Ed Overstreet

Thanks very much for the tip about WMF files Ken, I had trouble figuring out your email to me on this subject (must be one of those days where I somehow got too much cotton wool into my head ) but it's clear in your post above. Hadn't heard of that before.

A couple of comments, to reinforce one by damor: I too vote against competition, either among multiple shows or on what images get included. If this is another competition (in either sense), I won't participate. (I stopped participating in photo club single-image and AV competitions a while ago for reasons I won't belabour here.) As someone who has produced group AV shows, I appreciate there are times when a producer would sometimes prefer not to use a couple of images, but that should be because they don't fit with the other images in the show, not because of some judgment "this is good" and "this is not good" (unless we're talking of matters of public morals and generally-accepted standards of good taste in depicting certain kinds of content). In my experience, if the producer has been given leeway in editing or compositing images for transitions, "it doesn't fit" usually means "the producer isn't imaginative or skilled enough to find a way to make it fit." The last group show I worked on used 250 images (none of which had originally be taken with AV in mind) from 50 photographers on a huge range of topics, and by gosh my colleagues and I found a way to work every single one of them into the show and our audience loved the result. I think the intent is for this to be a collective show by multiple photographers with multiple viewpoints, not a unified production governed by a monolithic vision or some arbitrary and often specific-culture-bound "standard" of what is "good" photographic composition and technique or "bad" photographic composition and techique. I won't vote on which images are "in" or "out," and if there's going to be a vote, I won't submit images. Sorry for the screed, but this is a very sore point with me. A couple of other suggestions: it would be nice to have some credit slides at the end identifying the photographers by name and country; that could be part of the file-naming convention for the JPGs (e.g., "Ed_Overstreet_Canada_sunrise.jpg") which would simplify the logistics; it would be nice if the title and in any credits the words "photographers" and "music by" were multilingual, either in the official languages of the UN or perhaps more practically in the languages of the photographers who participated, in which case perhaps those photographers who don't speak English as their daily language could provide you the translations of the title and the other words into their own languages; it would be nice to give people the option of submitting three images intended as a specific sequence, in which case I would hope the producers would respect that sequence and not break it up; an easy way to deal with this option is to ask people to use the numbers 1, 2 and 3 in the file name if (and only if) they firmly want their images displayed together in that sequence; people who don't care whether their images appear in a unitary sequence or are split up at the producers' discretion, can just not use those numbers in the file name. If the file names are numbered, the producers use them together in that sequence (or they don't use them at all), IMO. (If I were the producer, I'd want to know whether the photographer will or won't object if I split the images if I think it makes sense to do so, because my preference would be to reserve the right to split images when I see a really neat transition with someone else's image, but only if I have some assurance that splitting won't put the photographers' noses out of joint.)

Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious but in my experience people sometimes know less about Windows than others think they do -- as my wife keeps reminding me every time she asks me a question about why her 'puter isn't behaving the way she thinks it should To clarify Ken's comment on how to get PTE to open an image from that menu, and of course assuming you have Photoshop installed on your system, go to My Computer in Windows then at the top of the screen go to the Tools menu and open Folder Options then click on the File Types tab. Scroll down the list to JPG -- you'll probably note there is more than one JPG entry. Pick the one that says "JPG File" (to play it really safe, pick all of the JPG entries that are there) and once you've highlighted that entry by a single-click with the mouse, note below the scroll list a dialog that says "Open with..." which tells you what program Windows currently assumes you want to open JPGs with, in your case not Photoshop. Click on the "Change" button and another list appears, in which (if it's installed on your system) Windows will cleverly include Photoshop as one of the options. Choose it. Do the same for all the JPG entries as I mentioned, then click Apply and OK at the bottom. From now on and forevermore until you change this setting, anytime you double-click anywhere on a JPG (or anytime you use the Open Picture choice in PTE) Photoshop is what will open your file. To save time, since Photoshop on most systems takes forever to launch (especially if you like me have more fonts and plug-ins than normal people really need), once you've done this don't close Photoshop after you edit your file, leave it open and go back to PTE leaving Photoshop running in the background. That way the next time you want to open a file, Photoshop is right there and the file opens almost instantly. Maybe you knew all this stuff, but I'll bet there are others browsing this thread who didn't. Or maybe my wife is the only person in the world who didn't know this (and actually I didn't until a few months ago, and I've been messing with Windows computers longer than I care to admit).

