Ed Overstreet

Absolutely. And even better if you could shift-click or CRTL-click on several items and move them around as a group with the mouse? (Mind you, one would have to be careful about multiple-selecting objects in different parent-child chains, I'm not sure what complications that might pose ...)

Just to reinforce Peter's point, for Gary -- in the showcase night where we had the 3DHA switch On for the menu, by mistake, I had two shows, both of which had been created with 3DHA turned ON because they both involved some mild P&Z animations. Those two shows run just fine from the menu-show buttons if the menu show has 3DHA turned OFF, and they don't if 3DHA is On with the menu show. I agree with Jim (JRR), of course. Yes, we're biased for PTE, for the reasons Jim mentioned. Also, much as I keep posting suggestions in the Ideas Forum to improve the PTE interface, I still find PTE's user interface a lot friendlier and more intuitive than that of other products I've tried. After finally figuring out the Photoshop interface (not to mention the sometimes quirky Silkypix Developer Studio for my nifty little Lumix LX3 backup camera), I have limited patience left for complex and daunting user interfaces that don't make sense to me (after ten years with Photoshop I still can't figure out why any sane photographer would want to go near a Bezier Curve ) But, as we say in Canada, "different strokes for different folks." Or, "chacun à son goût."

Just to reinforce the points that Peter and Xaver made, in our club we have a number of members who persist (against my and JRR's best advice ) in submitting EXE shows created in ProShow and other software. Never mind the range of PTE versions in use out there. (It was enough of a battle to get showcase-night shows limited to EXE files, we get AVI and other formats too sometimes, but generally resist them due to the complications of finding out whether the club computer has the "right" CODECs for those other things.) I suppose we could just give up on PTE menu shows and live with running all the shows from Windows Explorer, but that's so boring and unprofessional-looking At least in my opinion, which is the only one that counts for our interclub showcase until someone else volunteers to run the thing. In the meantime, we sure don't want to see the option to turn off the 3D Hardware Acceleration disappear from PTE

Just thought we would pass along an experience with using ver 5.6 to create a Menu page with the 3D Acceleration left on… I realize the issue of hardware acceleration has been discussed recently in another thread http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10661&st=0 however I think the following deserves a separate thread, as it is advice to users who want to create a “menu show” such as found in the attachment. Recently in our club, our annual AV showcase at our annual Open House was disrupted because a menu show, used to launch 24 sample shows from members, had been created by a relatively new PTE user who didn’t know to (nor how to) turn 3D Hardware Acceleration OFF for a menu show. Instead, the user accepted the Project Options default, which has that setting ON. The result was a shambles. About half the shows wouldn’t launch, or the video launched “behind the menu” and didn’t appear on-screen, though you could hear the music. The person running the show was unable to fix the problem on the fly. In the end, the person presenting ran those few shows that did launch normally, kept track of those that didn’t, then at the end of the evening re-ran the missed shows manually through Windows Explorer. Not as flashy or professional for the audience, but at least the shows ran from Windows Explorer. After some extensive debugging of the menu show, JRR (another PTE Forum member) and I have proved to our mutual satisfaction that the sole problem with that menu show was the 3D Hardware Acceleration setting. Turn it OFF, and every button on the menu functions as it should (the menu screen clears, the show runs, and at the end of the show the menu screen returns). Turn it ON, and you have CHAOS, from the master-of-ceremonies’ perspective. The audience wasn’t impressed, nor was our colleague. The problem is random at times, but always there will be problems with some shows if the Hardware Acceleration is turned ON. We’ve verified this problem on four separate computers. For those interested, I’m attaching a sample menu show (not the one used that particular night, but it exhibits the same behaviour under Hardware Acceleration). Go into Slide Three’s O&A window, go to the Objects list, change the Common-tab file references for a couple of buttons to several of your own EXE shows on your hard drive, and create the EXE menu show and launch it. The current configuration has Hardware Acceleration OFF; when you run the menu show and click on the relevant buttons, the referenced shows should run normally. Verify this. Now go back into PTE and, changing nothing else, turn Hardware Acceleration ON, re-create the EXE menu show, re-check the button launches and look at what happens. It isn’t fun. This posting is a heads-up to those doing, or thinking of doing, Menu Shows using ver 5.6. We’ve verified this issue in version 5.6 and some earlier 5.x versions. None of us “do” beta versions, so we don’t know whether the current betas will have this problem. We believe the proposal to do away with the option of the 3D being ON or OFF has been shelved. To our mind the 3D ON/OFF Option must always be there. Menu Show A.zip

