Search the Community

Please add back the Cut and Paste hotkeys as well as the Send to Top and Send to Bottom keys. Also missing from the version I am using is the slider to make the slide list thumbnails larger or smaller. When trying to put together a slide show with at least 100 slides the drag and drop with no ability to make the slides smaller is just way too time consuming and cumbersome. Every time I try to put together a slide show now I just get frustrated and angry!

I personally would like to be able to press the arrow key on the keyboard to go forward to the next image while working on sizing images. Moving the mouse to the top of the page and clicking the arrow to go to the next image is more time consuming.

PTE's video editing/ conversion process is so simple & could be used more often if the process was reversed. At the moment 7.07, the video entered into the conversion process has to go through that process whether you want it to or not. Sometimes when using videos from sources other than my camera, the process inflates the file size without any noticeable difference in quality. I would like to be able to crop etc my video then decide if I wanted to convert it as well. Most video editing programmes are complex unless you use them regularly, PTE's could be made even better iMO. Please :P/> Yachtsman1.

I have occasionally wished that I could have more control over opacity with time, in much the same way as is available for position, zoom etc, rather than just a linear effect. Is that possible?

I'm in the process of preparing a series of tutorials for seniors on computor basics. I'm in the midle of one which uses an MP4 video clip of 7 minutes. I want to add an image (shift key) at 1m 49 seconds in the O&A screen, when I've completed adding the image, if I press play, the clip reverts to the beginning so that I have to watch the first 1m 49 seconds to judge if the image is correctly placed. I know I can watch this in the mini player & position where I want the clip to start, but it would be nice to do this in the O&A screen. I'm using 7.07 so if this has already been taken care of, please forget what I've said. Yachtsman1.

1) I would like my presentation to stop at a given slide, where I have defined a button with action 'next slide'. I do not want the presentation to go forward until the user presses the button. How can I do this? I am able to get the presentation to stop at the slide by customizing the slide and selecting either 'loop this slide' or 'wait for a keypress to show next slide' But both of these options still allow the presentation to go forward to the next slide if the user presses the keyboard key. Is there a way to force the user to press my online button to move forward? I know I can set the project options/control tab to uncheck 'permit control of show using keyboard'. But this still allows the show to move forward (after it has stopped on the slide with the button) if the user presses the right arrow key. 2) similarly, I want to have the first slide in my presentation as instructions to the person watching it, with some buttons on that page. And I don't want the presentation to move forward until the user presses an online button (no action if they press a keyboard key). The only way I've found to do this is to create a separate, one slide presentation with the buttons, and set the project options "when show ends keep last slide in show on screen". Now if the user presses a keyboard key, it does not move forward to the next slide (because there is no next slide). But this is not an elegant solution. Plus it means that I need to distribute to the audience to be exceed files instead of just one. Is there a better approach I should be using?

Igor, How difficult would it be to make the Canvas Controls change per Key Frame? DG

It would be fine if PTE would provide speaker support as it is offered by the well-known German/Austrian competitors. First, it would be fine if we could declare audio clips as synchronous or asynchronous, independently. So in cases when the show is stopped (because of a speaker wants to make a live comment) an asynchronous clip would go on playing (e.g. as background for the live comment). With the present tools (e.g. envelope) it would be easy to program a crossfade from the synchronous audio to the asynchronous audio just before the time point when the show is to be stopped. As the speaker's time cannot be predicted we need a mechanism for the crossfade back to the synchronous audio at the unpredictable point of time when the speaker has finished and has re-started the show. It may also be fine if we could place stop points anywhere on the timeline, and if asynchronous clips could run in a loop. Regards, Xaver

Greetings, I have suggested in the past that the Video Player Nav Bar needs an 'Esc' icon. If you give a PTE show in the 'exe' format to someone not familar with PTE, the person might not know to use the 'Esc' key to stop or interrupt the playing of the show. But today, I went to a computer store to test some PTE shows on the Windows Surface Pro. After a show played for a show while, I wanted to stop the show and try another one. After 4 salesmen tried to close the show using the touch features, we figured the only way was to attach the keyboard to get to the Esc key. So it looks like it would be a good thing to add an Esc icon to the Video Player Nav Bar to make it easier to close a PTE show on a touch machine, too. Gary

