a better option, and found what looks like a great disk/partition image backup tool - Acronis' True Image 6.0. http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/ There is a free fully functioning trial you can download from their site. Just stumbled upon this last night, but my I really like what I see so far. Provides the best of both worlds - full drive/partition image creation w/out booting to DOS for operations, and allows mounting of the image file as a logical drive so you can browse it like a folder and restore individual files via simple copy/paste operations! I've used Norton's Ghost to make and restore images and like True Image better so far. Very easy to use and powerful. It has a disaster recovery mode that allows you to create a bootable floppy, CD, or other media so you can boot to it if/when your system gets hosed and then select your archive (from CD/DVD media, and/or from a secondary hard drive) and restore your drive/partition/files. You can resize the partition during restore, change the format of the restored partition (FAT, FAT32, NTFS, etc.), and there are switches to make it active, primary, logical, etc. Provides adjustable compression - my 5 gig partition took up about 2.8 gigs at moderately low compression, and took about 20 minutes to create. Its all pretty much wizard driven, and still has a lot of flexibility. I'm very impressed so far. If you want to have image backup available, it looks like a good option. What it doesn't do is unattended image creation (at least not as far as I can see) or incremental backups. Each image is a one-time snapshot of the drive(s), partition(s), or folder(s) you select. I think it goes for about $40 or so. Dana

Igor: Ability to select multiple slides in the slide list has been an oft-requested and high-want of mine for many many moons - thanks! The functionality I'd like is to have for a group of selected slides: - Delete from show - Drag/Drop or Copy/Paste to new position in show - Set Customize Slide settings - Set Comment or Sound Down the line, if we could preview a specific section of the show (select range of slides and click "Preview") that would be nice, but not a big deal, since you can simply press "ESC" to stop a preview at any time. Multiple slide selection in the slide list would be a significant improvement in PTE usability! Thanks, Dana

Thanks - just playing w/it a bit, and getting errors - dialog w/title "Microsoft Forms" and error message: "Could not load an object because it is not available on this machine." Clicking on any thumbnail on the Darktable (love that name!) results in that thumbnail shrinking to about 1/3 of its original size, and nothing else seems to have any affect. Win2K, SP2, Office 2K, all up-to-date. Thanks for all you're doing - this looks very cool. Dana

Yipppeee!! Slide numbers! Coolest thing since sliced bread. :-) Thanks, Igor!!!! Dana

Igor: Just amazing. Thanks. PTE continues to rule the PC slideshow world. Please, please, please consider porting PTE to a DVD-capable version some time in the future. Or maybe you'll bump into someone who'd like to license your code? :-) Thanks for the great updates!! The zoom and preview from slide are perfect. Now I still want in the slide list: - ability to select more than one slide at a time - slide numbers Dana

Read this thread: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...ct=ST&f=2&t=193 Dana

Just beautiful, Igor. Nice work. Have to say, I LOVE the double-click to edit properties in the Object Editor. My remaining wishes: - Number slides in slide list - Allow selection of multiple slides in slide list (to move or delete, at least) Thanks for all your great efforts!! Dana

First, I think it's perfectly reasonable to post about related products in this forum, unless Igor tells us not to. He (wisely, in my opinion) has never done that, and we've discussed different competitors off and on again since I've been around, and I'm sure before that. Not surprisingly, any number of competitor products have come and gone and and PTE (for PC shows) still stands tall. I wouldn't actively promote another product against PTE, given the openness Igor shows to our input and the frequent updates he provides that would be terribly wrong. But in areas where there are significant feature gaps (e.g., VCD/SVCD/DVD output) I think it's fair to point out other options. I won't try to figure out how Igor feels about this or any other personal matter, but if he feels strongly that we shouldn't talk about other products he has a right to post here about it, and should do so. I'll defer completely to any standards he cares to apply - it's his forum! As for the program (see www.photontv.com if you're interested), I'm sure a lot of us will try it if trial version is made available (just like other programs), and some may even start using it for TV slideshows if VCD is good enough for their purposes (not me - ugh! 352 x 240 resolution!). Whether they would use it instead of PTE for PC slideshows (the market where Igor has chosen to focus) depends on a lot of factors that we all know nothing about right now, including Rick for the most part. His post was after a quick test. Living with a program for a while and making several shows is much different than a quick test. As a 1.0 product there are bound to be some glitches and areas where it falls short of our needs along with any cool new features that may excite. I do think this is a wake-up call in general...the world is moving towards TV slideshows. More and more folks want to create and distibute shows that can be played on DVD players. The big market growth in the future is not going to be in PC-only delivery. For various reasons Igor may choose to not chase that market, but there's no denying that that's where the heat is going to be. Dana

