I am delighted that Maureen has agreed to provide some direction with the World Peace AV project. I had asked her several weeks ago to consider the offer. Again, I'm delighted that she has said yes. Maureen will do a wonderful job in managing the production of this project. However, it is up to the forum membership to provide material with which to work with.

The upload site remains open to everyone - World Peace AV Project Submission Link. I hope you will take the opportunity to submit images to this worthwhile project. A link is provided at the bottom of the submission page which will allow you to review what has already been submitted to the project.

Regards,
Bill

Whats this? Do I detect accord ( if thats how you spell it) Peace at last. What a difference a day makes, as the song goes. Yesterday I was ready to throw in the towel, but you guys are something else.Today I feel like its Christmas again. How can anyone now ignor our plea for peace? Ive been singing John Lennons "imagine" all evening! Thanks All, for making one concerned man happy,
This project will have some effect one others as well as ourselves.
Maureen-- You do have the correct avatar Im gonna make a new for meself now.
Dave

Sorry for the misinterpretation
This comforts me that text can be a source of error and this problem could be easily bypassed just with a self explanatory photo.

"devil's advocate" .. we have the same in french, word for word ; "l'avocat du diable"
... my intervention can also be interpretated so

Peace to all !

Don't know if you'll all like the finished sequence Folks.
Time will tell!
It would be awful to disagree about Peace, wouldn't it?

I'll be starting it on February 20th, the day after I finish organising the 321 Challenge at Aldbourne
See www.maureenalbright.com/321challenge for more information about that International event which has 15 countries taking part.
You can still enter if you wish - closing date Feb 10th- sequences must be under 3mins 21secs.
Anyone is welcome to come along and watch the judging at Aldbourne.

I have a few ideas up my sleeve for "peace" and I will incorporate my own images as it progresses, hence my delay in submitting images (waiting for someone else to "volunteer" ). All images welcome so have no fear.

I gave one AV group a challenge to produce a five minute sequence from 35 images I uploaded - only rules were you have to use at least 20 images and you cannot use any other images!
see here

Meanwhile keep sending in your images to Bill

Best wishes
Maureen

Maureen,
Many heaartfelt thanks for taking on this worthy task.
If you need any additional pictures, of a particular genre/style say, to help you develop your ideas and to facilitate co-ordination, I'm sure that many of us will be able to come up with something constructive.
Just shout.
John

I went into the Cottage Upload Page again today, to have a peep at all the new pictures sent in since the last visit.
But, counlt not find the preview facility. Has sonething been changed?
John

John,

Perhaps you caught the page just as it was being updated. Today I received several new submissions. As soon as I updated the system with the new images, another submission was received. To prevent this from happening in the future I've created a 'Temporarily Offline' type page during the transition process. Hope this helps. Sorry for any inconvenience.

All pages are available here - World Peace AV Submissions

Regards,
Bill

Thank you Bill,
quite like me to be at the right place at the wrong time.
Best wishes
John

Let There Be Peace

The joint Forum AV is now finished and should be up on the web soon.

Best Wishes

Maureen

Ken


If copyright music is required I will purchase the CD and donate it to whoever puts this show on the road.

Just let me know what he/she requires.

Barry


barry@beckhamdigital.co.uk

www.beckhamdigital.co.uk

Hi
The sequence is on the web since I finished it at 5.30am.
See Beechbrook link.

However please be patient ...
when I downloaded & tested the zipped version this afternoon,
the credits jump (Thanks Ken for the feedback)
and there's some distortion with the sound.
SO I have put a temporary block on the download for a short while as I'm correcting a few niggles.

Thanks

Maureen:

I downloaded it this morning. Yes there are a few minor "glitches" but a really good job taking images from many different people and melding them into one great show. That is not easy !!

Thank you very much !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

little bit late Barry
Maureen has already put show together

maybe you could have a look at this one tho seeing as you are back from your vacation

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3971


we tried to cover for you but one can only do so much -- forum members should get a deep discount for directing people to your site for training videos, sources of music etc:)

ken

Wow! That was terrific Maureen. You have made something special and tasteful from the images we submitted. Best wishes.