Sometimes i play with the builtin mask parameters 500:500:0:50:50 and directly edit them to fine tune the mask effect. If i mistake and type something that goes out of range an exception raises. Sometimes it's possible to recover it by undoing the mistake, closing and reopening the O&A editor but sometimes PTE enters into an exception loop that requires a task manager kill. I think it can be useful to clip entered parameters to the maximum available range to avoid this annoying error. Greetings! Umberto

I think it would be nice so users would not have to upload 2 versions of slideshow. See Eric's ISP quota posting. Possible Solutions: 1. Windows and Mac free player download that can play slideshow data file. 2. Windows and Mac players with single data file in zip file. 3. Windows and Mac applications that convert to other format. I think I like solution 2 the best but maybe not possible. Also must consider slideshow creator not wanting format change. Thanks, Tom

* A keyboard shortcut specifically for navigating long presentations, eg 50-100 slides. * The Key combination (Ctrl+Left/Right?), will jump 5x slides for each single-press. * Otherwise we are left forever pressing Left/Right button too many times to get through to the middle / end of the presentation.

I have recently been exploring the new audio handling features within the Timeline view and would like to make some suggestions for improvement. The first time I muted and locked tracks I did not immediately see any on-screen indication of that change. Eventually I spotted that the warning symbols appeared way over at the extreme right hand side of the track. This placement struck me as rather odd. The filename information is shown aligned over at the extreme left hand end of the track. This was where I was looking for the Mute/Lock information. I also found it difficult to move tracks up or down and still retain their precise alignment against the timeline. I think both "problems" could be overcome if each audio Track had a small, fixed header at the left hand end. This header would be where the symbols would appear and would also be where the vertical drag could be applied in a manner that guaranteed no sideways motion. This concept of a "header" could be implemented at Track level or, better still, at clip level. regards, Peter

* *Optional* feature to be specified on/off during slideshow .exe creation. * Auto-saves the current slide position whenever you exit the .exe viewer. * When you re-open the .exe slideshow viewer, it opens directly into the last slide known slide position (eg "33/105"). Reason: ======== * For much longer presenation files - eg up to 100 slides. * It's awkward / unprofessional to be there scrolling back trying to remember the place where we had finished previously in the last session. * Looks cool. Technical suggestion: ===================== The setting might be saved either to 1) A .INF file (created into the same folder as the .exe viewer) **. 2) Or if not INF file, then hard-code each presentation to random GUID key. Then save the slide position to the Windows registry. The slide number position can be as small as 4 bytes for a uint32_t value. Using the Registry way might pollute the registry 1 GUID key per slideshow ***. If using Registry sounds bad, so use .INF file then. ** This feature is optional so presentations compiled without the feature enabled won't ever need to write the INF file. *** Windows now has better management and cleaning of the registry user data with Windows 8 - "refresh" / "restore" / "reset".

This program is pretty great really. However like all of the other ones, it cannot seem to produce an .exe file that will toggle between a fullscreen and a Windowed mode. Is this possible? It would be a great feature. For example, pressing "f" to toggle Windowed / Fullscreen mode. Nothing too elaborate. Hehe.

Igor, My suggestion is to be able to expand the O&A's play-line as we can do in the Timeline with the shift/mousewheel. This is especially helpful when you have a very long slide duration and you have to deal with keyframe placement or adjustments. When you enter keyframes in a slide with a very long duration, they can be sitting on top of each other because the entire length of the slide is compressed into a space that normally would have a duration of only a few seconds. Being able to expand the O&A's play-line will make it visually easier to deal with multiple keyframes. Gary

Igor, Would it be possible to offer Relative and Absolute options when cloning keyframes? If the Relative Option were used then moving the original (Absolute) keyframe would result in all clones moving by the same amount. If the Absolute Option is were chosen then the cloned keyframe would remain in its position regardless of any changes made to the position of the original. Perhaps a refinement would be to be able use Ctrl + Click on a keyframe to change it from a Relative Keyframe to an Absolute Keyframe. Colour coding: Blue for an original (or Absolute) Keyframe and Red for a Relative Keyframe. DG

I wonder if it's possible to hide the pictures panel. Once i added all my pictures in the project (mostly with drag and drop from windows folders) i'd like to hide it and give all the upper part of the window to the mini player, even if it will not fit the entire width of the window. It's less distracting. I see there is an option to hide tree panel, but none for pictures panel... Greetings! Umberto

