Ed Overstreet

Thanks for the quick replies everyone. I had a good night's sleep, woke up remembering something I'd done that is probably the cause the of the problem, and came up with a work-around that lets me do what I wanted to do originally, then came here and discovered that Nobeefstu hit the nail on the head. What I'd forgotten that I'd done before trying to the the super-zoom in a single O&A window (for slide 10) is that originally in my timeline the images were in the sequence slide 12-slide11-slide10 (which would have been a superzoom INTO the scene) and that instead I wanted a superzoom OUT OF the scene. So I used the Change Image File command in the main window to swap slides 12 and 10 into the current position, leaving slide 11 unchanged. I did this much earlier in the edit process and forgot about it. So the problem I'm seeing is the result of the Change Image File operations that I performed, and probably why in my "step four" it's slide 11 that displays in the O&A window regardless of which of the three objects I click on -- that's the only slide whose original file reference hasn't changed by my Change Image File operations. I disagree however with Nobeefstu this isn't a bug -- I think it is, or a mistake that should be fixed. If I Change Image File then it seems intuitive to me (as a non-techhie user) that should mean that all the file name references for that file should remain consistent throughout whatever else I do later. For example, the slide C1... that was originally in the Slide 10 slot is now in the Slide 12 slot (where C3... was, with C3... now being in the Slide 10 slot). I then Removed Slides 11 and 12 (file names C2... and C1...) and then opened the slide 10 O&A window. In that window, I Added Image for C2... and C1... by loading them from the Add Image dialog box (which accesses the Windows Explorer menu, where one would think the file names haven't been modified) and that's when all the trouble began with the incorrect file references that I couldn't figure how to fix. It seems to me, in my naive way, that C1... is C1... regardless of what slide-number slot in the main timeline it's occupied in the past, and that when I point to C1... in Add Image in another slide's O&A box, C1... is what I should get, not the mess that I did get. Bug, bad design, call it what you will, it's not even slightly intuitive to me and ought to be fixed IMO. I hate to think what a less patient and less experienced user (like one of the folks in my audience coming up) would do if they ran into this situation, they'd likely run screaming from the room and never go back into PTE. I know that's how my wife would react if she did AV shows (she doesn't); she has much less tolerance for glitches like this than I do. Most of the folks I know are like my wife, not like me, in that regard. I will post the whole backup zip for this mess on mediafire and email the link to Lin so he can see what I mean; thanks very much for the offer to help, Lin. (If Tony, Peter or Nobeefstu is a glutton for punishment and wants the link, send me a private email and I'll happily provide it to you.) I will also try Nobeefstu's and Peter's suggestions and see if those work for me, and would appreciate any earlier links Nobeefstu might find and post here (I'll keep watching this thread). The work-around I came up with this morning before logging in, as I awoke, is to work with slides 10, 11 and 12 on the main timeline, doing the superzoom as Lin suggests in his superzoom tutorial rather than trying to do it entirely in a single O&A window for one slide (which is what I successfully did with two other superzoom sequences earlier in the show, but in those cases I HADN'T played any Change Image File games with the slides involved, so there was no problem. Anyway that all-on-the-timeline method did work for me, so I now have a sequence that does what I want it to do, though not quite the way I thought it should have worked ... The file-name references in O&A for slides 10 and 12 are still messed up, but it doesn't seem to be affecting the way the images display on the main timeline, in the O&A windows, or on preview for the show, which is what counts "at the end of the day" I guess. I don't think this necessarily should be marked RESOLVED because I really really think this aspect of the Change Image File operation ought to be fixed in the software ... to make life a lot easier for future users who might trip over this. Perhaps not a major priority for Wnsoft, as probably not many users will encounter this particular manifestation of the problem, but still ... This is a very confusing and counter-intuitive way for the software to behave re file naming and referencing, at least to my aging non-technical brain However, at least for my preparation for my presentation in three weeks, all's well that end's well. I just won't mention to my audience the real reason I did the slide 10-12 superzoom sequence differently from the other ones, I'll lie and said I wanted to show there are two different ways of getting the same effect not that it was the only way I could get the software to behave properly before I came back to this thread. But now my demo show does in fact illustrate two different ways of doing a superzoom