There are a couple of changes I would like to see with the way the Objects palette in the O&A Window behaves when one adds a new object, either from the right-click menu or from the Add Button icon at the top of the screen. If the user has just finished editing an object already in the palette, the default behaviour is that the just-edited object remains blue-highlit. If the user adds a new object now, using either the right-click menu or the button, the next object automatically becomes a “child” of the previous object. To avoid this happening, the user has to ensure the previous object is no longer high-lit. I do this by mouse-clicking on blank space near the bottom of the palette. That is an annoyance, but not a big deal, IF YOU KNOW ABOUT IT. However, this is something that I have discovered (the hard way) that less-experienced users don’t realize. Nor is it easy to fix, once it’s happened. To see the absurd lengths to which this problem can evolve, check out the O&A Objects list in the attached menu show (created by a very intelligent and artistic colleague of mine at the photo club, who however is not thoroughly versed yet in the intricacies of PTE). My colleague knew this didn’t look right, but couldn’t figure out how to fix the mess. There was no reason why my colleague (or anyone else I can think of) would ever want Buttons stacked in parent-child chains like this, but that’s what happened. I have two suggestions. 1. IMO it would be more user-friendly and more intuitive for the default behaviour in this palette to be that any new object automatically becomes a separate “parent” object. A new object should never IMO be created as a “child” of another object in that list, unless the user EXPLICITLY tells the software to do so. The current behaviour, where the software automatically creates a child if another object is high-lit, isn’t intuitive to many new users, and can be very frustrating and easy to forget even for more experienced users like me. Given that an object you just finished working on remains lit until you go out of your way to “un-light” it, which is not intuitive for a lot of users, the current default behaviour is an invitation to trouble, as seen in the attached example. 2. Once one has created a string of unwanted parent-child links, it is presently very hard to un-do the mess. The only option I’ve found is the tedious one of deleting all the objects and starting over, or of taking the time to highlight, copy to the clipboard, then delete each object one at a time, pasting the object back from the clipboard into the Objects List AFTER first making sure nothing else is high-lit. This process is needlessly cumbersome and frustrating. Instead, I’d like to see the option of clicking-and-dragging any object in the palette to another level or position in the hierarchy at will. That would make it easy to fix any inadvertent problems that rise from the issue identified in point 1 above, and in fact would make it very easy for the user to specify, change, or experiment with parent-child links at will. In a pinch, if for some reason it is too complicated to implement suggestion 1, an implementation of suggestion 2 would achieve the desired results for both suggestions (if you understand my point). It wouldn’t matter where the new object was initially placed, as long as it’s easy to move it somewhere else if you need to. Currently, that is not easy. Menu Show B.zip

Great tip, thanks Peter! As it happens, by odd curiosity (great minds work in the same channels?), our club's Webmaster gave a presentation last night to members on our club's website, and he had exactly the same tip for our website. I sort of knew about this, but I forgot about it along the way, it's good to be reminded of a simple, painless way to keep in touch on a Forum that you visit regularly without having to scroll through all the sub-forums each time Cheers

Just a suggestion for the interface on the next version of Video Builder, arising from my burn-error difficulties described on a separate thread, which arose from inadequate space for temp files on the default C drive location on my computer Currently the main temp files for the burn to DVD option are located using a field in Project Options>Program, which is easy for the careless (e.g., me ) or the technically unsophisticated to overlook. On the final page of the Video Builder interface, there are default locations (which can be changed) for the temp files for creating MPEG2, DVD folders and ISO files, but not for the DVD burn itself. I would prefer to see the llocation for the field that designates where temp files for the DVD burn are to be stored, moved from Project Options to this final interface page, for consistency with the fields for all the other temp files, and for easier and more prominent access. I also would recommend adding a short warning, perhaps in bold or red font, on that same final page, something like "be sure that the drive for the temporary files contains at least 2 GB of empty space for every 1 GB or 20 minutes of DVD space needed for your project." If this restriction also applies to the MPEG2, DVD folder or ISO file options AS WELL, then obviously this should be indicated too. I don't think this warning is mentioned prominently anywhere else in the software nor in the user manual (as far as I've noticed anyway). One can find this advice if one thinks to search the Forum for posts on burn errors, but many users won't think of that. As this lack of adequate temp-file space may be a prime cause of frustrating burn errors in Video Builder (and certainly that was true in my own case), I think it is important to make these warnings more prominent, as I've suggested above.