Hey, Mouse, good to see you again. Hope the felines don't keep you away again. Dana

Thanks - I also downloaded it and found that they have indeed removed the 99 slides per show limit of their previous version. Since my shows are often in the 250 - 350 range, that's good news. I created a short (the demo only allows 10 slides) show and tried it on my DVD player. Image quality was excellent - sharp w/good color. Transitions (I only tried fades) were smooth. Music I selected to include did not play, so some unknown potential problem there. Haven't had time to try it again w/another song file. The interface is one of those slightly (or sometimes very) maddening "wizard" type of interfaces that is good for trying it out the first time, but potentially annoying as you progress. Definitely worth looking into for anyone wanting to make DVD slideshows. (And it can also make VCD and SVCD.) Oh-there is no sync to music feature, so you'd have to do the old count seconds of music, divide by slides and get appropriate slide timing. At least the timing, once set, would never change since it's a movie. So you could play it on any DVD and it would remain consistent, unlike a manually timed PTE show played on different computers. (Lucky we have the sync feature in PTE!) Dana

Seems like we hit a nerve. Prices appear to be in the mid-$600's at this point, so they've fallen almost a third in the past six months or more. By this time next year you might be able to find them on ebay for a reasonable price. Coupla caveats: 1. PTE menus, links, etc., won't transfer to the DVD as active content - just video. So you'll likely want to leave them out and capture just the flow of images in the slide show. 2. DVD recorders like the Phillips provide some basic indexing capability for content recorded on the DVD (thumbnails for each individual recording session on the disc). If you want to create customized menus or nested menus, chapter points in a show, etc., you'd need to author on a PC. 3. Some of the recorders out there only do +R or -R formats, not the RW (rewritable) ones. Not as good an option if you want to test things first on an RW before burning final. Media prices are falling, but may be a while before they hit the point where most of us would want to create a bunch of DVD coasters testing things. 4. No idea what the quality would be like. Using Svideo and optical audio out (which some newer PCs have) it should be pretty good. The big bonus here from a time perspective is that the DVD recorders use hardware encoding, so there isn't the long wait to convert content to DVD format as w/software encoding most of us currently use. Dana

Les: Yes - that would also be an option (assuming you have the $ for one of those units they were about $1000 few months ago when I looked at them). Even simpler might be to take the signal directly to the recorder, assuming that's possible. It would never work for me...even if I had one of them, if I asked my wife if I could put a computer next to the TV I know the exact "Over my dead body" look she would give me. . . Dana

ADB: You can't just copy a PTE presenation exe to a DVD and then run it in your DVD player. Your DVD player isn't a Windows computer, and would not recognize the exe. DVD players require a specific DVD format (MPEG2) and file/directory layout on the DVD disc. So no - you can't copy a PTE show to a DVD and play it in a DVD player. The only way I know of to get a PTE presentation on a DVD would be to play your PTE presentation on your PC, take the video output from your video card while it is playing (assuming your video card provides video out) and record on to tape on a VHS deck. Then capture that video back from the VHS tape to your computer as an AVI file and use software to author and encode the AVI into MPEG2 (DVD format) on a DVD. Not simple or convenient, and quality would be VHS-level. Dana

Ulead's DVD picture show's biggest problem for me in the past (among others) was the limit of 99 images per show. The new version doesn't clearly state in the FAQ if they've removed that limitation: Per disc info, but not per-show info. Any ideas, Truelight? Dana

one of my translation sites says "Yell a blow." The other said "GUEULER A BLOW" Dana