I have encountered a very vexing problem in a PTE 6.0 project (I’ve upgraded to 6.02 and the problem persists there too). I am attaching three different steps to demonstrate the problem (I hope) The problem arises in slide 10 (and did not arise when working on earlier slides in the sequence). In the project name Problem Step One, notice slides 10, 11 and 12 on the timeline. They are three different files. Slide one is a 1400x1050 JPG, while slides 11 and 12 are 4000x3000 JPGs, photos of the same object but zoomed out on the camera lens so I can perform an extensive pan and zoom on both of them to form a "superzoom" out of slide 10. In Problem Step Two I remove slides 11 and 12 from the timeline, using the Remove Slide button after highlighting both slides. (I did the same thing in an earlier slide sequence with no trouble). However, though the file name and preview display from the main timeline, when clicking on Slide 10, says it’s still the same file name and displays the same photo when I'm in the main PTE window, when I open the Objects and Animations window for slide 10, while the correct photo is displaying, the object in the Objects palette has the file name for what had been Slide 12 and has now been removed from the timeline. In spite of this, under Properties>picture dialog the correct file name and thumbnail for Slide 10 is still displayed. Then we go to Step Four (there was no step three, this was a mis-numbering on my part sorry). Here I have tried to add as new objects in the O&A window for slide 10 the two files that had previously been slides 11 and 12 on the main timeline. But now things are much worse. On the main timeline, I am now seeing the picture from the former slide 12 displayed even though the file name display at the bottom of the main PTE window says it’s the file that was supposed to be in slide 10. When I go into the O&A window, instead of seeing the files that were in slide 10 and former slides 11 and 12, I see in the Objects palette two copies of the file name for former slide 12 and a copy of the file name for former slide 11. The file formerly in slide 10, whose name is still displaying at the bottom of the main screen associated with slide 10, in the O&A window is nowhere to be seen. Moreover, when I click on each of the three objects listed in the O&A palette, only the image from the file formerly in slide 12 appears FOR ALL THREE OBJECTS even though for each object, if I click open the properties>picture link, the three different file names appear to be associated correctly and the correct thumbnails appear in the dialog box. It is impossible for me to work with this catastrophe. I wanted to do a “superzoom” between the three files, but the displays for them in the O&A window are utterly corrupted. I am supposed to be giving a group presentation on PTE to an audience of maybe 20 persons (all AV producers many of whom are undecided between PTE and ProShow) in three weeks, and this part is going to be an utter shambles and isn’t going to make either me or PTE look very good. What is the problem here, and how can I fix it? Any ideas, anyone? Preferably very soon if possible. This is utterly strange, I've never seen this before in PTE. And yes the problems identified above persist after a reboot, after reinstalling the software, and after removing slides 10, 11 and 12 from the main timeline in step one and re-inserting them, then repeating the processes in steps two and four (as identified above). I am attaching the *.pte files for all three steps in a zip file. I realize this description must sound very confusing, believe me the problem itself is very confusing and surreal. Have a look at the attachments, maybe that will make more sense. If anyone from Wnsoft wants to see the three JPGs involved, send me a private email and I'll post the JPGs to you privately. I don't want to put them on a public forum, due to some copyright restrictions (they are photos taken at a local museum on condition that the photos are for personal use and are not in any way to be displayed on the internet, and I want to respect that limitation). strange problem with PTE 6 and 6-02.zip

Hi Eric. In December I coordinated our inter-club AV night here in Ottawa, and one of the entries from one of the other clubs weighed in at about 250mb initially, in spite of the fact that our rules had CLEARLY said we wouldn't accept EXE files larger than 100 mb (mainly and initially to keep the sizes small enough for free posting on YouSendIt to make it easy for the other clubs' coordinators to get the shows to me). That file ran very unsmoothly on my laptop, it was only about a 7.5 minute show. I got back to the other club's coordinator and asked him to tell the producer to re-create the show using slides downsized to 1400x1050 pixels and saved as no more than Level 8 JPGs, since I know from past experience that the only way an 8-minute (our time limit) EXE can exceed 100mb is if the producer is using generally-higher-than-Level-8 and generally-out-of-the-camera-resolution JPGs. I was right; the resubmission came back at about 85mb (there still was a lot of complex O&A layering going on) and ran smoothly both on my laptop and on the club system. So the file size definitely was the issue is that particular case (no other factor had changed). In addition to setting a 100-mb limit on the EXE size, we strongly advise producers entering our events to keep most of their JPGs at 1400x1050 to 1024x768 in size (except for those hopefully few slides where they're doing extensive zooming and need larger-res files in a few places) and never to save the file at higher than Level 8 (larger than that doesn't make any significant difference to display quality on a 1400x1050 projector but can make a substantial difference to the JPG file size, and that adds up pretty fast in a 50-80-slide show). Goodness knows what will happen when shows starting incorporating video clips, but we'll jump off that bridge when we get to it Or rather, my replacements will jump off that bridge, I'm not doing the coordination again, I've already "done my bit for Queen and Country" by now, I think and it's time for other volunteers to have their turn at the helm.

I'd like to post a very belated THANK YOU LIN for these tutorials. I'm preparing an "intermediate O&A tricks in PTE" demo for our club's AV Group in March, and I've found several of these tutorials inspirational in clearing some of the fog out of my own head regarding some of the tricks. I'll be pointing everyone in the group to this forum thread and recommending they have a close look at several of the tutorials and examples(notably, and initially, numbers 1, 5, 6, 8 and 13). This is a wonderful resource for all of us, Lin. Great service to the community; thanks so much.

