Ed Overstreet

Just on a whim (I have been accused by those close to me that I have compulsive tendencies) I generated a new short voice recording in Audacity, exporting it twice, once as a WAV and once as an MP3, then tried attaching the clips (one at a time) to a different slide in the same show where the problem popped up. Again, the WAV doesn't play, the MP3 does. When I go to Explorer, right-click on the WAV file, and try to use dBpowerAMP to covert the WAV to MP3, it still gives me the error message about the (unknown from the stupid message) codec needed to do the compression not being found. So this isn't a one-off gremlin, the problem is still there. But the Audacity MP3 plug-in does work around the problem nicely. However, if I go into the same show and use Add Sound to attach a large WAV file that I ripped (through Dell Jukebox) about a month ago, to the same slide to which I'd associated the above-mentioned test WAV file that failed to play, THIS large WAV file from a month ago plays just fine when that slide comes up in playback through PTE 5.6. So the problem isn't with all WAV files, just recent ones. Maybe the sudden unexplained disappearance of the unidentified codec formerly associated with dBpowerAMP is somehow related to the problem with the WAV export from Audacity not playing correctly? This is getting into messy terrain which I probably don't want to wander into... Showing my age again, but I'm beginning to feel like a character in the old TV series "The Twilight Zone." Time to go find something else to do for a few hours ...

Interesting. My Explorer doesn't give that kind of information, what I see when I click on Properties for the WAV files (under the ID Tag tab) is File and Location (not relevant here) Type : wav file Extension: wav length size 2841 kb uncompressed 1419 kb Comp Ratio 4 to 1 (200%) (didn't know that WAVs compressed, thought that was MP3s) Format IEEE Float Frequency 44100 Channels 2 Bits 32 at the bottom of the screen in the right corner it says "dBpowerAMP" I guess because that utility installs and runs when you right-click on the WAV file, there is a Convert option that launches the utility. Not sure why this is getting mixed up in the ID Tag for the WAV file which hasn't been converted with that utility. In the past I've always used dBpowerAMP to convert to MP3, I only started using Audacity's MP3 dll yesterday when I downloaded and re-installed the current Audacity and noticed the MP3 plug-in on the webpage and decided to try it (which fixed the problem). However the problem I'm reporting had happened before I'd done this, so I don't think this is due to some conflict between dBpowerAMP and the MP3 Audacity plug-in. Not sure why my Explorer isn't giving me the same info yours is. I have XP Home edition SP2 if that's any different.

I don't think I changed any defaults. I did recently get a copy of Peter's excellent PDF tutorial on using Audacity and modified all the Preferences exactly as he suggests in that document, but none of them seem to involve changing the WAV format from what it was before. I only used the Export to WAV feature, not the Save As feature, in generating these WAV files (this is how I've always produced WAV files in Audacity), and with that option it doesn't give you any choices of WAV formats, and if it did I'd just use whatever the default was since I never deviate from software defaults unless I have a good reason to and know what I'm doing (which I don't here, the different WAV formats is news to me today).

I used to have a main file with nothing but silence in the background, incorrectly thinking I needed that to be able to customize timings on the Timeline, until one day I realized that wasn't necessary. The problem with these WAV files occurs whether or not that background file is set in Project Options, so I don't think that's related to the problem. Just realized that I forgot to mention in my first post that both WAV files were attached as Add Sound comments to particular slides in the show. The MP3 files that now work OK are also attached as Add Sound clips, to the same slides in the same show. I'm searching my memory for what upgrades I loaded in the past month since the last time I did this and it worked, but I'm drawing a blank. Mostly it's been the weekly Microsoft security updates, who knows what those might have done? I can't see why they should affect sound files, but there are lots of things in Windows that don't make sense to me so that's not new. I log all major updates or installations in a spreadsheet, with dates, and the only new installations I made in the past four weeks (during which the problem developed) are Gadwin Print Screen and the latest version of Audacity. I don't see why a print screen utility would affect sound files, and as a check I uninstalled the current version of Audacity and re-installed the previous version I'd been using (I keep copies of all my downloads, on an external drive) and that didn't make any difference, so I don't think it's anything to do with the latest Audacity upgrade. As I say, puzzling and annoying, but thanks to the MP3 export function in Audacity I can live with it, at least so far. Thanks very much to you and everyone else who took the time and trouble to check this out and reply! Much appreciated.