This is a fun and interesting discussion! Wedford: To specifically answer your question - no, all MPEG1s (or any digital video file) are not the same even if they are the same format. The all are encoded/rendered, which entails trade-offs in speed and compression (and amount and type of compression is the largest factor in perceived final "quality"). So it matters very much what encoder your program uses, as the encoder used in that program will determine the resulting quality. I haven't played w/Xatshow, since it only does VCD/SVCD, but others here have indicated that they liked the quality of that tool - just remember how subjective this all is. You'll have to see it for yourself to judge. (Aside: There are stand-alone video encoders, one of the absolute best is TMPGEnc (Tsunami MPEG Encoder) that has free and $$ versions - see http://www.tmpgenc.net. It will output just about any format you desire (VCD, SVCD, DVD, etc.) at a very high quality level. It's not a slideshow tool.) The HP DVD 200i recorders were as low as $169 or so before Christmas. They will be at that price (and lower) in the future - that's what hardware prices do, they fall. :-) Keep looking around if you're interested. Dell often had them marked down late last year. The HP drive is a very good drive, and comes with a nice software bundle that would allow you to make DVDs, but like most you would probably end up shopping around for other software fitted to your specific needs. Guido: Interesting points. Red laser DVD will be here for some time. It has very large large maket penetration (especially the last year or so), and companies have similarly large investments in it. Likely it will exist along-side blue light as a less expensive option for some time. If you read the article you pointed to, you see that there are two competing formats announced and delays are likely due to these continuing "format wars." From another article: So if you're waiting for everyone to be done and have the "last" format, you may have a longer wait than you expect. I'd put my money on the newer standard from Toshiba/NEC, as the industry will have a much tougher adoption curve if the new players won't handle folks extensive red laster DVD collections. If both formats arrive, then we'll have to see who "wins." Hopefully (and most likely) compatibility and convenience will rule the day and blue-laser will outlast blue-ray. I like what a comedian I saw one time said, "I'm not buying anything else until they promise to stop inventing things!" :-) Silly, but funny. I don't see HDTV broadcast standards settling down too quickly, and as the article notes we'll likely end up with several "final" standards for broadcast to fit different types of content. But none of that keeps red laser DVDs played on a DVD player from playing on any HDTV system. My neighbor has a 65" HDTV and progressive scan DVD player - my DVDs look great on it and will not matter what the broadcast standards end up at. Finally, making a DVD slideshow now doesn't destroy any source pictures any more than making it w/PTE does. You can always revisit them in another format in the future if you want to. Isn't that part of the fun? Michel: The software is available from several vendors, is quite complete, and can be used to make wonderful DVD slideshows now. Transitions (far beyone what PTE offers), multiple audio tracks, and ability to include video make it a fun and flexible alternative to PC slideshows w/PTE for some of us. Another flexibility point - the tool I use for slideshows allows me to output to DVD or video (e.g., VHS tapes) so I can create the show once and output to multiple formats if desired. This is not an "either/or" situation, of course. It's a case of multiple options, each with excellent possibilities. We would have a lot of things to say to a 35mm slideshow fan who tried to tell us that PTE isn't a reasonable option because the quality isn't as good as 35mm and the CDs/hard drives we store our data on won't last as long as slides! Loyalty to PTE is a good thing, as its a great program and Igor is a dedicated developer who listens to his customers. However, there _are_ other excellent options out there if you want to distribute in formats other than Windows EXEs on CD-ROMs. Dana

Having done all the formats in question for slideshows (PC, VCD/SVCD, DVD "picture" slideshows w/out transitions and DVD "movie" slideshows w/transitions) I would say that though there are trade-offs in sharpness when going from picture slideshows to "movie" slideshows, when you move up to DVD the trade-offs get to the level where they become insignificant for me. I'm sure you could stand a few feet from the TV and discern differences. But from a normal viewing distance (and closer) the clarity and sharpness of the DVD slideshows I've made just amazes me. I never felt VCD/SVCD were of much use (see, I can be picky too! :-) ) The quality just wasn't there at any distance, and too many of my friend's DVD players didn't handle them (especially SVCD). The quality of true MPEG2 DVDs are another story - the images are quite sharp and detailed, and being able to seamlessly combine both digital video and stills in the same show allows you to have a lot of fun. DVD burners are as low as $175 on sale (and likely lower - haven't checked recently). DVD-capable programs are at and well under $100. The main stumbling block for most would be the render time, which admittedly is significant (P4 2.4 = three times actual movie length to render). Other issues include DVD format (+R or -R) but even that isn't as big an issue as it seems, as both formats will work on about 85% + of the DVD players out there. To put it another way, I have yet to find a DVD player that won't play the DVDs that I burn, even when the format is _not_ supposed to be compatible with it. (Aside: If I was buying a DVD burner now I'd go w/the +R format, it's the more "modern" format and was built for compatibility.) In my experience VCD and SVCD have more limited compatibility w/DVD players. If you have a fairly recent computer (or even an older one if you don't mind rendering overnight) and can spare the change for a DVD burner and some software, there is a lot of fun to be had. I still use PTE for PC slideshows, which I still make in some cases. For example, for a show that I"m going to distribute to a lot of people (e.g., 30 copies for one of my son's classrooms) a PC show makes more sense since the media is cheaper and the burn/copy time is shorter (I have 50 CD autmated copying machine). But most of my shows that I make these days for my family and close friends are DVD. I've said this before on the board - the folks who have seen my shows over the years on PCs and now see them on the TV prefer the TV versions unanimously - that's right, I haven't had anyone say "Gee, can't you make them so we can watch them on the little PC monitor instead? :-) They just love the high quality sound from their entertainment center, the large image size on the TV, the image quality is great, and they prefer the comfort of watching in their den/family room rather than huddling around a computer. If you're developing shows to please your audience (and I am), that's a powerful motivator. :-) Dana

