Eric Athroll

Hi A couple of years ago I purchased the update to PTE De Luxe to enable the use of VideoBuilder and have been more than happy with its performance. However, my two year licence has just expired and I am now wondering whether to extend this licence or not. The problem I have is that PTE and VideoBuilder require two separate licences, which is fine, yet they are integrated as a single piece of software called PTE De Luxe. As a result it seems impossible to tell whether VideoBuilder has been (or ever will be) updated as if the interface is opened there is no indication of its version. Why isn't VideoBuilder provided as a separate piece of software (or PTE Plug-in) with some history as to its version and development?

Thanks for the links Ken. I can see the advantages in using templates when images and/or ausio for the show are selected from various locations on the PC but no advantage with my working method. I also note that the templates can be located anywhere but that the location reverts to default when PTE is updated. Perhaps we should have a facility to create "preferences/options or some such taskbar item" that would have the ability to retain these settings on update?

When creating a sequence I would normally make a unique folder and place correctly sized copies of any images to be used together with any audio files in that folder together with the .pte file. These folders are saved to a separate HDD and backed up on an External HDD. I have never understood what advantage there may be in creating and using Templates as all it seems to do is to create a template folder containing a duplicate set of images and the music plus a .pte file. Can anyone enlighten me as to what advantage Templates have over my method of working? I may be missing something here.

Hi I have just found out how to do it. I didn't realise that I had to click on the small waveform icon at the lower left to add it and then I was able to resize the Timeline section. Thanks for your help.

Thanks but I found that - all that does is to enlarge the timeline scale. What I am referring to is the ability to open a new Timeline window with the buttons to load the waveform and do other things within the Timeline option that we used to have.

Hi When I click on the Timeline button from Slide View I only get a small strip of the timeline at the bottom of the window. The old versions of PTE opened the Timeline in a new window and one could insert the waveform also. How can one do this in PTE 5.2 - or is it not possible? HELP!

Thanks. I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it and this time 4.49 appeared on the title bar.

Hi I have Version 4.48 as the latest version of the old PTE yet the download section on the site states 4.49. When I downloaded it it shows 4.48. Is this an error on the site or is there a version 4.49? BTW compliments of the season and a happy new year to all.

Hi Thanks for that - I wasn't aware that there was a new facility to do this. I have just installed it and it works fine.

Hi I wish to set up a slide show that I can control myself to show slides one by one and comment on them before moving on to the next slide. I can do this using Project Options but the one aspect that I cannot set seems to be the Time Intervals for New Slides. Is there a way to set this so that there is no specific time for each slide to be displayed and the next slide only appears when desired, i.e. either by a mouse click or using the navigation bar? I have overcome this to some extent by setting the time interval to a figure that is well in excess of anything I need but I wonder whether there is a "proper" way to do this.

Al I have negatives and slides of mine going back to 1956 and prints in albums well over 100 years old. I can still print from the negatives and scan the slides and prints and produce better images than was then possible. I wonder what the future will hold for current imaging methods? Sad to think that there may be little personal history around in a comparatively short period of time for most people.

Hi Al Given the current rate of technological change I begin to wonder if my efforts will be worthwhile. I started making VHS videos back in the mid nineties and abandoned this avenue recently because they are likely to become unavailable in the not too distant future. Most of our major electronic stores have stopped selling them. Will DVDs go the same way before too long I wonder.

I must thank all of you who have input to this thread and also apologise for suggesting there was a problem with VideoBuilder where none exists. Having carried out further tests I find that changing the "% of the slide to show main images" does indeed change the TV Screen image size. What caused me to think otherwise was that my initial tests were carried out with steps of 1% down to 94%. Using reductions of 5% intervals down to 80% I realise that on my TV the differences are only apparent with quite drastic reductions. Also, unlike my PC Monitor, which can accurately display undistorted squares and circles over the whole screen, my TV appears to spread the image very significantly towards the edges of the screen. Thus, my first tests did indeed appear to have no effect. I also notice that when I set the % figure to 100%, my TV cuts some of the image off at the sides but shows all of the image at the top and bottom with a small amount of distortion. I have also played with having a black border round the image but the distortion at the edges are so significant I would prefer to have my images clipped and fill the screen. Other than setting a small zoom to each slide individually I'm not sure how else this can be achieved. I also wonder whether this is worth the effort as my intention is to make DVDs of my family history for posterity and I quite expect a different TV will clip them differently, particularly as mine is a CRT model and no doubt we will soon only be using LCD/Plasma ones. As to optimum file size I am quite happy with the TV quality using 1024x576 @ 72 ppi.

Hi Carol Had a look at your action set and found I had already got most of them in my set for PTE. I don't know what the script one is ; it doesn't work on my PC and of course the "save to" file is different. I am aware of the TV safe zone but at 100% (using 1024x576 pixels) my images are not cut off at all on my TV.