In the Timeline view, at the far right of the middle toolbar is the check-box for "Time Points". When this is chosen (i.e. ticked), a numbered "flag" appears on the timeline at the start of each slide. This flag is a mouse-selectable object (by which I mean that the mouse pointer changes to the "finger-hand" when the mouse hovers over the flag). I suggest that clicking on the flag should produce a pop-up window in which that slide is displayed in the same style as it is displayed in the Slides view - with an AB button, a transition duration field and a slide duration field, and that these items should be interactive in the same way that they are in the Slides view. regards, Peter

I didn't find such feature so i suppose it's worth a suggestion. The project i'm currently working on is composed by hundreds of complex slides, some of them group 10-20 png files at high resolution (i don't mind the runtime performance because i go out to full hp mp4 file). But each time i load the project it's a pain because it takes a minute an so to load all thumbnails in the time line. The program is very unresponsive until all thumbnails are produced. I know that it's possible to uncheck "show real slides" in the system pane, but if i do so nothing appears in the thumbnail, and this leads to high difficulty in finding the right slide. What about computing this thumbnail and save it into che project file? This should not take too much additional space. This will lead to lightning fast loading times. Maybe as an option, and if this option is checked and the project doesn't contain updated thumbnails, well, they are computed ad load time. I know that the thumbnail could not reflect the real image content if they are updated out of pte, but i can live with this issue if i can enter the O&A editor and exit it to refresh the thumbnail. Greetings! Umberto Uderzo

What about an option to switch between the current single selected object track and all object tracks? This will simplify the editing of complex nested animations because all key point will be visible. Being able also to select a range of key points (by box selection) and move them on the time line would be my heaven Greetings! Umberto

Igor When I first saw the default option for Compact view of mixed channels I felt it looked odd and said so. As I thought the attached email is the second I have received in the past weeks I don't know if you can help me with this problem. It is nothing serious but just a nuisance. When I insert my sound file into the AV, everything looks and works OK except for one minor problem. The wave form at the bottom of the screen only shows half of the detail which I have not experienced before. I have upgraded to PTE 7.5 and also Adobe Audition 6 with Windows 7, so this is all new software to me. I have attached a screen grab so that you can see what I am talking about. If I close up the top half of the screen, it still makes no difference to the wave form. Are you sure you have this set at the right default, it just looks odd