Thanks for the tip, Dave. I don't think this was user error, not that I've never made user errors of course! As I mentioned in my reply to Peter, both WAV files were created in Audacity by recording my own voice (these are comments submitted to me by club members who want me to read them out during the presentation of their slides, so that's how I do it). They were generated using the usual "Export as WAV" option in Audacity, after making the recording, same as I've been doing six times a year for the past four years in producing these slide-showcase presentations for my club. Why suddenly I'm getting these problems, and the message from my dBPowerAMP Music Converter utility is now telling me it's not able to find a codec (but of course not giving me the name of the codec that it can't find, which isn't a very helpful error message ), for the first time in four years, is beyond me. Maybe it's something to do with my upgrading something else in the past month that over-wrote a shared dll somewhere, who knows? And trying to track that down is way beyond my expertise and patience level. As far as I can tell, these WAV files are in the same WAV format that always worked until yesterday ...

Hi Peter. Whatever the problem was, DRM it wasn't (I hope!). The WAV files in question are all recordings I made of my own voice over my own microphone, in Audacity. Unless Windows is now putting DRM on my own recordings of my own voice without my knowledge I don't think that's the problem. At least I sure hope not.

Thanks Eric. I was just returning to this thread to report that by doing exactly as you suggest, I managed to get the sound clip to play. So great minds run in the same channels, I guess I still don't know why the WAV clips won't work, they have in the past, but I can get the MP3 clips to run as long as I use the Audacity MP3 conversion dll to do the trick (the other mp3 utility I have was telling me a codec wasn't found, a message I'd never got from it before, but the Audacity conversion route seems to be working OK). God I hate Windows. Things that should be straightforward and replicable suddenly aren't, and darned if I can figure out why. But the project is done, that's what matters, for now. I do wish computer software engineers would one day learn to write operating system and other software that a reasonably intelligent non-engineer can get to work correctly without doing contortions or gnashing his/her teeth for hours. it would be nice for a change

I have just produced a slide showcase show for my club in PTE 5.6 final edition. I used the same template I've been using since 5.6 came out. It worked last month. This month, however, for no reason that I can see, when I attach WAV sound clips to two of the slides in the showcase, there is no sound playback from those clips. When I open the WAV clips in Audacity, I can see the waveform and I can hear the sound over my speakers. But not in PTE. I've checked all the settings I can think of in PTE to see if I inadvertently messed something up, but I can't see anything. I am attaching the *.pte file for reference. maybe someone else can spot what's going on. I'm suffering from a bad cold at the moment and my head feels stuffed with cotton wool, maybe that's part of the problem but I have a deadline and I can't wait for the cold to clear. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks. PS just checked and I can't get sound from this show's clips in 5.5 either, though I can get sound from a show that I created using the same template in February. I can also get sound from THAT show in 5.6. So I'll attach below both *.pte files. Other than the different default setting for the time intervals for new slides (7 vs 8 seconds) I don't see any differences in Project Options. Weird. problem_show_is_March_but_Feb_is_OK.zip

I'll second Colin's post on this subject. I think P&Z, and some of the other things in the Effects tab, can be great when applied selectively to a FEW images in a show for a good reason. Applying any effect other than a simple fade repetively in a show "debases the coinage of the realm" so to speak, and makes one wonder what the producer is intending -- is the show about photography or is it about the producer's dexterity in manipulating software controls? Or, as several of us in our club keep telling "newbies" in our how-to-do-AV presentations, "just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you HAVE to do it, nor necessarily OUGHT to." We've unfortunately had shows in some of our AV nights where there is a constant (and usually pretty small) P&Z effect on every image, and like Colin and Ken I've started wondering whether we shouldn't start providing bottles of Gravol at the door for the audience.