Arguably your best bet is to use the projector's resolution. If that is different from your monitor resolution, then (depending on how you configured your PTE show in Project Options) your show may automatically be resized "on the fly" as it plays. If there is a big discrepancy between the two resolutions, and especially if your show contains large files, then your show might not run very smoothly as the computer struggles to keep up with the resizing demands. Visual results are always best if the computer has to downsize on the fly, rather than "upsize," so when in doubt make the show bigger rather than smaller. If the show is going to be played back on more than one projector or monitor, or if you don't know what resolution of projector will be used, your best bet is arguably to make the show at least as big as the largest current display devices (presently 1920x1080 pixels in 16:9 format or 1440x1080 in 4:3 format). Since most projectors are still 4:3 and not 16:9, I currently size my shows (and all JPGs destined for an AV show) to fit within 1440x1080, since that minimizes the amount of resizing I'd likely enounter in case of any discrepancy. Most projectors in use are either 1024x768 or 1400x1050; it's arguably better to run a 1440x1080 show on a 1024x768 projector than to run a 1024x768 show on a 1400x1050 projector, and 1440x1080 is so close to 1400x1050 as to be trivial. (You arguably might just as well size your images and show to fit 1400x1050, in fact.) That's my two cents' worth, no doubt there are other views on this and on how much the differences really matter. The one thing you probably don't want to do is create a 4000x3000 show and run it on a 1024x768 projector, unless you have a pretty powerful and fast computer driving the projector

Jim replied later confirming he'd verified the hardware acceleration issue, but I thought I'd reinforce his findings -- to date, in every instance I've seen of an AV show running behind, instead of in front of, the menu show, it's been because the hardware acceleration switch was turned On for the menu show. If it's Off, this has never happened in my experience (not to say it couldn't in someone else's experience with other OS or software configurations ... computers being what they are). Sorry for the tardy reply, I've been late today in trolling through the websites I normally check earlier in the day (like this one).

Thanks very much Peter and Xahu. I've never used frames, always wondered why I would ever want to, and now I know! Timely for me, as I'm supposed to be demonstrating the use of the O&A window in PTE to our club's AV Group in March, and the use of frames is something I wasn't going to cover but now I think I will ...

This experience is one of many reasons I stopped entering my photographs and my AV shows in competitions, some years ago. Awards often reflect the judges'/audiences' personal tastes, comfort zones, and moods more than the "quality" (however one defines that) of the photographs or the AV production. I produced an AV show on Dachau about ten years ago and showed it at the club. I showed it at our first annual AV showcase, which at my influence (I was co-manager of our AV Group that year) was a non-competitive, non-voting showcase and not another annual competition (which we'd been running for some years). There was no way I wanted my Dachau show to be part of a competition, because I thought the idea of getting an award based even very remotely on something so horrible was not my desire or intent. I wanted to remind the audience that photography isn't only about pretty women, stunning landscapes, and nice wildflowers -- it's also about documenting, or reminding, us about the horrors that can and do exist in the world around us, "lest we forget." My co-manager and I deliberately ran my show at the end of the first part of the evening, just before the break. The show we slated before mine was a relatively low-key show, as was the first show after the break. We both wanted the show to run, but we wanted the audience to have time to de-compress afterwards before moving on to some lighter-hearted shows. You can't do that in a competition, but you can in a showcase. In a competition people want the shows or images in random order initially, to "level the playing field." But the order in which you view two shows or two images, especially in short time frames and when at least one of them is emotionally moving or upsetting, inevitably colours your experience of the next thing you view, no matter how "objective" you think you are. How can you possibly "level the playing field" between a show about the Shoah and a show about kids having a great time swimming in a lake at a summer camp (my colleague's excellent show for that program)? The concept of trying to put those shows on a "level playing field" is obscene, in my view. How can any judge (and I've been one) possibly rank or score a show about death camps and mass murder against a show about happy children? Why even try? They're both excellent productions, they are very meaningful to their producers, and what is the point of proclaiming "this is number one" and "this is number whatever?" Who cares and why? And don't tell me people need competition to motivate them to produce excellent shows -- our annual interclub AV night is strictly non-competitive, not even a "people's choice" vote, and we get some exciting and superb shows each year. People who care about AV don't need bloody competitions to motivate them. Re Colin's experience: I also had an elderly gentleman of German or Austrian descent come up to me after the showcase and ask, "why did you show us this? Some of us want to forget." I said some of us need to be reminded, because if we aren't reminded, we might let it happen again. Having known survivors and children of survivors, I think I owe them that. At the international AV competition circuit that was held here in Ottawa (and other places) a few years ago, I attended one session in which an incredibly powerful and brave (for the producer, who still lived in China) show about land-mine victims in North Vietnam and the bordering area of China, ran right before a show by one of my Ottawa colleagues showing children snow-sledding during Winterlude here. The shows ran about 30 seconds apart. I was horrified and so upset, I walked out at the intermission and never returned to the rest of the festival. Running those two shows back-to-back did major injustice to both of them, in my opinion, and trivialized the subject matter of both of them. Sitting through them back-to-back in so short a time was like being taken out of freezing water and plunged into boiling water, it was an awful experience. I needed time to catch my breath and to reflect on what the Chinese producer had just shown me. I would never want to try to attach a numerical score or a ranking to something like that. Since that last experience, I've never entered, organized, judged, or sat through an AV competition. Nor will I again. My only advice to you is, next time you have a photograph or an AV show that really means a lot to you personally and emotionally, don't waste it as an entry to a competition. You'll likely only get yourself upset, and what's the point? My two cents' worth anyway. Others may well disagree with my views on this, but that's their right, as it's my right to have these views.