My apologies for the lengthy initial post, which it turns out raised some red herrings that are irrelevant, at least in my own case. Thanks to Ken’s reference to a post by Igor, I have learned something that may help others, so not all is totally wasted here. I have confirmed that my aging laptop’s NEC DVD+-R/RW drive can, in fact, work with Video Builder to burn an 80-minute, 8-program, 4.02 GB DVD+R that will play back on my Toshiba DVD players. The trick was to reset the location for the temporary files (under Project Options>Program) to my F drive, which has ample space for them (unlike my C drive which doesn’t have enough space). In practice, the maximum DVD size is going to be 4.7 GB (and it is unwise to fill a disc completely, one should always leave a few dozen MB empty space for system files etc). As long as the drive to which you are directing the temporary files has at least 10 GB of empty space, there should be no burn errors arising for lack of sufficient file space. The other factor that may have made a difference, not sure, is that originally I was asking VideoBuilder also to create MPEG2 files, DVD folders, and an ISO image as well as burning a DVD disc. I now realize that was unnecessary, and this last time I disabled all those other check boxes. (To my credit, however, at least on THAT page of the interface I DID in my earlier tests direct all THOSE temporary files to my spacious F drive. I just neglected to do the same with the temp files covered under Project Options.) So the aging NEC drive does work (at least with Sony DVD+Rs also Sony DVD-RWs which I (this time) tested before trying a DVD+R), and I don’t need to use my external Apacer DVD drive. The burn speeds used by the NEC were 2x for the RW and 4x for the DVD+R; these were the only speeds showing on the drop-down menu so I didn’t have a choice, but it reinforces the point that it’s probably better to use slower burn speeds than faster, when there is a choice. Of course the monster project took nearly 3 hours to complete, but now at least I have a master DVD that I can duplicate more quickly with my DVD burning software. The resolution on a TV screen isn’t wonderful, but that’s inevitable given the difference between 720x480 pixels for a video DVD and the 1400x1050 pixels at which the original shows were created and display on a computer monitor or projector. In closing, my kudos to Igor for the Video Builder 5.6 interface. Once I figured out the temp file issue I found the interface very friendly, easy to use, and much more effective than what I remember of the earlier DVD-video features a couple of years ago when I first tried doing it and ran away screaming in frustration. The codecs or whatever Igor put into VB5.6 work perfectly, and burning directly from VideoBuilder is much more fun and straightforward (at least for me ) than having to go through another burn program with an avi or iso file structure ... I may actually start using Video Builder more now, at least for DVDs intended for friends and family who prefer to watch TV instead of crowd around a computer monitor (and who don't own digital projectors).

Thanks for the tip, Dave. I didn't have much success with the ISO files on my computer's DVD burning software (from Dell, not Roxio), and I don't like intermediate steps if I can avoid them. However it turns out I don't need to go this route; the problem was entirely due to the temp file location and the lack of space on my C drive, I'm pretty sure . .. see my next post below.

In case you haven't seen the replies to my other thread: there may be a simpler solution than getting a different DVD drive. Are you sure there is enough room on your system for the temporary files being created for a large project? Thanks to Ken Cox pointing me to one of Igor's replies to another thread, I've discovered that Video Builder needs about twice as much space for temporary files as the final DVD is going to require. In Igor's example, a 24-minute video DVD occupies 1.2 GB on the DVD but also needs 2.4 GB (approximately) for the temporary files. In Project Options for your project in Video Builder, go to the Program tab and see where the program is trying to store your temp files. (The default is the temp folder under Local Settings in your current Windows account, on your C drive.) Go to Windows Explorer and make sure you have enough space on the drive for all those temp files (extrapolate from the figures I quoted above to get an estimate for your own project. If your C drive doesn't have enough space on it (mine doesn't in my case), if you have an external hard drive that does have enough empty space, change the folder location in Project Options to place the temp files into a folder on that drive. If you do have ample space according to the above calculations, then the problem obviously is something else But always check the simple solutions first

Thanks very much for these, Ken. I think the solution to the problem has been triggered by the second one. Extrapolating from Igor's reply on that thread, it seems likely that I'd need a bit more than 7 GB of space for the temp files for the big project I was trying (the eight-show one). Guess what, my C drive only has 6 GB of free space on it! I had occurred to me at some point that I should direct the temp files onto my external F drive which has about 170 GB free space at the moment, and I thought I'd done that, but in re-visiting the PTV file for that project I discover to my dismay and embarassment that I forgot to do what I'd intended, and I was using the C-drive default location for the temp files. I dare say that may likely have something to do with the problem. It had occurred to me at some point that I'd better figure out where in Video Builder I can direct the temp files to a drive that has room for them, but I guess with advancing age I sometimes forget to carry through on things I know I should pay attention to In the next couple of days I'll try this again, this time directing the temp files to my external hard drive where I have enough room. I"ll get back on this thread and post the results, whatever they are. Dave, I did have the software save ISO files but I couldn't get imgburn.exe to use them without messing up the menu structure. I'm hoping the simple answer is that Video Builder ran out of room for temp files because I forgot to direct those files to my external drive Thanks for the quick replies, all.