Some of the concerns raised earlier in this thread about adding some sound-editing capability to PTE relate at least partially to what that might do to the complexity of the software interface and its impact on some users. What I'm about to suggest may have been raised before, and it certainly won't satisfy sophisticated sound-editing needs, but it would be a partial step that might make life a lot easier for some users, including me. Most of the sound-editing that I do in connection with PTE shows involves trying to mix an audio track with a music track, fading down the music so the voice-over can be heard, then fading up after the voice-over ends. In many situations, in fact in most of my own projects including the one I just finished today, the voice-over needs to be attached to specific files and can be done with one or more sound clips using the "Add Sound" feature. However, there remains the need to fade down or mute the main sound file (the one that I add in the Music tab under Project Options). I don't know how feasible this would be from a programming aspect, but it should possible (without unduly cluttering or complicating the interface) to add a fade slider to the timeline, in conjunction with the ability to select a section of the timeline with a mouse-click-and-drag, so that the user can fade the sound from the main file down (over a period of time specified by the user) to an audio equivalent of an "opacity setting" also set by the user, then fade back up. This would be done in conjunction with specific slides on the timeline to which the user has attached sound clips through "Add Sound." Yes I know one can achieve the same result by going back and forth between PTE and Audacity and blending the sound clips into the music track at specific points in the Audacity timeline, coordinating that with the timeline points in PTE. But it would be much easier, simpler, more precise, and less prone to error if one could do that fading in PTE itself. This still would not provide a true "mixing board" for multiple sound tracks in PTE, but by limiting the fade/sound level options to the main music file and linking that to the sound clips in individual slides, this would go a very long way (I think) toward satisfying the needs of a lot of users such as myself who don't get overly ambitious in our sound work but would like to be able to fade music up and down to accommodate voice-over clips. This also would be less ambitious and demanding of the programmers, would provide a partial solution to at least some sound editing needs, and might be a stepping-stone to more sophisticated options later if there is enough interest and demand for it once the first step has been taken. Just a thought ...

Best wishes for your and your family, Lin. We will miss you, but family and health always come first. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that the 5.0 manual that you and Jeff produced is one of the clearest, best-written user manuals, or indeed technical manuals, I've ever read. That alone is a remarkable achievement, for which I'm sure everyone on the Forum will be thanking you for a long time to come. Even though we're now into version 5.6, I still find the exposition of the Objects and Animations window the clearest and most helpful I've seen, and in the presentation I am giving to my photo club on March 30 on PTE 5.6 I am specifically urging my audience to get and read that exposition. It is far more detailed and far clearer than I could ever have made it!

Thanks for mentioning that Peter, I hadn't noticed (or had forgotten) that feature. Would be nice to have it also for the File Panel too ...

That might be one way forward, for those who have the money or (more critically in my own case frankly) the space on the table to accommodate two monitors, but it won't help those of us who prefer (or have not much choice but) to use only one monitor. Also it won't help people who want to use PTE on a laptop away from home and don't have access to an external monitor ... I'm not saying don't provide the multi-monitor option, but I am saying don't assume that all, or even a majority, of PTE users have, want to have, or are able to have multi monitors going at the same time.

This also has my vote. I would also suggest making the Directory Tree hide-able. Both the Directory Tree and the File Panel are very handy features, but I (and probably many other users) don't need either of them on the screen all the time. Once you have your images Added to the show, unless you discover you need another image during editing or can't remember whether a specific image has already been used and want to check the bolding on the file name, there really is little point in having these panels active on the screen while you're working in the timeline or doing other show edits. A good analogy is the options in Nikon Capture NX2, where the equivalents (the Folders and Browser panels), and indeed all the panels in the software, can be opened or closed at will by clicking on an x next to the panel name along the sides of the window. The screen appearance thus can be completely customized to the user's own taste at a particular moment during their personal workflow, having every panel open, a few panels open, one panel open, or nothing but the image open. I'm sure there are ample other software examples of this. That would provide ample "screen real-estate" for audio-track blending, as well as the suggestions made elsewhere for waveform and multiple object-timeline displays in O&A etc. And if you don't want to use the options and just want to stick with the current View options in the menu at the top of the screen, you could still do that too. But why constrain everyone to the same screen layout(s)?