I'll second Peter's experience on this. To date I've owned the Nikon D100, D70, D200, and D90 as well as the Lumix GF1, plus several non-interchangeable-lens digital cameras by Nikon and Panasonic. I've never noticed any focus problems with any of my equipment, except for a brief episode with an early-release Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom in which the AF stopped working entirely in the 18-35mm range after about 2000 shutter-activations, it was an early design or production bug that Nikon repaired under warranty and fixed in the later production runs. The fuss and bother with "backfocus adjustments" on the D300 and later Nikon cameras always struck me as overkill and a fussy-and-time-absorbing tool looking for a problem that wasn't there, but then maybe like Peter I'm a mere "average" user who doesn't push his gear to the absolute limit (rarely use macro anywhere close to 1:1 and then it's tripod plus MF not AF for me, and with most cameras and lenses these days there's always instant-manual-override on the focus if you notice a problem in the viewfinder or on the LCD screen). With "live-view" LCD focus combined with magnification on the LCD screen, you can identify and fix focus issues PDQ as long as you aren't trying to capture a bird in flight or an athlete in the middle of something fast, which as a mostly-travel-and-landscape photographer I'm usually not. Picking up on Bill's previous post about weather-tight, a tip for users of Panasonic and likely other non-interchangeable-lens cameras -- if you buy a filter/hood adapter for the camera and put a UV filter on it, the zoom lens is suddenly water-tight (except under immersion), the lens extends and contracts solely within the sealed tube formed by the adapter and filter. There's nowhere for water or dirt to get into the camera, except maybe in the battery/flash card compartment when replacing either. I use my Lumix LX3 and FZ8 cameras in preference to my SLRs in inclement weather, for this reason and the fact they're both very compact, light and silent cameras with fast lenses that produce excellent JPG and RAW files as long as you don't boost the ISO too much.

Excellent news! As two of the features mentioned, audio-track editing and (later) video clip implementation, are things I've been asking for, I may actually break my long-standing practice of steering clear of beta releases and start trying any beta releases with either feature and chipping in whatever suggestions or problem alerts that I am able on those features. (Most of the more recent enhancements have been things of marginal or no interest to me, certainly not in beta form, but these two are different.) I am looking forward to this very much.

Thanks for the very quick reply Lin. I agree; whatever the heck they're doing, they need to fix their anti-virus software PDQ or some of us are going to start looking seriously for some alternatives. No one needs this grief.

This thread sounds suspiciously like the problems some of us were reporting a week or so ago here http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11061&st=20 As I noted at the bottom of that thread, when I returned from a trip a few days ago, I found the false-positive problem has somehow cleared up on my system, for whatever reason . Thought I should mention I'm still running NAV 2005, so it isn't just NAV 2010 that returns false positives on PTE shows ... My wife's Norton Internet Security v. 17 nuked a PTE screensaver I created for us, about a week ago; we've both been using that screensaver for about a year and a half, and NIS never bothered with it until a week ago. Haven't tried re-installing it on her system yet, my NAV 2005 doesn't seem to mind it though. Go figure.

I'm back from my trip. When I updated my NAV virus definitions on my return, the update files were a LOT bigger than I remember them being (for whatever that's worth). After updating the definitions, I temporarily disabled NAV, copied all the PTE shows on which NAV had given a false "backdoor.trojan" positive to a separate folder, re-activated NAV and then launched each show. No problem, no warning, NAV is no longer giving me any grief on these shows (for now, anyway). From which I infer that either I am very lucky, or that maybe Norton has quietly fixed the problem. I hope. If the problem recurs, I'll update further.

I know this point has been raised multiple times in this forum, but I want to make yet another pitch for the ability to integrate video clips into PTE. Numerous other programs can now integrate video and stills, but PTE still can't. I consider this to the be most important priority for the next version of PTE, trumping all other proposed new features IMO. Just look at all the new cameras coming out with HD-video capability. check out the excellent new "beginner's guide" to HD video at the DPR website: http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Guides/hd_beginners_guide_01.htm The writing is on the wall. If PTE doesn't respond, it's going to fall behind other programs very quickly and may lose some loyal users.