A little slow on the uptake today, but finally it occurred to me to try to post the ptv files inside a zip file, so here goes. If it helps anyone ... Ed__s_PTV_project_files.zip

Thought this would be a good place to post the following result, which I discovered today. I've been playing around with VideoBuilder, with very mixed results (see my post at http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....t=0#entry66101). But I did succeed in burning to DVD a copy of my Angles of Repose show, which opens with the big panorama file, the pan on which sparked this long gruesome thread about problems with the Canon SX50 and some other projectors on displaying that pan smoothly. I have confirmed that I can run that show, with its opening pan, very smoothly from a DVD created by VideoBuilder on two different DVD drives attached to standard TV sets, the DVD players both being Toshibas (one is an SD 1800 and the other is an SD 3980). However, when I play the DVD on my sometimes-problematic NEC drive on my laptop (see above-referenced post for more details re the NEC weirdnesses) using Dell Media Experience DVD playback, the pan looks very jerky (though it's smooth on the same system run as an EXE file from the hard drive). So, while projection is an issue with this particular panorama -- in terms of either tearing or jerkiness -- it's not when played back on a DVD in either Toshiba DVD player to a TV set. For whatever that's worth. The fun does continue, doesn't it

I have been experiencing some strange burn problems with Video Builder 5.6. These problems occur using a Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop and an Apacer CP300 Disc Steno running the latter as an external USB DVD drive with Sony DVD+R discs. (I am entirely unable to use the laptop’s NEC 6500A DVD+-RW drive with either DVD-R or DVD+R discs and Video Builder; that drive persists in returning burn.exe errors with all the projects described below.) The system is running Windows XP Home with SP2 on 1 GB RAM and an Intel Centrino 2 Ghz chip. First I tried to produce an 8-show, 4.02 GB roughly 80-minute DVD project. This returned burn errors no matter what I did with it, and the DVD is unreadable; this happened with both the NEC and the Apacer drive. I then tried to produce a DVD with just one of the 8 shows, about 6 minutes long, using the same background and menu design (but with only the single show). That works fine on DVD+R with the Apacer drive. I produced a second DVD with three shows not on the first project; that also works fine on a DVD+R in the Apacer drive (total run time just under 14 minutes). A third DVD attempt uses the first four shows of the 8-show project; these are somewhat long shows totally 49 minutes, a 2.49 GB project. Video Builder ran through the project, and the Apacer drive lit up. At about 55% completion, Video Builder returned a burn error (not a burn.exe error, just an error box saying there was a burn error). However, and this is most puzzling, the DVD+R (from the Apacer drive) does in fact play back. I can see all four shows, and I can launch each of them and they appear to run OK. (I haven’t played through all four, but they launch and exit normally on the DVD player). These play back fine using Dell Media Experience with my NEC laptop drive; they also play back on my two Toshiba DVD players connected to different TV sets. This four-show project was created by opening the original eight-show project and removing shows 5-8 from the play list, then re-saving the project to a new name. Hence, it is identical to the first part of the eight-show project; as far as I recall I didn’t change anything in the project options or the menu layout when creating the four-show project. I can continue experimenting with the big 8-show project, cutting back one show at a time until the problem goes away, to try to isolate what the size (or maybe show) problem is, but that would be very time-consuming. I thought I’d try this forum post first. The eight shows all were created in PTE but some in earlier versions than 5.6. However, following a recommendation I read on another thread, I opened each of the PTE projects in 5.6 (actually 5.6.4) and re-saved the PTE project file in 5.6. It is the re-saved versions that I have been using in all the PTV projects described above. I don’t think the PTE version used to create the show originally is a factor in my problems; the three shows on the three-show project all were originally created in PTE 4.x (not sure which version now, but it was in late 2005 when I did the originals). Three of the four shows on the four-show project were done in 5.6, the other in 5.5. The other four shows on the eight-show project were in 5.6 or 4.x, varying. I am attaching below the PTV files for the one, three, four, and eight-show versions that I tried. (SORRY INVISION IS TELLING ME IT WON'T ACCEPT PVI FILES SO I CAN'T POST THEM; READ MY SUMMARY OF THE SETTINGS NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THIS PARAGRAPH) It’s the eight-show version that returns the burn.exe error and an unreadable DVD; the other versions work (only when created on the Apacer drive, though) but as mentioned above the four-show version gave a burn error message though the DVD still plays back OK. As I hope you can see in the PTV files, all the projects used a 2x1 layout for the PTE projects in the menu, with a background image (except for the 3-show project which uses one of the templates as a background), the 10-second default for the menu, no music and no animation on the menu, and a single frame selected for the thumbnail on each PTE project. All the PTE projects in all the Video Builder projects were created on the same computer as the PTV projects. All burn attempts involved setting the “Burn DVD” option for 4.7 GB and the slowest speed available on the drop-down menu (4x on the Apacer drive, 1x on the NEC drive). My laptop and NEC drive have no trouble with PTE shows on their own, either as EXE files or run within the PTE 5.6 interface as a Preview. The NEC drive does have some peculiarities. It’s no longer made, though I do have the most recent driver for it. It will burn EXE and other non-Video-Builder files as data discs to 1-8x DVD-Rs and 1-16x DVD+Rs but not to 1-16x DVD-Rs which it refuses to recognize ... hence my decision to try (successfully) the Apacer drive as an alternative. The Apacer, which I originally bought for burning files from flash cards while traveling, is the only external DVD drive available to me, but fortunately it worked. With both drives, I set the burn speed to the slowest listed on the drop-down menu in Video Builder. I did have Video Builder generate ISO and VBO backup files for all projects, but I am unable to get the ISO files for the 8-show project to work with imgburn.exe and my NEC drive, and the VBO process with imgburn destroys the menu structure and is therefore unacceptable to me, though the NEC drive did produce an eight-project DVD-R from that process that my Toshiba players could read (but without the menu, all I seem to get is an automatic launch of the whole program from the beginning of the first show, with no option for selecting a later show to play alone, as far as I could see). So, given all the above, I have two questions. First, why am I able to play the third DVD even though I got the burn error message? It seems to run OK. Second, regarding the full 8-show project – is there a size limit (obviously less than the full size of the DVD) beyond which Video Builder won’t run the project properly? Does this vary by system characteristics? Has anyone else run into this problem? (Sorry, that’s three questions.) Any ideas on what is going on here would be much appreciated. Though I’m certainly no newcomer to PTE, these are my first attempts with Video Builder. So maybe I’m overlooking something basic (hence my posting of the pvi files), but I don’t think so, given that two of my attempts worked flawlessly and a third works in spite of an error message.