I'll add my two cents' worth and completely agree with Peter and others that there should be more in PTE on the audio side of things. I did a show last year (in fact, the one that started with that big panorama pan that caused the tearing problem on our SX50 discussed at huge length elsewhere on this forum). In that show, in the sound file I blended four different music tracks plus three one-minute clips of my wife reciting poems she had written for the same scenes that I'd photographed. I could blend all the above in Audacity, but I wanted to fade-in and fade-out between the music and my wife in mid-music-clip, and I found in Audacity the fades began or ended with a short "pop" that probably no one else in the room except me noticed, but I hated it. I'll bet that if Igor and team set their minds to it, they might come up with a smoother and more efficient way to blend sound clips in PTE than what I can get in Audacity -- and be able to do this in some sort of timeline or "underlay" below the image track so that I can see what image is going to be on-screen at a specific point in the sound editing, rather than having to copy down timings and go back and forth between PTE and Audacity. I'd far rather see programming effort spend on the audio side than on more "glitzy" Effect and animation features, which I think have reached or passed the point of diminishing marginal returns, at least to my tastes.

Hoo boy look what I started What still baffles me is why I only have this problem with PTE 5.6 final O&A screen capture into Photoshop but not with anything else I've noticed in Photoshop, and why Word and WordPerfect have absolutely no trouble at all with any screen capture (so far, please pixies don't be tempted ) Obviously the problem isn't PTE blocking Print Screen, because I AM getting the screen capture in the Clipboard, only Photoshop can't access the darn thing if it came from 5.6 O&A window (but 5.5 no problem). And the several glasses of wine and the good night's sleep last night didn't help a bit ... Don't you just LOVE Windows computers? Thanks again Jim for the Gadwin reference, I love those nice JPGs, and they stay in the default folder and don't turn into pixie dust when I copy something else from the screen I think I'll just forget about the Windows utility from now on and use Gadwin, but I did go into MSCONFIG and disabled the Startup utility for Gadwin. I would rather call it up when I need it, from the desktop shortcut, then have yet another TSR loading into memory every time I turn on or reboot my computer

Now you've got it too. Is Winterlude still on this weekend? What are those mascots they have, the people in the giant white groundhog suits called, the Snowhogs or something (I can't remember, I always avoid the Canal area during winterlude 'cause I hate crowds )... Maybe the Snowhogs are casting spells on our computers. God knows. I don't.

As Alice would say, "this is getting curiouser and curiouser." Went into 5.6 O&A, did a screen capture by Shift=PrtScn. did run>clipbrd. The screenshot is right there in the Windows Clipboard. But, I go into Photoshop CS3, and CTRL-V doesn't do anything, and when I go to the Edit menu the "paste" command is greyed out. Photoshop isn't recognizing that there's anything in Windows Clipboard. I go into either WordPerfect (my preferred text processor) or Word, and I can copy the screen shot from the clipboard into either a blank WPD or DOC file. The Edit menu in both programs shows "Paste" as an option. But NOT Photoshop CS3. So now it's a problem with Photoshop CS3. But CS3 has no trouble getting screen shots out of the clipboard from 5.6's main page, just the O&A page. And it is any O&A page in my show, not just the one I've been trying to get. I've tried several, and NONE of them can be pasted into Photoshop from the clipboard, though the clipboard viewer DOES show the pages as I copy them. But when I return to the main PTE 5.6 window and do Shift-PrtScn, that page copies into the clipboard OK AND CS3 pastes it into the New document, also now shows Paste as an option under the Edit menu. ARGGGGGHHHHHHH Enough for this evening. I'll come back tomorrow, see if anyone has any other ideas, who knows maybe after a cold reboot in the morning and a good night's sleep it will go away like a bad dream. Or not.

I've always had to use the Shift key; on my keyboard the key has "Print screen" at the top and "sys rq" (whatever that is) printed underneath on the same key face, suggesting I'd better use the Shift key if I want Print Screen. I've found in fact that I never got print screen from Windows unless I use the shift key with that key. Maybe we have different keyboards? I can't re-check this because when I installed Gadwin I accepted the default hot key, which is Print Screen without the shift, so inow f I use that I get the Gadwin pop-up window immeidately. But I'm quite sure that on my system, until I installed Gadwin this afternoon, the only way I could ever get a screen capture was to use Shift-PrintScreen not just PrintScreen.