Though national anthems (the words and music) are probably in the public domain, the specific recordings of them aren't usually Maybe we could all submit recordings of one or more of us singing a few phrases of our respective national anthems, if the viewers of this show don't mind the less-than-on-tune singing that will result (at least in my case) On "sober second thought" (my fellow Canadians will recognize from whence that comes ) I'm not over-keen on national anthems for something like this. National anthems, at least some of them, strike me as rather nationalistic, which is sort of counter to the thrust of this idea -- it's hard to have world peace with everyone waving national flags and singing national anthems, if you get my point. Maybe Alan's idea of individual voices saying something peace-like is a better one; or maybe we can find a royalty-free recording of the music/words to the last movement Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which I think is pretty-well-internationally recognized as an anthem to world person-hood ("brotherhood" back in Beethoven and Schiller's politically-incorrect days). That music has had international connotations for me ever since I heard it sung during the televised memorial service at the UN when Dag Hammarskjold died (boy am I dating myself ). Also the music is long enough, yet structured with sonata-form theme, development, recapitulation etc, that we would have the option of either using the whole thing or truncating it, depending on how many images we get, without the music sounding butchered or cut off (I'm a big fan of using pieces of music relatively intact in AV, but that's obviously a matter of taste).

I will be happy to provide three images in whatever size at whatever website you designate, just give me the link. I think this a wonderful idea, and it is more meaningful to me than the competitive things that are run with AV (I have numerous and major issues with the whole concept of competition in photography or in any other art form which I won't inflict on you here). I would also be happy to contribute to a collective effort to pull the show together. Our photo club has an annual show in which all members are welcome to contribute a limited number of their favourite images they took in the past year, then three-five "old AV hands" pull it together. I've participated in pulling several such shows together, and I know JRR also has some experience and ideas in doing this. No doubt there are others. Perhaps a group of people can produce different segments. At minimum, my three images will be a sequence and will have a short sound clip to go with them, so even if I don't get involved in producing the end-product, whoever does can just insert the segment wherever it fits, with my permission to doctor (within reason) the first and last images in the sequence to make them blend better with the segments in which they're imbedded, or to use copies of same to produce composite images with copies of images from the other segments, to ease a transition from or into a new segment, if that seems to work better than doing a "straight" transition. (We've done this lots of different ways in the above-mentioned shows.) Obviously the main wrinkle will be using a sound track that works with the images, sort of, and for which we don't have copyright issues. My sound clip (which I won't insist on being used if it's a problem) will be something I've recorded myself (waves breaking on a beach), so that won't be an issue with my part of it. However picking music for a "composite" show such as this can be challenging. Maybe there's a famous recording artist out there (even one who monitors this forum?) who might be inspired by this idea to donate his/her/their piece of music for us. I know, for example, one of our club members (a professional AV producer) who did an excellent production for fund-raising for a local hospice, who got a famous folk singer (whose name I won't mention because I don't have permission) to grant permission to use one of his songs off a CD at no cost, and the recording studio also agreed. There actually are artists and companies out there who aren't greedy about wanting royalties for worthy causes ... maybe this could be one such project that might inspire such generosity. If anyone reading this forum personally knows a likely candidate (alas, I don't) and is inspired by this project, maybe they could pursue that for us ... just a thought.

I'll second Jim's comments. Take your time and enjoy the holiday season. Best wishes to all of you at PTE and your families, and may we all have a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Take all the time you need, Igor! We've all run into poorly-alpha-tested products in beta-testing and later, and life is too short for everyone. Version 4.4 is a wonderful product, and I for one am quite happy to wait as long as necessary (or longer) for pan and zoom -- I've yet to see an example of that effect that I found remotely compelling enough for me to want it for myself. No doubt my view will change once I have it and try it out, but for now I think the world of AV needs fewer "glitzy" gimmicks in its AV shows, not more. If I ever see another AV show where someone clearly is trying out every trick in the book just because it's there, I think I'll scream.