I'm going away for a few days, when I return I'll update my NAV virus definitions and check to see if NAV is still giving me the backdoor.trojan warning on those old PTE shows. If so, I'll send a copy of one of them to Symantec with a polite suggestion their definitions are returning a false positive and asking them to fix it. If not, then it probably means Symantec found the problem and fixed it with an update to the definitions, likely without telling anyone as this sort of thing doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the anti-virus software Either way I'll post an update on my experience in this thread. BTW I was wondering this morning why about 2 GB of space had disappeared from my C drive overnight, until I did a search in Windows Explorer for all new files in the past week and discovered NAV had "kindly" quarantined multiple copies of the "infected" PTE files, which accounted for almost all the "missing" space on the hard drive. Deleted the quarantined files and all is back to normal on my hard drive ... A word to the wise ...

Hi Ken. thanks for the cross-reference; where did you move my post, I can't find it there ...

I guess this forum is where I should post my latest false positive, I think, of a virus warning from Norton Anti-virus. I've been using PTE since 2003 and this is the first time I've seen this. I have a folder of PTE shows that I created in January 2005 (I no longer recall what version of PTE I was using then, but it was the latest version at that time). I ran my monthly NAV scan of my system this afternoon, and NAV deleted every PTE show in that particular folder (and only that folder, which is a subfolder in a larger folder containing all my PTE shows), telling me each of the shows in that subfolder was infected with Backdoor.trojan. I have had that folder on my system (two copies actually, one each on two external hard drives) since 2005 and NAV has NEVER given me a warning of a virus infection on those files until today. I scan my system once a month, so my system has been scanned by NAV probably about 60 times since January 2005 and this is the first time NAV has done this to me. Fortunately I have backups of those EXEs on a DVD-R, so I can recopy from that DVD-R (made about 12 months ago). However, when I try to run any of the restored copies, the same thing happens, NAV clobbers not only the file I tried to launch but also all the other files in that particular subfolder. NAV is not doing this to any of my more recent PTE shows on the same system. If I temporarily disable NAV I can launch and run any of these "suspect" shows with no problem. So I assume there is something wonky with Symantec's Backdoor.trojan definition that was issued in the past four weeks or so as a regular update, that is causing this problem with these particular shows from 2005. Has anyone else run into this? PS I'm out of town for a week starting Thursday morning so won't be following this thread for a few days after tomorrow; I'll pick it up again next week when I return. However I will check it once or twice in the next 24 hours and reply if necessary for any follow-up. PPS This is the first time since I got this system in 2004 that I have had ANY virus-infection warnings from NAV. I never connect to the internet without Norton Firewall and Norton Anti-Virus being active, moreover my internet service provider has a very effective virus program that quarantines infected spam mail before I ever see it; I get a weekly report of all the quarantined emails from them so I know how many have been sent to me (and also which "spam" emails weren't actually spam but were false positives, so I can download those). Like Barry, I am very cautious about suspicious emails, I don't troll through dodgy websites, and I've never had a virus infection on my PC since I got my first one back in 1988. So I'm 99.44% certain the problem I've identified above is a false positive from Symantec and not a problem with my PTE shows ... but even so it's a pain to have to disable my internet connection and then disable NAV before I can run any of the 2005 shows mentioned above. Maybe someone should complain to Symantec, but I'm not technically-inclined enough to know what to say to them about this (and in past experience I find they are singularly not helpful when dealing with people like me who aren't software engineers like them )

We ran into the same phenomenon at a recent presentation to our photo club, running with Windows XP. However in that case the problem appears to have been with the hardware acceleration switch having been turned On in Project Options in the menu show, by mistake. Turning it off cleared the problem. I have no experience with Windows 7 and can't help you there, sorry. It might help however if you were to do a "backup to zip" of your menu show and post it on this forum (just the menu show, not the exe files which it launches) so some of us could have a quick look at Project Options and also the O&A window where you set up the objects that launch the other exe shows, to see if we can spot anything. I'd be surprised if the problem were Windows 7, my guess is it's something in Project Options or the O&A window. However the fast way to check whether it's Windows 7 is to run EXACTLY the same menu show on Windows XP or Vista and see what happens.