Al I have tried altering the % figure and whilst it does affect the image size on my computer monitor for PTE Shows it doesn't alter the screen size of a DVD using VideoBuilder on my TV. I thought at first it was because I hadn't pressed the "set for all slides" button (not obvious, and different to Version 4) but several tests with varying % figures appear to make no difference to the TV Screen size. Carol Thanks for the Action file - I shall give it a whirl. I expect your method will produce an image size on my TV that will be smaller than the full screen and have a black border around it depending on how much my TV screen chops off and how accurate its centralisation of images is. What I am really trying to do is to get an image that will overfill the TV Screen with a minimum of cutoff to avoid the distorted edges that I (and presumably others) get with TV. When I used a test image containing squares and circles the distortion of the TV Screen is considerable compared to the distortion free PC Monitor. I have a suspicion that VideoBuilder will "convert" the project to the DVD standard size when authoring regardless of image size which will then always fill the TV screen unless one places some black "canvas" around the image to ensure it doesn't. I don't know who actually programmed VideoBuilder but surely they must be able to provide some guidance on its use in relation to image size, quality and screen effects on the TV.

Hi Yes, I have read this article and I do understand the effects of different combinations of 4:3 and 16:9 format ratios on the TV Screen image but that doesn't address my two questions. I would like to know whether there is an optimum image size to obtain the best quality when making DVDs from PTE/VideoBuilder (and PTE exe files for that matter) and whether there is a facility to vary the amount of the TV screen that is occupied by the images when making a DVD using VideoBuilder. I am working on a family history and shall be making DVDs in the 16:9 format as this seems to be the current standard for TV in the UK, although nothing is future proof these days. As I said earlier, I have tried many permutations within PTE but the resultant DVD is always the same.

Hi I have tried altering the "Percent of the slide to show main images" at the bottom of "Proj Ops / Screen" and whilst it affects the exe image size it doesn't appear to affect the DVD image size. I realise that I could get over this problem using a sl9ide by slide option but that would be very tedious to do. Perhaps Igor and his team may be able to confirm this. I would also like to know if there is an optimum image size for DVD authoring as I am currently using 1024x576 pixels but I'm unsure if that is the optimum for DVD

Hi The image files I use for making DVDs to play on a widescreen TV (16:9 format) are sized to 1024 x 576 pixels at 72 ppi. I have been playing around with the various permutations in PTE 5 and Video Builder in an attempt to have the images fill the TV Screen with minimal loss of the image but also without having any spare background as this creates some unsightly distortions to the edges of the images. I have tried many different settings in Project Options>Screen but no matter how I alter any of the options although the image size and placement changes in Preview but remain the same when the DVD is burned. Am I to understand that whilst one can vary the image size on screen in the project and the Exe File there is no control over the image size on screen using VideoBuilder? If it can be done I would appreciate some guidance as to optimum image size and resolution for DVDs and the PTE settings that affect the image size when making a DVD.

Thanks.

Hi Is there a limit to the number of projects that can be included as chapters in a DVD using VideoBuilder?

Silly me; I have been using DVD-RW for testing and my DVD Burner only writes at 2X for these. It will write at 4X with DVD-R and 8X with DVD+R but as my Panasonic DVD Player prefers their DVD- format I stick with those. I did some tests with an 11 minute sequence (very simple evenly spaced fades and background music) - Nero took 65 mins to transcode and 6 minutes to burn the DVD; VideoBuilder took 23 minutes to encode and a further 20 minutes to burn (according to the Nero logs and info displayed in VideoBuilder as it progressed). VideoBuilder is simpler to use and gave the correct full screen 16:9 display and is faster overall than Nero using the same DVD-RWs, but it has far fewer options.

Hi Ken Yes I did, but it was a while ago and as I recall it didn't fill the screen on my TV although it was in the correct format. I notice that the screen options in PTE V 5.0 are somewhat different to V 4.48 - this had an option to "fit to screen - enlarge images to fit to screen", missing in V 5.0. Not sure now whether that had any effect when using Nero. I do find Nero Vision Express Version 3 very slow for DVDs but fine for SVCDs - the lead in and out seems to take for ever on DVD and my write speed of 2x is pedestrian to modern standards.

Hi Yes, DVDs using VideoBuilder are fine and are much easier to produce than using Nero. The DVDs from the AVI File using Nero Vision Express are also OK for quality but I am having problems with the format settings in PTE Version 5.0 (different from 4.48) and Nero to get my images to fill my 16:9 TV screen. This is probably more to do with Nero than PTE.

Hi I reworked my image files in CS2 making sure that they were all saved in exactly the same size, colour space and compression value. The AVI File still flickers badly when played (unlike in Version 4.48) but this time the DVD was OK when Nero Vision Express was used. I can only assume that there are some differences in the AVI Files produced from Version 4.48 and Version 5. However, as you stated earlier, the playing quality of the virtual AVI File is of no real consequence so long as the DVD is correctly displayed. Thanks for your patience in this matter.

Hi I have received your email and have sent the Nero video files by email. The DVD I burned from your AVI File seems OK but with only three images and no sound it is hard to tell whether I have a problem or not. I shall have to do more tests. No doubt you will let me know what you find with regard to my Video Files produced using Nero Vision Express. Eric