I've had the same problem in the past 48 hours, in my own first attempts using VideoBuilder. However I am posting my problems on a separate thread in a moment, as they may be a bit different from yours. Have a look. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....st=0#entry66101 One issue that is definitely a partial factor in my own problem is the DVD drive being used. The NEC DVD drive on my 4.5-year-old laptop refuses to burn DVDs from VideoBuilder, returning either the same error message that you got or a "burn.exe failed" message. In either case, the resulting DVD is unreadable, whether -R or +R (and always using brand-new Sony products). However I discovered that my not-quite-so-old Apacer CP300 Disc Steno, which can be used as a USB external DVD burner, can in fact produce DVDs successfully from VideoBuilder (but only under certain conditions which are puzzling, see my own thread). But my suggestion from all this is to try, if you can, using a different DVD drive (external one most likely) if you have access to one. I'd hesitate to recommend that you go out and buy another one to test, because I have no idea which brands and models are going to work or not with VideoBuilder. But some (older) ones clearly DON'T even using the most recent drivers for them (in the case of my NEC). I realize this is frustration, you shouldn't have to go out and buy more hardware that costs more than Video Builder just to get the software to run for you, but that may be the only option ... Check it out if you can without spending money first, though. If you do decide to spend some money, my advice is to get something like the Apacer CP300 (now discontinued I think but I believe Sony makes something equivalent). This device runs off a rechargeable battery as well as an AC adapter, and you can use it stand-alone (no computer attached to it) to copy onto DVDs or CDs files from your camera's flash cards, since the device has ports that will read those cards. But it also has a USB connection and cable and can be used as an external drive (several, actually; you can use it to read/write DVDs, CDs, and all standard format of flash cards). So at least you're getting a little extra for your money; if you don't mind packing a bunch of blank DVDs, the Apacer or equivalent is a handy travel companion (though there are now very compact portable hard drives like the Hyperdrive that will hold a lot more data and can be used the same as the Apacer for downloading photos, plus the Hyperdrive is a lot lighter and more compact, will fit (bulging a bit perhaps) in a shirt pocket and certainly in any camera bag). Hyperdrives also have USB cables and can be used as external hard drives for your computer, but they won't burn a DVD for you like the Apacer will ...