Hi John. If both computers, monitor and projector all were calibrated to the same gamma, then yes as I understand it they all will be singing from the same page -- though if one were a Mac and the other a PC, I'd really want to see this with my own eyes, being the paranoid person that I am (many times burned by techhies in the past, many times shy ...) In terms of where you set the gamma, I forget where it is on the projector. If you're using a ColorVision Spyder for calibration, as I do, then at least with the software that comes with Spyder2Pro the place where you set the gamma is on the third screen page (which you get to by clicking the Next button a couple of times), where a display tells you what gamma is the current default for the software and gives you a radio-button choice between "continue with these settings" or "change these settings." If you don't like any of the settings, click the second radio button then next and the software will let you change them. After completing the calibration the software lets you toggle between a "before" and "after" view of a standard calibration image; on every monitor I've calibrated there is a very noticeable difference. However if you have an older version of Spyder you may not have this option in the software, alas. Spyder2Pro is worth the upgrade in that case, because it can be used to calibrate CRT and LCD monitors (you have to tell it which) and also can be used to calibrate a projector (equally necessary and different from calibrating a monitor). Though the before/after display is obviously more of the "nice to have" not "got to have" variety of feature ... I re-calibrate my monitor roughly once a month, though maybe that's overkill. I also take advantage of the option to calibrate taking into account ambient room light, since I work in a room with a west-facing window. I have up to five different calibrations available at any one time: one for a sunny morning, one for a cloudy morning, one for sunny afternoon, one for a cloudy afternoon, and one for night-time (which is when I actually do more than half my editing) when it's dark outside and I'm using the same room lighting all the time. I change the calibration monthly, or would do at least every season, because at our latitude and climate here in Ottawa, the amount and colour-temperature of the light coming through my window in daytime varies quite a lot between the seasons and also depending on whether there's snow on the ground outside. However if you work in a room like our photo club's "digital darkroom" where there are no windows and the door is kept closed, the only light is from the overhead lighting, then you only need one calibration -- though as a monitor ages you need to update the calibration, because the image likely will dim and probably drift toward the red end of the spectrum over time, at least that's what seemed to happen to my now-defunct CRT monitor. Hope this helps. PS added later, hope you spot it ... Before I calibrate any monitor or projector, the first thing I do is go to Windows Display Properties (either through the Control Panel or right-click on the desktop, go to properties, go to Advanced tab>Color Management) and disable whatever calibration profile is currently active on the system, THEN open the calibration software. I don't know whether this is technically necessary, but it can't hurt, and it means "starting from a blank page." Also before starting the calibration, reset the display device's Contrast and Brightness settings to neutral or 50% (depending on the device's menu choices) as this generally makes it easier and quicker to calibrate the grey scale. And, very importantly, when you save the calibration profile when prompted, include in the profile file name the display device (if you have more than one), the room (if it's a projector used in more than one room), the screen (if there's more than one choice), the ambient light (sunny morning/whatever in my case), the brightness and contrast settings you ended up with after calibrating the device, and the date. Whenever changing a profile because of an ambient light change, different room, or whatever, always note the brightness and contrast settings and reset the display device to match what's in the profile name. Especially if other people use the display device, as always happens with club projectors Murphy's Law reigns supreme ... assume nothing, always check everything ... PPS sorry to add another thing I forgot, but I'm juggling several pins at the same time this afternoon Another choice you have to make when calibrating is the colour temperature to use for the "white point." On my LCD monitor there are three pre-sets: sRGB (5000K or something??), 6500K and 9300K. I always use 6500K since a) that seems to be pretty commonly used, though as in any technical matter there are always raging arguments about this which I tend to ignore, and that's very close to the "native" colour temperature of the club's Canon SX50 which I think is 6700K or something like that, it's in the manual somewhere. Some folks used to argue for 9300K since a lot of older monitors shipped at that default and the assumption was that most people who view websites don't calibrate their monitors and were using that temperature, but I find it gives a very cold image that I don't like. On my CRT monitor I sometimes tried 5500K but I found it looked overly warm and didn't like that, either. 6500K seems to work well for the various print jobs I've had done, at two different service bureaux to date, so I'm comfortable with it. (If in doubt, ask your contact at the service bureau which temperature they use, when you're having them do prints. If the contact doesn't know what the question means, find yourself another service bureau, fast ...) I always add the colour temp to the file name for the colour profile, though I almost never change it from 6500K...

