isabel95

Regarding my question about software to use for voice-overs - RED FACE HERE... After using Audacity for years to prepare music and sound clips for stills posted on pbase and for slideshows I simply never noticed that RECORD BUTTON! I'm using my Logitech webcam mike for voice and the quality is "all right" but I'll have to remove the bird clock from the wall. Wish I had carpet instead of a tiled floor in this laundry room!!! Isabel

You didn't mention what application you use to record voice. I haven't figured out how to do that with Audacity, and Windows Vist Sound Recorder only saves as a wma, which Audacity won't read. Isabel

I totally agree with you about zooming being overused...in fact, when someone directs me to a presentation that has a lot of zooming and panning, I stop it before I get totally annoyed. The effects have to be used judiciously, just as one should not have every transition available used within a program. Up to this point I have been using only fades, but with 17 month old twin grandchildren that I see very infrequently, I like to make a presentation from the images I shoot when I see them and want to make some memorable more polished programs. Yes...less is really more when it comes to creating a mood! Quick question - I've been watching your tutorial information on your Australia program and tried to add a voice track in Audacity but find that Windows Vista Sound Recorder only saves in WMA format. Didn't XP save as a wav? What can I use as a sound record for that voice track (I noted that your commentary was pre-recorded and brought into Audacity, and not recorded from within Audacity (haven't figured out if that is even possible). Isabel

Ahah! Thanks. That's higher math for me - not one of my strengths! I found Lin's video tutorial tremendously helpful in understanding what's going on. Isabel

After I posted that illustration I did find your tutorial on panzoomrotate and it was tremendously helpful. Thank you! Isabel

Well...obviously I DIDN'T insert the link properly...It's the video on panzoomrotate: http://www.lin-evans...nzoomrotate.avi (about 64 meg) Thanks! Isabel

Thank you, THANK YOU....for putting these together. I've been struggling with animation all day and made next to no progress. Just started watching this one and I was able to see some animation. It's nice to know I can go to bed with another mystery cleared up! Isabel P.S. Not sure I inserted the link properly, but you know what I mean!

I'm trying my darnedest to learn the program features by reading the manual, but often the illustrations don't match up with their descriptions. Attached is an example of what can be confusing. I don't see the 8 seconds and 16 seconds described in the text. I do see something that comes close to 8 seconds, but I don't see anything like 16 seconds. If someone could set me straight I would appreciate it. Isabel

Neat-o. Nice feature! I'm still aggravating myself about animation and keypoints. I don't quite have the steps in memory and I have to fiddle around till I get it to work! I wish the manual made the steps clearer. (Trying to zoom in to part of an image - I keep winding up with only the zoomed-in part of the image, rather than the animation starting from the beginning. Barry has an illustration in one of his videos but goes through it too fast for me to pick up on what he's doing. Isabel

Saving mp3s as wav is what I've been doing. Thanks for the confirmation (I hope!) about quality being retained! Isabel

MP3 is a compressed file. If one takes an mp3 file into Audacity to edit it, let's say to add some more silence to the beginning of the file, when it is resaved it is going to be compressed again when the altered file is resaved as mp3, resulting in loss of sound quality. Am I incorrect? Would there be any merit in saving the editing mp3 file in wav format and then resaving to mp3 hoping to retain the best sound quality? Isabel

thanks, Dave and Ken. It's really going to be fun making presentations using more of PTE's capabilities than I ever used before. Isabel

Have just started watching the tutorials and love the ability to make a white border saved as a png and add to all the images at once (as long as they're the same size!). I realized that that was how additional elements are added to images within PTE rather than making additional images in Photoshop! Figuring out how to do animation (I always wanted to learn how to do that) was a bit more complicated but I finally got it to work. What puzzles me, however, is how do you deal with the inevitable image degradation when you zoom in (asking a smaller part of the image to fill the same space as the original image). Thanks, Barry for putting this together for us. Isabel

Thanks, Lin. That worked great, until I ran the file! I had chosen to resize my original 1280 pte file to 640 x 360. Attached is what I saw in QuickTime. Isabel

I'm totally baffled. I want to take a pte slideshow and convert it to avi so that I can bring the avi file into a flash conversion program (Moyea FlashVideo MX Standard). I know I did this once before, but don't remember how I did it. The instructions within the program (Deluxe 6) are very unclear. They state to click on finish after you've burnt the avi file to a disk...and also to open a burning program..I chose 1280 output and when saved the file was only 55kb???? Please straighten me out here. TIA. Isabel

Tthanks for the good feedback. Interesting that it runs faster on Firefox. That's my browser of choice, but I do have the IE tab for it for use when a website doesn't seem to be working right. I used Moyea FlashVideo MX Standard. It is extremely easy to use and does a great job. Processing gives you four files (flv, swf, jpg, and html) which you upload to your website space (I have a Yahoo Small Business website for which I pay about $35 every three months). Here's a link to their site, where you can download a trial: http://www.moyea.com/video-to-flv Isabel

That's wonderful, Carol! You must have a faster machine than mine - or better wireless service! Isabel

Was happy to learn that I qualified for a free upgrade and immediately used it to put together a fast slideshow, accepting the default transitions that the program chose (normally I just use fades...I am truly going to have to sit down and force myself to read the manual!) I was THRILLED when I learned that through Deluxe 5.6 I could automatically upload to Vimeo...and upon testing found out that it was extremely to do so. I'm concerned with the pacing of the slideshow and the starting and stopping of the video as it loads. I have a 3G dsl connection and wasn't playing the slideshow in HD. Another concern is the fact that the opening slide on the Vimeo screen is a frozen image where two of the slides are evidently in transition, so it's a bit messy looking. These are not PTE problems, but probably something to do with Vimeo's processing. I am extremely pleased with this new capability. Here's the show: http://vimeo.com/6489985 Password: PTE (black bars are the result of my noticing white lines from cropping on the individual slides in Photoshop and recropping to smaller than they had to be.) Isabel

Thanks! Isabel

Haven't used it in a while and was happy to read that I can now upload slideshows to Vimeo...but wondering about the price for someone who owns version 5.5. Isabel

Dragging didn't work for me but exporting the Amazon mp3 opened in Audacity to wav and the to mp3 worked. The truncated waveform that showed before the end of slide indication was moved further out remained truncated until I resaved the file. Isabel

BRILLIANT....from your post I deduced that I should try the following: I opened the mp3 from Amazon in Audacity. I exported it as a wav file with a new name. I opened up the new wav file in Audacity and exported as an mp3 file. it worked!!! No more abrupt end. Thank you!!!! Isabel P.S. I tried exporting an altered mp3 to mp3 format and it was degraded. If I export first to wav and THEN to mp3 the sound quality seems to be retained.

Tried that..for some reason that particular mp3 file is getting corrupted along the way, because it hasn't happened with another file. I moved the end of slide indication and got this: Moved End of Slide Point

Thanks for the input...this didn't work. Please read my explanation in my response to Barry. Isabel