I've had memory cards, digital cameras, and a Digital Wallet (now-discontinued portable hard drive) pass through airport x-ray (carry-on) screening multiple times and have never had a problem. In spite of claims to the contrary by airport authorities, while I found ISO 100 and 200 film can pass through carry-on x-ray machines without fogging on a trip that doesn't involve too many screenings (exposure to x-rays, like exposure to light, has a cumulative effect on film), I found that ISO 400 film (Delta 400 in my case) did fog from x-rays on the same trip when ISO 100 and 200 didn't. A company called Apacer (www.apacer.com I think) makes a portable CD burner that I have and recently came out with a newer model that will burn DVD-Rs as well as CD-R/RWs. This device is a bit too bulky and awkward to carry (and probably a bit fragile) to use on-the-go in a camera bag, but it works very well in a hotel room each evening if you have enough flash memory to get you through the day. I carry it on the aircraft with my other photo gear and have had no trouble with it being x-rayed as carry-on luggage, either. A big advantage of burning your photos to CDs or DVDs "on the fly" rather than using a portable hard drive, is that you return from your trip with your original images already on CDs/DVDs. When I used my digital wallet (I no longer do), the first thing I did when I got home is to make a backup set of the original photos on CDs. I no longer need to do that, so a step is saved. Also, a CD/DVD burner is infinitely expandable; if you use up the CDs or DVDs you brought with you, you merely need to find a store that sells blanks and buy some more. That's usually a lot easier and less expensive than shopping for another portable hard drive or extra flash cards. And of course CDs and DVDs aren't affected by x-rays (or by magnetic fields, either, magnetic fields can still be an issue with digital cameras, cards, and portable drives -- but as long as no one places these devices directly next to the CRT that drives the x-ray beam, magnetism shouldn't be an issue from airport security). Also, with your images spread across multiple CDs or DVDs, you're less vulnerable to bad sectors or other hardware failure on the storage media than you are if you put all your images on a single hard drive ... I prefer to use multiple smaller flash cards instead of a single big flash card, for the same reason -- don't put all your eggs in one basket.

In Photoshop there is a very simple way to ensure that all images fit within certain limits, such as 1024x768. Create a batch Action in which you open the file, then go to File>Automate>Fit Image and enter the height and width parameters you want. Then click OK and Save As a JPG with the compression you want. Then close the file. Then run the batch, paying careful attention in the dialog box that runs the batch action to select the correct source and destination folders. This will automatically resize all images in the source folder to fit within the parameters and save them to the destination folder as a JPG.

Ditto!!!!!!

I haven't run a digital projector from my widescreen 1900x1200 laptop, but I have run a CRT monitor from it. All youi need to do is change the screen resolution on the laptop to match the dimensions of the monitor (1600x1200 or 1024x768, doesn't matter in my case) and the laptop runs the monitor just fine with no stretching. I would imagine the same principle works with a digital projector, since you run it the same way you run a CRT monitor, namely from the same video connector at the back of the laptop. For that matter, if I want to, I can run my laptop LCD screen at 1024x768. There is stretching on the laptop screen when I do this, but it the stretching doesn't translate to the monitor. I don't see why running a projector off the laptop should be any different than running a CRT monitor off a laptop, but I admit I've never tried running a projector off this particular laptop. Maybe someone else has done so and has encountered problems in resetting the laptop screen to match the projector's dimensions, but I'd be surprised.

I've encountered this problem repeatedly in Audacity not only with some MP3 files but with some WAV files, like those recorded by the "voice annotation" feature on some Nikon cameras and battery grips. With the unusual WAV files I found the simplest solution was to convert them to MP3 using dBPower Amp conversion software, then open the MP3 in Audacity and proceed from there. If I had an MP3 that wasn't playing back properly in Audacity, I'd try converting it to WAV first (using the same sampling settings mentioned above) and then open the WAV conversion in Audacity; that should work.

I guess I'm the odd man out, as usual But, since you asked, and since as a former researcher I know it's important that surveys sample all viewpoints not just a few, here's my two cents' worth: While I run my 19" CRT monitor at 1024x768 when viewing PTE shows, that's only because I create them at that resolution (for our photo club's projector) and I like to fill the screen with a good image (1024x768 shows displayed at 1600x1200 don't look very impressive, IMO). I also generally run PTE at 1024x768 when creating a show, so I can see what it will look at that resolution. However, at all other times I run my CRT at 1600x1200 (including Photoshop, email, web surfing, and word processing) and when I run my widescreen 17" LCD laptop screen it's at 1900x1200. Yes the print is small, and yes I do have bifocals (not quadrifocals yet), but especially for image viewing and editing I much prefer the larger resolution. I generally view PDF files at that resolution as well; if I find the text too small, there's always the zoom button. I've got used to the font appearance and now find fonts uncomfortably and distracting large at 1024x768! The only time I set my screen res at 1024x768 is when I'm viewing or creating a PTE show. I haven't run a screen at 800x600 for years, not since I gave up my old 386 with a 15" screen.

I'm also inclined to agree, especially if the best I can hope for with a 1280 by whatever image is that it will match (but not exceed) on a 1024x768 display what I'd have from a 1024x whatever image anyway. I also second the sentiments about DVD at present, which at the moment holds no interest for me because of the significant loss of image quality (in my experience on my equipment, anyway).