I was the person who started the discussion thread on our club forum that JRR is referring to, and just to clarify a bit -- What sparked my post was my discovery that cross-platform use of a JPG produced from a calibrated PC monitor can create serious problems if you take the JPG to a service bureau to get a print made, when that service bureau uses a Mac system to do the printing. My PC monitor is calibrated, but at gamma 2.2, and my service bureau's monitor and system (Mac) is also calibrated, but at gamma 1.8. Neither the monitor display nor the print from the service bureau looks even close to what I get on my monitor, and the only way I could get a proper match was when the service bureau manager allowed me to adjust my JPGs on his Mac system in Photoshop, that worked. As far as I know the service bureau is using gamma 1.8 on his Mac, whether out of habit or because most of his Mac users do the same, I don't know. (When I first started discussions with the service bureau, it never occurred to me that he'd be doing the printing on a Mac, and when he mentioned he would the penny didn't drop until he ran some proofs -- see below -- and I realized there was a big problem and finally figured out it had to be the gamma used in calibration.) I agree with JRR, as long as you calibrate either a Mac or a PC then images should look the same, IF and ONLY IF the calibrations are to the same gamma as was used to adjust the images. If you have an AV show full of images that were adjusted on a system calibrated to gamma 2.2 and then try to display that show on a system that is calibrated for gamma 1.8 instead of 2.2, you're likely going to be in for a very rude surprise, if my experience with my service bureau is anything to go by. (On his system my images were horribly contrasty, highlights blown and shadows blocked where on my system no highlights are blown and the shadows have lots of detail. And the problem was both on his monitor and on the prints he produced from Adobe Illustrator - this was for a book I'm self-publishing with my wife - and yes his monitor was calibrated with his printer, if you put the print next to his monitor they looked almost identical and identically awful and not how I'd adjusted them on my system.) Be careful and don't take anyone else's word for what will happen if you display cross-platform, preview the results on the other system in question and make sure it's going to work before you embarass yourself in front of an audience (or spend a lot of money on a print run that produces prints you can't live with, thank God I insisted on seeing proof pages first ...) And if I were ever thinking of switching from PC to Mac, or even contemplating whether it would be worth it, I'd take a bunch of PTE shows and JPGs that I created on my PC and demand that the salesperson let me view these on a 2.2-gamma-calibrated Mac before I'd even think of shelling out the money. I don't care what any engineer or salesperson says about how it wouldn't be a problem, I won't believe it unless I can see it with my own eyes. I confess I've never tried viewing or projecting one of my PTE shows on a gamma-1.8-calibrated Mac, but given my experience just mentioned I would be VERY gun-shy of doing that and would not want to let someone display one of my shows on any Mac calibrated to any gamma until I've previewed it myself ... I'm not from Missouri, but I grew up near there, and "show me" is my motto to this day.

just to emphasize the point, and also to apologize for my sloppy wording in my original post, which may have triggered Jeff's reaction -- I wasn't suggesting I'd want to edit the sound in an MOV or AVI clip in PTE (e.g., putting in echo effects, filtering noise, boosting some frequencies, etc.), no more than I'd want to edit a JPG in PTE. I'd want to be able to fade the sound from the MOV or AVI clip (probably in most cases I'd want to suppress it) relative to the background music file, or perhaps in some other cases I'd like to keep the sound from the movie clip and fade down the background music while that clip is running. That's it, that's all, analogous to fading the background music relative to a sound clip attached to a photo in the timeline, or actually in my first case fading the image/movie-based sound relative to the background (which isn't really analogous to what you'd do with a sound clip, if you didn't want it you wouldn't have clipped it to the image in the first place -- but no movie-capable camera I own lets me turn off the sound recording while recording the movie, I get both whether I want both or not). I hope that's clear. I'm assuming that when Igor and team integrate MOV or AVI files into PTE the sound will be included, but I'm also hoping there's some easy way of getting PTE to control/fade/suppress the sound from those files without fading the visual part of the video clip. Which is the only "sound editing" I'm asking for, beyond what many of us asked for earlier regarding fade controls on one or more background music files and sound files attached to specific images. I've been struggling with a nasty sinus infection for a week now and my head feels like it's full of cotton wool, sorry if the wording comes across that way too

I also would be willing to pay extra for a deluxe add-in with both video clips and sound editing, if that's the way to go. PTE is still a huge bargain compared to the competition, and I'd far rather pay Igor and team for these features than get into buying a camcorder, a video editing suite, and probably a major computer upgrade on top (my system really isn't suitable even for Premiere Elements, and this isn't something that I'm so desperate for that I want to go through the expense and agony of getting another computer until my present one dies). And if it's an optional add-on or in a more advanced version (like the current Deluxe version), anyone who doesn't want sound editing or video clips doesn't have to pay for it. Makes lots of sense to me. And it generates more revenue for Wnsoft's hard-working people!

There has already been ample discussion on this Forum asking for PTE to incorporate movie clips, and also to provide some minimal sound editing (at least, the ability to fade selected portions of overlapping sound tracks). Maybe the following is obvious, in which case forgive the redundancy of this post, but I would like to enter a plea that PTE implement BOTH movie clips AND sound-fading at the same time. I’ve been playing with the movie features of my Nikon D90 and my new Lumix GF1. (The latter’s movie features are MUCH better implemented and much user-friendlier BTW, but that’s another subject.) Let’s face it, the sound tracks that you’re going to get from most stills-based cameras, at least those currently on the market, are pretty feeble. Moreover, because of the closeness of the camera “microphones” and the other camera controls, you’re quite likely to pick up clicks and whirs from the camera on the sound track of your movie clip; this is especially true on the GF1 (if you want to use the camera dial manually to adjust exposure comp or lens aperture during filming, those clicks are very audible) but also is a problem with the D90 (which lacks any video autofocus so you’re constantly fiddling with the manual focus ring in movie mode, and the mike does pick up the sound of that ring being turned). Even with a decent camcorder, the one I rented a while back picked up the sounds of my operating the zoom button on a number of clips I took. Unless and until the design of the current movie-capable still cameras improves substantially, or unless one wants to carry a very good camcorder in addition to one’s stills system (I don’t), these sound-clip defects are going to present a challenge when the movie clips are integrated into an AV show. And, quite apart from annoying camera noises on the sound track, for many of the clips and uses I forsee in my AV shows, the sound that was part of the scene being recorded simply may not work with the rest of the show and would best be replaced with the show’s music track anyway. I would really like, once I can insert an AVI or MOV clip into my PTE project, to be able to fade or even suppress the sound track from that clip and let the main sound file for the show drown it out or supplant it entirely while the movie clip is running. So I would prefer the developers to give EQUAL priority to the sound-editing and the movie-clip-integration suggestions many of us have made. I don’t think it’s possible to achieve in Audacity the sound edits I’m going to need in my AVI and MOV clips for them to work well in an AV show; as far as I can tell, Audacity won’t edit the sound in a movie clip, and I hate to think of the cost (and computer requirements) for a video-editing program that could do that. But a sound-fade control in PTE, if it could be designed to work on a video-clip sound track as well as on other sound files being used in the show, would be wonderful.