I use Templates mainly to store the Project Options that I would use for specific purposes for a show, along with storing two black files (one at the beginning and one at the end of the show) which I use in all my shows. I never (except for test purposes today) use the Templates feature to back up a specific show. I never store JPGs or music files in a Template; for backing up a project (or moving it to another computer for example my club's computer to demonstrate the PTE show and how I set it up, for an audience) I use Create Backup as ZIP. For archiving a project I burn a folder with all the files to a DVD (a gold DVD if I really think future generations are going to care about it, which I do with my "family snaps" shows but little else). I'm a little nervous about ZIP or any compression format as an archive, in the same way I'm nervous about using JPG instead of TIF or RAW (with edit files) to archive a photo, due to an article I saw some years ago in a magazine about how a compressed format like JPG can get seriously corrupted with a storage-media sector error in ways that won't happen to a TIF or uncopressed file unless it's the file header that got clobbered on the medium). But if you're archiving on a good-quality CD or DVD, instead of on a hard drive (taking into account Conflow's very good point about archival issues with mechanical drives as distinct from optical ones), the odds of sector corruption happening in your lifetime are pretty small from what I understand. So I use Templates as a way to quick-start a new project, never as a backup. With a ZIP, everything is in one handy (but large) file; with Templates you have a folder with a bunch of files. ZIP is certainly the way to go if you want to post something on mediafire or whatever. In terms of compression, in my experience the issue is trivial. I just checked my last show, which I archived to ZIP in PTE but also created a test template. The two versions contain exactly the same PTE file, JPGs and MP3 file. The ZIP file created by PTE weighs in at 37,521 KB according to Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer also tells me the files in the Template folder occupy 37.7MB (or 39,610,542 bytes in terms of Size in parentheses in the Properties listing). So PTE's Zip compression saves me about 200 kb of space, relative to Templates, on a base of 37 MB+ which is a percentage difference of about one-half of one percent. I'm not going to lose any sleep over whatever compression Igor's ZIP algorithm is doing. It's a question IMO of whether you want to work with one ZIP folder that has to be unzipped (and I've never seen any problems doing that, in terms of playback quality or anything else, though maybe if you zipped and unzipped the same files repeatedly you'd eventually see problems, same as re-saving the same JPG multiple times at any compression ratio if you do it enough). Or do you want to work with one folder with a bunch of folders inside it, that doesn't need to be unzipped, at the cost of very little extra storage. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, in my view. Pick one method to be consistent with your personal work preferences and forget about it, is my advice. There are too many bigger things to worry about

I confess that's as good a reason, maybe a better one, to have a competition as any other. About a dozen years ago I am ashamed to admit that I said in a conversation with a friend at my club that digital photography wasn't "real" photography and I'd never do it. (Never say never ...) Two or three years later I bought my first digital camera and started playing with primitive digital AV using dynamic HTML programming in Internet Explorer (not something I'd recommend now that PTE has arrived ) and five years ago I sold off my last film camera and have been doing nothing but digital since. So you can teach an old dog new tricks, or he can teach himself those tricks, if something kick-starts him into the process. In my case it was the prospect of digital AV (and frustration and tedium of scanning a bunch of slides for my first effort, then thinking heck it would be so much easier just to take the photos on a digital camera in the first instance ...). So if a competition is what it takes to ease folks into the pleasures of digital AV (and likely digital photography will follow soon behind, unless they have a lot more patience for dealing with a film scanner than I do), that's a step in the right direction IMO. I think you're wise to keep the rules for the competition simple, but I also think it's important to keep them as non-exclusive as possible. In our AV group, even in pre-digital days, we used to say "the one rule in AV is that there are no rules." Though of course to make things manageable for whoever runs the competition or showcase evening, there have to be some technical standards for length, show format (it has to be able to run smoothly on the club's equipment without crashing the system or the projector ), so I guess there need to be some rules ...

I should qualify my support for this feature by noting that at the time I made my reply, I wasn't fully aware of the current technical implications for EXE file size of incorporating any decent sort of video clip in a PTE sequence. See Lin Evans' reply to the following thread: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....amp;#entry65694 While I still would in theory like to be able to incorporate a video clip or two into an AV show, if there is going to be a trade-off for the size of the EXE file or the quality of the video possible, I'm no longer sure this is a high-priority option for me. It would be great if Igor could magically work out such an option while keeping the file size reasonable, but even Igor may not be able to work miracles. Maybe in a few years as techology advances (if it doesn't destroy us all first ) ...