Just to stick my oar into this discussion: I normally run my 19" monitor at 1600x1200 resolution, especially when editing photos in Photoshop (I generally reset the res to 1024x768 when viewing my PTE shows, since that's the size of images I normally use in PTE). By the same rationale as given above, should I not be sizing all my PTE-destined JPGs to fit within 1600x1200? Or would that be pushing the software or system capabilities too much? Many digital projectors (like our photo club's current one) only go up to 1024x768. Will they handle the larger images in PTE OK? Is PTE's ability to "downsize on the fly" going to work as well with a digital projector as with a monitor, either at 1280 or 1600 (or even larger) resolutions? Where does one draw the line? Why at 1280 and not at 1600? To date I've been doing all my PTE shows with images at 1024x768 because that's all our club's digital projector can handle, and that's pretty much the only place I run my shows outside of my home. But I'd love to be able to view my shows at home with the images set for 1600x1200 if I could feel confident (without having to test it the hard way in front of a large audience) that the digital projector could run the same show at 1024x768. I'm not at all interested in making separate versions for both venues, too much extra fuss and bother. So my question "why not 1600" isn't an idle one, for me.

I'd like to support Jim and Paul's suggestion. While one can of course produce "third" or even "fourth" and more images in Photoshop by various opacity blends of the starting and ending images, it can be very difficult and tedious to get this effect to look in PTE like it looks in a "traditional" dissolve-unit show, because in the latter the transition can be much smoother and more continuous than in PTE working with a small number of intermediate-stage images. Of course, the more such images you create, the closer the effect in PTE would mirror the dissolve-unit effect, but that could entail an awful lot of images and tedious Photoshop work. What Jim and Paul are suggesting would be a nice enhancement, if it's not too difficult to program. Welcome to the Forum Paul. I look forward to seeing what you do digitally, having seen and admired your "analog" shows in the past.

Just to add to the chorus of thanks for all you and your team have done, Igor -- some time ago, when you first announced the incorporation of the waveform in the timeline, I had posted something to the effect that it wasn't a priority and I couldn't see myself using it. Well, time to eat those words -- in the past month I've put together six PTE shows, and in each one I've found the ability to locate the music pulses (and, once I sorted it out, how to identify the beats visually) amazingly helpful in getting my transition points spot-on the beat (when that's what I want) quickly and easily. I know this feature has been available for some time now, but I now think that feature is right up there with the excellent video working of the transitions (including the smoothest fade function I've seen in any software at any screen resolution) as a compelling reason to use this software and no other for audio-visual production. Thanks again!

I would never presume to describe myself as an expert, but my two cents' worth on the issue: All my PTE shows are sized for 1024x768 pixels, because that's what my photo club uses with its projector. So if I want to exhibit any shows at the club, the show is sized correctly. Except for my own computer or those of my wife and a few family members, that's the only place I ever exhibit my shows. I find that on my monitor, 1024x768 pixel images, even saved with Level 5-8 JPG in Photoshop (generally keeps the individual file sizes under 200KB which is my target), the images look great. While my XP laptop could, I am fairly sure, handle larger files in PTE without affecting the smoothness of the transitions, our club has an older Windows 98 system which might choke on larger file sizes, plus several family members also have older computers. So my own criterion is to keep the image canvas at 1024x768 and the individual JPG sizes under 200KB. On the canvas, the images are anywhere from 800x600 to the full 1024x768 (often cropped) depending on what I'm doing. This works well on my laptop and on the club's computer, also has always worked on my five-year-old Win 98 PIII desktop, so I figure that's a reasonable compromise for my audience and their equipment. I suspect the best answer to your question depends a lot on who is your intended audience and what playback equipment you or they will be using.

And thank you, Igor! Your reply that you found and fixed this seemingly very esoteric bug (but very disturbing all the same) in about 20 hours after I first reported it on this forum. Now THAT is what I call SERVICE Boy, am I impressed

Thanks very much for this, Igor. Igor didn't mention this in the post, but that weird and esoteric problem I reported yesterday turned out to be a small bug that wouldn't happen often (but of course, it WOULD happen to me ), and I got an email from Igor telling me he found the bug and fixed it in this new beta. All in one day. I am VERY impressed, what incredible responsiveness to customer complaints! Would that some much larger software companies whose names we all know but I won't mention, were even a tenth as responsive!