Robert: Yes. I use the output from my VCR - hook that into the analog input on my Sony digital camcorder using the analog RCA cable that came the Sony. Just make sure that the digital camcorder you purchase includes analog in capability. I think most have that capability, but check to be sure. ONce you've recorded the content you would use the firewire connection to download your digital video to the computer for editing, etc. One cool feature w/the Sony (don't know if other manufacturers have a similar capability): Sony sells an infared receiver unit that you can hook up to your VCR or TV video inputs. Then you can press a button on your Sony camcorder to put it into "remote" mode (don't remember the exact name of the selection) and send your video across the room from the camcorder to the infared receiver and onto your TV (or videotape). Makes it a snap to watch videos - sit the camera down across the room from the receiver and you're watching video. Dana

Not sure what you mean here...dazzle is a capture device (gets video from your recorder to your hard drive) and a digital camcorder captures video to tape of one type or another. If you mean will capturing analog video (8mm or Hi8 tapes) via dazzle be as good as video from a digital video camcorder, the answer is no. Digital Video (DV) will be sharper and clearer than analog, ceterus parabus. The other cool thing about digital video is that the date/time info is encoded right into the digital info on the tape (rather than optically recorded as w/analog camcorders) so when you capture your video it can be automatically be broken down into scenes by the video software - that makes for much easier reviewing and editing of your content. You can break video captures up by analyzing scene content and other methods, but using the date/time method is simpler and usually provides the most usable results for editing. Again, not clear what you're asking. If you mean are all digital camcorders the same, yes and no. :-) You'll get similar quality from DV (digital video) camcorders. There are two DV formats in the consumer market now - Digital8 and miniDV. Digital8 was pioneered by Sony. Digital8 reworks the Hi8 format to allow recording digital video on Hi8 tapes. So these units are about the same size as current Hi8 camcorders, and can play both tapes. Digital8 started out as a Sony-only format, though a few other vendors picked it up as well. MiniDV units are the next format, and is not tied to a particular vendor. Tapes are about half the size of Hi8 tapes, camcorders range from 2/3 the size of Hi8 camcorders to 1/3 the size - quite small in some cases. That's what I have, and I really like the smaller size of tapes and the camcorder - makes it easier to make sure that I actually have the camcorder w/me when I'm out and about. I can fit my Sony miniDV camcorder and my Oly 2020z camera in a small belt pack, along w/an extra miniDV tape, extra batteries and smartmedia cards for the Oly, etc. Another new digital format (though not a DV format) is MicroMV (aka MMV). This is from Sony as well (about 8 months young), and records to even smaller tapes in MPEG2 format in real time. I haven't really researched this format much, as I'm not in the market for a camcorder. Benefits are that these units are smaller still. One con would be that the video from these units is compressed at time of capture to MPEG2 (12 megabits/sec vs 25 megabits/sec for Digital8 and miniDV). A review I read here (http://www.dansdata.com/dcrip7.htm) said: So I would choose between Digital8 and MiniDV. More specifically, since you're going to have to move away from your 8mm tapes anyway in the future (they are going to age and die) I would go to miniDV if I were you. You can find good miniDV camcorders for as low as $500 or so at Costco/PriceClub type stores, they are smaller and more convenient, the tapes are smaller and easier to store/transport, and you get standard DV output. On the con side, miniDV tapes are a bit more expensive than the 8mm tapes you can use in Digital8 units, but prices have fallen steadily as the format has become widely popular. Digital video (either miniDV or Digital8) will be higher quality than your old analog stuff, so you'll get that benefit no matter which DV format you choose. A site with a lot of info on this area is http://www.videoguys.com/, check out their "getting started" page at http://www.videoguys.com/started.html. They are marketing products, so their advice is centered on selling stuff, but the overall DV info there is accurate and relatively clear. If you have more specific questions, fire away. Dana

Oh, forgot. digitized video is 12 gigabytes per hour on a hard drive. If you want to work on any quantity of video you're gonna need more disk space... :-) Dana P.S. Studio has an analog-only product (Studio AV) that is $129 on their web site, likely available from retailers for less than $100.