Thanks very much, Ken and Tom. I'll have a look at QuickTime Pro and Premiere Elements trial edition and report back if I discover anything profound BTW for the interest of any readers who use or might use PhotoFun Studio, I've run into a curious limitation to that software which has prompted an email from me to their tech support with a suggestion for an update on the software. As the documentation warns, and as I've verified, you can't copy AVCHD files from the flash card or the camera using Windows Explorer and then be able to do anything with those files in PhotoFun Studio; you HAVE to copy the files using PhotoFun Studio itself, because it "unpacks" the data into its own format before viewing (never mind editing) the files. At first I was pretty upset about this; when I travel, I don't generally take a laptop, just a Hyperdrive onto which I back up my flash cards as I go along, then reformat and re-use them. I then access my backup copies on my Hyperdrive for editing when I'm back home; I have no interest in spending holiday time sitting on my derriere in front of a computer screen, I do enough of that at home already I've discovered that PhotoFun Studio won't recognize my Hyperdrive when I attach it to my laptop's USB ports, though every other photo-editing software I own does. However I figured out that, once I get the Hyperdrive home and attached, then I can re-copy the AVCHD files to a flash card via a flash-card reader on another USB port, and THEN PhotoFun Studio can copy and work with the files from the flash card. The problem is the software is only programmed to recognize a CD/DVD drive, a flash-card drive, or the camera itself -- it won't recognize any external hard drives. The recopy-to-the-flash-card approach is lame and tedious, but it works ... Some days I want to grasp some software engineers by the throat and give their heads a sharp shake Anyway, a word to the wise if you're thinking of using PhotoFun Studio for AVCHD editing ...

I'm not sure which is the most appropriate forum for posting this, but here goes -- moderator is welcome to move this to another forum if that seems better ... I am looking forward to the day that PTE will let me drop a video clip from one of my cameras into my AV show. I know there will be some issues with this (aspect ratio might be one, especially if I do HD video but 3:2 still capture; another is avoiding any "hiccups" when the video starts and stops). However there are numerous examples of where I'd like to do this (and a lot more examples than any I can think I'd ever want for the 3D features now being developed in PTE, but that's another issue ...). But I'd like to be able to edit a video clip before using it. Mainly the editing would consist of clipping out frames at the beginning and end, where in my experience there are most likely to be glitches I don't want or need, in order to make the integration with the preceding and following stills smoother. Nothing fancier than cutting frames, in all likelihood. Can anyone recommend simple and affordable software that would let me edit MOV or (preferably and) AVI video clips? I want to do both, because to my chagrin my camera manufacturers don't standardize on the same format -- my Nikon D90 produces AVI but my Panasonic Lumix cameras produce MOV. (My new Lumix GF-1 also produces something called AVCHD Lite, which is another story ... that format I can edit in software that came with the camera, but the software seems only to output the edited result onto a playback DVD and not into any format that I think PTE will work with, though I may be wrong on that ... in any case, the software - PhotoFunStudio 4 HD edition - won't edit MOV clips, only AVCHD Lite ones as far as I can see) This also raises the issue of whether PTE's eventually-promised video-clip feature will accommodate both MOV and AVI clips, probably a tall if not impossible order, but alas the reality seems to be that small-format cameras (including Micro Four-Thirds cameras) all seem to produce MOV and at least Nikon's SLRs only do AVI. So unless PTE is going to become software that only owners of some cameras can work with for video, I'm hoping it will somehow work with both formats... Though I guess that's for a different post. For now, can anyone point me to basic and affordable video-editing software that runs on a PC and will work preferably with MOV format but ideally also AVI? (The video feature on the Nikon D90 is pathetic compared to that of the Lumix GF-1, so I'm far more likely to use the GF1 to take videos than the D90...)