OK Igor I just emailed the PTE file to the support address, also included the PTE file from the version that is now working OK for comparison. I used the same slides and the same music file in both projects, also both in the same folder on my computer. Good luck, I'll be very interested to hear what you think might have been the problem (in the I hope very unlikely chance this happens to me again I don't mind making mistakes or finding strange things on my computer, as long as I know what caused it and how to fix/avoid it next time )

Thanks for the very quick replies, Igor and Jim. I'm really puzzled now. In desperation, I reconstructed my project from scratch -- same images, same music file, just started over with a new project in the same folder. Aside from the tedium of replicating what I'd just done, and trying to remember it all, no problemo. It worked fine. The problem never repeated. No idea why. A corrupted file maybe? Gremlins in the afternoon? An early start on April Fool's Day? Argghhh. At least the show is working OK and PTE seems OK. Igor, I'll see if I still have the original project file and will send it to you. But unless someone else has run into the same problem, maybe it's not worth worrying about. Strange things do happen under the midnight sun ... (though I'm not Robert Service and this isn't the Yukon, and I'm probably misquoting Service ...) Sorry for the panic, but it was VERY disturbing at the time .... Computers, you gotta love 'em, eh?

Help! I'm suddenly having a very vexing problem with a show that I'm working on. It just started today; I've finished three other PTE shows in the past couple of weeks and never ran into this, then or in the past year an a half. I'm building what will be a 45-slide show with a 6-minute MP3 sound file. The images are all under 200KB in size, and are all sized 1024x768 (black canvas with generally 800x600 px slides on top of the canvas). I'm using a very recent P4 laptop with XP and 1 GB of RAM, so the problem shouldn't have anything to do with file sizes. Plus I'm not doing anything I didn't do in the other three shows (or if I am, it's something pretty subtle that I haven't noticed). I'm about 2/3 through the production of the show. At about slide 37, suddenly and for no apparent reason, once I've added a new transition point to the end of the current string, if I try to tweak the position of the point on the timeline at all, in either direction, for any distance, when I let go of the mouse button that slide jumps about 30 seconds to the left of its original position (no matter where I move it). Moreover, the four or five preceding slides on the timeline also shift, and they're all overlapped (they weren't before). To add to the joy, several of the slides that were originally associated with those shifted transition points have been replaced by other slides that I hadn't even added to the timeline yet (they were however in the light table), and the slides that have been replaced have re-appeared out of order near the end of the other slides awaiting entry into the timeline -- in no apparent order. It is now impossible for me to adjust any transition point on the timeline without totally messing up several other points in the show. This problem has replicated in 4.4 beta 7, 4.4 beta 6, and 4.3 final release. It persists even after closing the software, rebooting the computer, and relaunching the project in PTE. Has anyone encountered something this weird before? Any tips as to what's wrong? I could start the whole project over again with a new file name, but I hate to throw several hours of work out the window like that. Any useful suggestions would be much appreciated. thanks

OK this is a serious problem. A reboot made no difference. I have a partially-completed show with about 40 images currently in it. The sound track is about 6 minutes long and I'm about 4.5 minutes into it. I saved the project and re-opened it. For no reason that I can figure out, if I try to move the last transition point in any direction on the timeline, for any distance at all, as soon as I let go of the mouse button, that point zooms about 30 seconds to the left on the time-line. It and four other transition points are suddenly overlapping and crowded together. Not only that, but the slides that were originally in those other transition points have been replaced by other slides that were in the light table but hadn't been inserted yet (they're from later in the sequence), and the slides that had been in those transition points have reappeared in the light table later in the sort sequence, totally out of order. (forunately I'd sorted and numerically renamed them all in Photoshop CS File Browser before starting this project, so I can easily reconstruct the sequence). LATER EDIT: I've just verified this isn't a problem with Beta 7; I have the same problem with this show in Beta 6 and also in version 4.3. Will drop this thread and start a new one; this is a strange issue seemingly unrelated to the current version specifically.

I'm having a VERY vexing problem with beta 7, perhaps it's a bug, or maybe I've forgotten something, but I don't recall seeing this problem before. Now, when I'm inserting slides in a show, after I enter a new slide (with many more to be inserted, say half-way through the music) and if I wish to change the position of that new slide by clicking and dragging it on the time line a little, when I do so and let go of the mouse button, the transition point suddenly shifts to the left of the timeline out of sight, compressing half a dozen or so of the previous transition points together so they all overlap, totally ruining all the work I'd just done. That shouldn't happen. What is wrong? Has anyone else seen this problem before? It started happening after I'd inserted maybe 30 slides in the show (a six-minute piece a music). The slides are all 1024x768 and under 200 KB in size so I don't think this is a problem with file size (P4 XP with 1GB RAM, I'd certainly hope not!) I've never had this problem with any earlier betas or earlier versions of the software in about a year and a half of fairly heavy use. While awaiting a reply, maybe I'll reboot the computer and see if that helps ...