Hello Igor NS FRIENDS ... SUGGESTIONS RE ANIMATION IN PTE This suggestion was put forward in February 2010. It received a very enthusiastic response from Peter (fh1805), but not a comment from anyone else. If I have not explained my thoughts well, then I should re-work the item. Trouble is, it will be even longer than now! = = = = = I am now using PTE 7.5 (was 6.02 back then). I think PTE is a wonderful program, and in general the animation features are implemented brilliantly. However, I gather from some recent discussion on the forum (both then and now) that some users do not find those features as exciting as I do. I have only one complaint, and that concerns the way keypoints are relocated when the duration of a slide is changed. Here are my suggestions as to how things might be enhanced. Specification of Keypoint Location I note that keypoint objects in a PTE file have their locations defined by the Origin= parameter and the Time= parameter. Origin can be SlideBegin, PrevEffectEnd, NextEffectBegin or SlideEnd (Let us call those the four “special points”). Time is a number of millseconds relative to the specified Origin. For keypoints that do not lie at one of those special points, the PTE user interface appears always to generate a time relative to SlideBegin. However, I have successfully edited PTE files to have keypoint locations specified relative to the other special points, and both positive and negative time values appear to work. However, if I subsequently move the keypoint (in Objects and Animation), its Origin reverts to SlideBegin (with the Time value suitably adjusted). The present behaviour has some unfortunate effects. For example: (1) if a slide’s duration is reduced, and “Scale keypoints” is unchecked, keypoints that were within the main viewing time of the slide (between transitions) can end up in the next transition; (2) if a slide’s duration is increased or reduced, and if “Scale keypoints” is checked, keypoints that were placed at PrevEffectEnd or NextEffectBegin are no longer located at those special points; (3) keypoints can get out of sequence, when those at the special points remain there, while others move past them. I suggest a change to the PTE program could free us users from these problems. It would be better if each keypoint had its Origin set to the nearest one of the four special keypoints, and its Time value as a positive or negative offset from its Origin. This should apply both to the initial creation of the keypoint, and to its new position after a move. This way, we would get the following benefits: (1) keypoints that are placed at one of the four special points would remain there, (2) keypoints that are supposed to be within a transition would remain within that transition, (3) keypoints that are supposed to be between the transitions would remain there. All these are true whether “Scale keypoints” is in effect or not. Scale Keypoints It remains useful to keep the option “Scale Keypoints”. Scaling should be applied within the range of adjacent special points, not across the whole range from SlideBegin to SlideEnd. In other words, scaling should apply to keypoints within a transition when the transition duration changes. Keypoints between PrevEffectEnd and NextEffectBegin should be scaled within that range only. If the user wants to adjust the duration of a slide, by extending or reducing the main viewing time (between transitions), but wants to keep the timing of the animations near the start and near the end, then Scale Keypoints would be unchecked. If the aim is to adjust the duration of a slide and the animations within the main viewing time, then Scale Keypoints would be checked. In neither case is any animation within a transition affected. On the other hand, if there is animation within a transition, then its keypoints should be adjusted when the transition duration is changed. This would have no effect on animation within the main view time. Potential Problems A reduction in slide duration, without keypoint scaling, could cause keypoints to “collide” or cross over in the centre. This should provoke a message to the user, with the option to cancel the change or drop the keypoints. Removing a transition should cause any keypoints within the transition to be dropped. Possible extensions It might be worthwhile to allow a right-click option on keypoints to enable them to be “anchored” to any one of the four special points. Different colours could be used to give visual feedback. It might be beneficial to have one more special point: Centre - Half way between PrevEffectEnd and NextEffectBegin. Thank you, Igor, for giving this your consideration. If anyone else has read this far, I say THANK YOU! APLman (Ken Travers) - Moss Vale NSW Australia

Suggestions for improvements: 1-Autosave Notice. I was playing around with a slideshow, experimenting with various different menu items. I didn't want to actually save anything. I was just testing different menu items to see what would happen. After a long session I closed the slideshow (without saving). I noticed that some of the last changes, in fact, had been saved to the slideshow. It was fortunate that I did not make too many drastic changes and I was able to get the slideshow back to its original state. I had forgotten that the Autosave had been selected in the Settings/Preferences menu. My suggestion is that, when the Autosave has been selected, a notification warning will pop up in the main screen, perhaps to the left of the Comment window. It can be very dangerous to forget the Autosave has been selected if you make changes that you don't really want to save. A notification in the main screen might help to avoid a potential problem. 2- Relative Keyframes. I have noticed that keyframes do not adjust in a relative fashion when the slide's duration is changed. When a slide's duration is changed, the keyframes remain in their absolute positions. I suggest that there be a way, when you increase or decrease the duration of a slide or group of slides, that the keyframes will adjust in a relative way to the total change. This would be helpful, for example, when you need to increase/decrease the duration of a group of the slides to match up with the audio's length. Currently, if you increase/decrease the duration of a group of slides, you have to go back into each slide that has multiple keyframes and readjust them. If we could have the choice to have the keyframes readjust relative to the increase/decrease in a change in the slides' duration, it would help to maintain the keyframes' relative positions. 3- Latch audio files in Timeline. It would be helpful to have the ability to temporarily latch adjacent audio files together. This would allow the shifting of a group of audio files together, without disrupting any crossfading you have already carefully set. Using the Ctrl key to select the audio files would be intuitive. 4- Latch keyframes together. It would be helpful to have the ability to temporarily latch adjacent keyframes together. This would allow the shifting of a group of keyframes without losing their relative positions. Using the Ctrl key to select the keyframes would be intuitive. 5- Allow the expansion of the O&A's keyframe timeline. It would be very helpful to be able to expand the O&A's keyframe timeline when you are working with multiple keyframes that are very close together, similar to how the Timeline can be expanded. Gary

My #1 Suggestion would be to make picstoexe compatible with Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray burners. Most of my clients who purchase slideshows from us are now using Blu-Ray format. I mean i can have the program create an .iso file and use imageburn to create the disk but it would be nice and much easier to have the burning feature within the program.