Thanks for this explanation, Lin. I'm one who on another post has suggested that PTE incorporate video clips into shows, but I confess I wasn't aware or hadn't thought through the implications you just mentioned. On balance, given the current technology as you've described, I can live without that feature. I had briefly thought maybe I'd switch to Pro Show so I could have that feature, but then I downloaded the trial version, and after about two hours of struggling with the interface to produce what in PTE would have been a simple animation effect, then looking at the result on my monitor, I quickly gave up on that fantasy. I'll gladly stick with PTE, even if it can't incorporate video, after I've seen what the competition does

Barry, I couldn't agree more. Maybe part of the problem is that some people actually believe the old saying, "the camera never lies," which itself is a big lie. Any photographer, regardless of what medium or equipment (s)he uses, manipulates "reality" in ways the viewer may not know. For openers, the photograher chooses where to point the camera and frame the image (and what not to include in the frame, which context may be rather relevant to the main subject), not to mention when (and when not) to trip the shutter, not to mention collapsing four-dimensional reality into two (or three, if you're using a video or movie camera), or picking a wide-angle lens that distorts relationships among things in the picture, etc. etc. The first love of my photographic life, black and white photography, shows us an image no one can see with the eye, unless they have some eye or optical-nerve disease that destroys the retina's ability to see in colour. Then there are the Wratten filters we used to adjust tonal relations in the B&W images ... etc. You can't take a photo without manipulating something, I don't care what kind of equipment you're using or what technology you use to process the photo. Rules that prohibit manipulation might as well prohibit people from using any camera at all. But there I go again, preaching to the converted

No manipulation? Good Lord, give us a break! I started doing my own black and white printing about 50 years ago. I can't think of a single negative that I didn't crop in the darkroom, burn or dodge something, retouch something out of (even a dust spot?), or tweak the contrast by selecting a paper grade. Never mind what one always has to do in Photoshop with Levels and sharpening, if nothing else ... Never mind the image compositing that was necessary back in the 19th century due to the extreme limitations of dynamic range of photographic emulsions back then. I went to a presentation by the curator emeritus of our National Gallery's photo collection where he showed a print made by one of Fox Talbot's contemporaries where the archivists have (so far) detected evidence that at least nine separate exposures were used to produce the final print. I coordinated our annual interclub Av showcase night last year here in Ottawa, involving 19 AV shows from three clubs in the area. There was no award, not even a peoples' choice vote, and "in spite" of the lack of a trophy or awards to "motivate" the producers, we had what I think is the most impressive evening of 19 shows I've ever seen. Contrary to what some in my club claim, lots of us (me included) don't need a competition to "motivate" us to go out there and work hard at producing interesting and quality photos and AV shows. As for feedback or validation, just listen to the audience. I (only occasionally, but sometimes) have heard the audience cheering and whistling after one of my shows, and people sometimes come up to me and tell me how much they liked a show I did (never had anyone tell me they didn't like one, but we Canadians are notoriously polite so that doesn't necessarily mean anything). What more validation or praise, or feedback, do you need other than cheers, or polite applause, or dead silence (as the case may be ). And what can you do with a trophy or a ribbon? You can't eat it, and my wife hates having the things on our mantle I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person who feels some days like he's "urinating into the wind" over this issue

Hi Eric. Notwithstanding my earlier comments, it just hit me - why would it matter whether the voice-over is yours or someone else's? Are shows that have music tracks allowed in the competition? If so, does the music have to have been written and produced by the member? And if not, then why on earth does a voice-over have to be by the member? It's just a sound track, only with a voice instead of with music. Why would it be a sin to use someone else's speaking voice but not a sin to use someone else's singing voice or music performance? Just asking. These aren't rhetorical questions; I've seen strange competition rules in my time, sometimes for good reasons (or at least what the organizers considered good reasons at the time until someone asked a "stupid question" that wasn't. But at second glance this rule, if it is a rule, seems mighty absurd to me.

Thought I'd share my first effort, a few days ago, with Auto-Painter. I'm attaching the original (a scan of a black-and-white 35mm negative) as well as the "impressionist" rendering, in colour. The two images are of different aspect ratios, because of the way I'm using them in an AV show. The first is cropped the way it was shot, more or less, because I think it looks best that way. The second is a 4:3 crop from the lower-right corner of the original up to the top of the frame, and the painting becomes a canvas on which I then tile lower-resolution (generally 600x400 pixel) images on top of the canvas, which is at reduced opacity. So the sequence runs as follows: 1) the original image comes up and is on-screen for about 6 seconds, 2) the painting pans-and-zooms up from the lower-right corner of the original image in a three-second transition and is held on the screen for another three seconds, and then 3) the painting fades to about 30% opacity while other images tile on and off it for a minute or so. Then I segue into a new image, which then morphs into a painting of that image, then some more tiling of smaller images. Etc. I love what the software did with the monochrome image. The windmill itself I had to work a bit with the detail brushes, because with the default treatment it pretty-much got lost in the ground clutter, and it's an important part of the image (but I like it small in this composition). The extra brushwork gave more brown haloing around the windmill than I might have preferred; if I were to re-do this, I'd probably just do the default Benson with photographic palette (which I believe is what I used here, at least it was the Benson) on a layered PSD then on a layer mask very slightly paint back the windmill from the original image with a low-opacity, low-flow fine feathered airbrush in Photoshop.