Hi Stu. I'm running Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2. I won't begin to list the gazillion other things I'm running, if this is a system conflict involving Windows, PTE 5.6 and God knows what else, I'll live with it, life is too short to try debugging things like that unless they're catastrophic, which this certainly isn't. So far you're OK, Dave G and I aren't, anyone else ...? Some days I really don't like Windows much.

Yeah Peter I know. Computers, you can't live with them, you can't live without them! At least I'm not strewing punch-card confetti over the floor as I wander around the house. ( think I just outed my age group there ) OK, update on the Print Screen issue. I downloaded the Gadwin freeware that Jim suggested. It works, sort of. I configured it to make two copies of the screen capture, one a JPG to the default folder it creates in My Documents. Works perfectly, no problem, thanks for the tip Jim! Now the bad news. The other thing I configured for Gadwin was to put another copy of the screen capture in the Windows Clipboard. Guess what, when I open a New file in Photoshop and try Edit>Copy, nothing happens. The screen capture doesn't go into Windows clipboard like it's supposed to. Which is exactly the same thing that happens when I try Shift-PrintScreen to get a screen capture into the Windows clipboard from the O&A window in 5.6 (but no problem in 5.5, nor in the main window of 5.6). So something in (my) PTE 5.6 O&A window (on my system) doesn't "like" EITHER Windows Print Screen OR Gadwin Print Screen, in terms of the windows clipboard, though Gadwin has no trouble giving me a nice JPG that I can open and play with in Photoshop to my heart's content So what in blazes in PTE 5.6 O&A window doing to the Windows clipboard? Or maybe it's some system conflict. I know this isn't a catastrophe, I know it won't affect all that many other users, and now I have a really nice workaround thanks to JRR. BUT -- whenever I see software/system anomalies like this, I get very twitchy. and start to wonder what else might be getting messed up, or leap out of the bushes at me sometime when I don't expect it and bite me in the ankle (I grew up in rattlesnake country). I repeat, not a major problem, but really maybe the developers might want to have a peek at this.

Thanks Jim. I'll download that and have a go. (Strange communicating with you sometimes by this forum, sometimes by email, sometimes face-to-face Tuesday nights, but then my wife and I have been known to send each other emails from two different rooms on the same floor of the same house. Sign of the times, or maybe we've been playing with computers for too long

Thanks Xaver. As I've already suggested to JRR and a couple of other AV organizers in our club, my inclination is to leave the "pause slide show" box always ticked On. I don't see how it can hurt, and from what Peter and Xaver have said it would help in some situations, so why not leave it on? I'm designing a template show for new members to AV in our club, so they can just open the template (with certain Project Options settings and two black slides, one for the beginning and one for the end of the show) and build their first show from that. Simplifies the Project Options stuff for them, just safer to give them something we know won't get them into trouble and tell them to leave the Project Options settings alone until they've had some experience with the software or have at least read and understood the user manual. Hence these questions, just to make sure I'm not giving people some "cookbook" settings that might get them into trouble on their very first show. Sounds like this one is a safe setting for a "cookbook" template, probably for any template really. I have trouble imagining when I wouldn't want the show to pause if I were to toggle to another window.

Thanks for this, Limey. Interesting. When I go into ver 5.5, I can Print Screen the O&A window just fine. When I go into ver 5.6, I can't. I hadn't thought of checking that until your post, so thanks for the nudge. I hesitate to call this a "bug" in 5.6, because it's not something that really affects PTE users per se, or at least not me so far, but it does affect folks who want to do a screen capture to paste into other software for an Acrobat or some other document to illustrate the software. But it is curious to know why Print Screen works OK in the O&A window in one version but not the next ... And whether it's something that might trigger or cause other bizarre problems down the road (it's been decades since I've done any programming but my very limited experience was that anytime anything doesn't work the way you think it should, start digging into the code because it probably means trouble later for you or someone else). Maybe the developers might want to have a peek at this issue if/when they get a moment As I say, it's not a major issue, but it might be caused by something that might cause other problems??

Thanks Peter. That makes sense to me, hope it's true. I never create PTE shows to be run in Windowed mode and never try to run them that way, so that might explain why it doesn't matter whether I set this or not. Unless someone else comes up with a different explanation, that's what I'll suggest to folks in my presentation.