May I suggest -- and I say this as someone who used to organize, judge, and participate in AV competitions in our club but who also was instrumental in having them dropped in favour of a showcase with no commentary, scoring or awards, back in 2001 -- that, as in any artistic competition, a judge's comments and scores often tell more about the judge than about that which is being judged. In an AV competition, beyond minimal technical competence there is so much in judging and comparing shows (sometimes even literally apples and oranges ) that is inevitably arbitrary, subjective, inconsistent and sometimes infuriatingly irrational, that I am inclined to believe that whether the judge knows who the producer was, or what the judge's personal relations or opinion are of the producer, probably isn't going to make much more difference to the score than what the judge had for breakfast that morning, what his/her tastes are in music, whether he/she likes pan and zoom or finds it incredibly annoying except in rare situations, etc etc. Personally I wouldn't worry about it. But then I can say that, personally I gave up on competitions and switched to running/participating in showcases not competitions, years ago, so I wouldn't care and it's easy for me to say this. And back when I did enter and care about competitions, maybe I would have cared about this. For the record, back when we had AV competitions at our club, the judges always knew who produced what, because (this was pre-digital) we required the producer to run the projection equipment for his/her own show, given the finickiness of the gear no one wanted to be responsible for messing up someone's show or being at the helm when the ship went down for who knows what reason. Though in our "regular" (single-image print and slide) competitions judges have never known the title nor the photographer while judging, though often an in-club judge or even an outside judge who knew some members well could spot a distinctive style or subject matter. I doubt very much that knowledge of who produced the show made any difference. What seemed to matter most is how different a show was from the other shows on view or that the judge might have seen (i.e., "wow I've never seen that before" vs "oh God yet another show about the glories of Ontario's maple trees in autumn or Ottawa's annual Tulip Festival"). In my long and bitter experience, there is no way (as a judge or as a competition organizer) you can possibly please everyone or totally "level the playing field" and honestly I believe the time and energy some folks devote to worrying about such things is absurd. Looking back on it, I think the time and energy I used to spend worrying about these things was ridiculous, and my wife agrees and finally convinced me of that, bless her. But that's only one person's opinion, probably a minority in my club and maybe also on this Forum. All this is to say that if you're happy with your show, it would be nice if the judge(s) liked it, but if they don't, that's arguably more their loss than yours. I wouldn't worry about it. Unless you do AV for income, in which case the only judge who matters is the one who writes the cheque to purchase your show, and when was the last time you saw or heard of a photo club judge actually buying something he gave a first place ribbon to? But I'm assuming that like me you're an amateur (i.e., you do it for fun and love and not to earn your daily bread). If it is otherwise, please ignore what I said -- the marketplace is by its definition (in Western economies anyway) competitive, and fair competition does matter if your income depends on it.

Yes it certainly is! Now I am beginning to understand what "underpainting" means and is all about. Have you tried the different colour palettes with various "painters"? For most of my AV purposes I'll probably use the Photographic palette. But playing with these settings can make for some interesting differences and results. I'm still trying to figure out the effect of some of the other sliders by trial-and-error, and while "painting" to bring out more fine detail as described in the manual can be interesting, I find that one can do a nice blend of detail and impressionism by having the program generate a layered PSD and then just play a bit with the Opacity slider for the painted layer, to taste -- it's quick and easy to bring out detail that way (or maybe also use a wide low-opacity Photoshop airbrush on a layer mask applied to the painted layer, but as I think I've said I'm a bit of a klutz when it comes to using brushes Probably thanks to my Dad "correcting" my innate left-handedness when I was a young lad (I'm now right-handed but clumsy). Nice result BTW John, like the simulated wood frame around it too. So far my favourite "painter" is the Benson module with Photographic palette and the Expressive slider moved a bit to the left ... And I am intrigued by how the program uses colour when you apply it to a monochrome image (try it!), though you can also use the monochrome palette to keep the image monochrome if you prefer (or go into photoshop and de-saturate the colour version, not sure if that's any different from using the monochrome palette must check that soon). BTW for my AV purposes I have to remember when using some of the "painters" to uncheck the default "natural border" that comes up, which results in a white border around the edge of the painting, which I find distracting for AV use even if that's the way water-colourists actually produced their work. If you leave that setting turned off, the painting will completely cover the image canvas evenly.