Ron [UK]

What a wonderful presentation, something for us newer members to aim for. A big thank you to all who contributed and especially Maureen for the final presentation.

Ray

It was like pulling teeth but we accomplished it .

A big vote of thanks for all who worked on "Peace"

ken

Just watched "Peace", fantastic show, Well done everybody who contributed.

George

Folks,

Firstly I must start by stating that I am a total novice but I am keen to learn.

Secondly I should state that I have only watched this show once so far but know I will watch it many times more in the future.

I thought that it would be of value to me and hopefully to others if I were to give some instant feedback that may induce debate.

I have been watching the discussion during the past few months with some trepidation. I feared that this show could turn out to be a bit “corny” and OTT. How wrong I was! The music and techniques used were excellent in my view and I am now impatient to have a second look to try to figure out how some of the transitions were achieved.

However I would make one criticism and that is that I would have liked to have seen many of the images on the screen for longer than they were. I have found this to be the case in many if not most of the shows I have watched since taking up this obsessive hobby. I have noticed myself that I always face the dilemma of not making the show too long but trying to include as many images as possible.

What are the views of others?

Thanks to everybody who contributed.

John Barnett

Hi

Hope Damor's had a chance to see his "Baby" idea and likes the result.

A trully International project & glad to be a part of it too.

Of course I keep seeing bits I want to "adjust & change" in my part but that's my personality....
Look forward to viewing the next one.... that someone else'll paste together
It'd be good to see the variety of styles presented on the Forum.

[b]Well done on bringing everyone together Damor. hope you're keeping well.
We'll be down in Swansea on the 18th for the week so maybe catch up with you then.

Also visiting Sospan Ray, so may catch up with you at the Club on Wednesday night. You can't travel anywhere without tripping over PTE members these days - great to put faces to the names. Maybe more members should now post their mugshots up on the PTE Rogues Gallery?
Also bumped into The Oldie in Northumberland the other week. Hi Alan !

I know the French Diaporama Forum have special large badges they wear at AV events to recognise one another, or maybe we'd just do a strange secret signal like one hand over your eye and one over your ear to show we're true PTE buddies! Just on April 1st maybe ?

Glad to get the feedback about production.
Negative helps the beginners and my skin is tough !
Well until they chop it around ...

My own comment is....[u]
the actual music is too short for the number of images - if I'd created this for my own personal use I'd have used much longer slower dissolves to get a much better effect and done more pruning.
Not that I felt anyone's work wasn't welcome here etc. Thank You everyone.
This would have given more time for the credits too at the end.
I could've added some silence to let them roll over but feel it'd lose the atmosphere.


I wanted to get this one finished,
... so I didn't do as much sound editing as I'd hoped.
So I could've for example put in some sound effects at the start to really get your attention,
gone into the song and finished with some of "Give Peace a Chance" (which I'd have editing & played with a bit.)
Then it'd get into another dimension and level
& that "ol' chestnut *********" would've been involved .

Can add more notes if required,

BW Maureen

I just got around to downloading the World Peace show. Veeeery nice job. Thanks you for doing it and thanks to everyone who contributed and thanks to Damor for the orginal idea.

E.B. West

I would like to thank Maureen for the having undertaken the challenging task of pulling together some pretty disparate images into a nice show. Having worked on "group" shows before, I appreciate how difficult that can be.

I would second John Barnett's comment above, however. I felt some of the images needed more time on the screen to be appreciated (and not just those of mine , and I felt some of the transitions were a bit too rushed. Some of the transitions, especially the Buddha/lotus ones, I thought were quite effective, but I'd have liked to have seen a similar gentler pace in some later parts of the show. Also, I think the credits at the end need to be up a couple of seconds longer, I didn't have time to read all the names before the slide disappeared.

However, one can always quibble with Av productions, and there are different tastes in how to do these things. I'm sure if I'd produced a show with these images, others would have reservations about some of the things I might have done, and that's probably true with most of us.

One curious thing, possibly more a function of my computer (or whatever my system was doing in the background when I ran the show) than of the show itself, the first time I ran the show, I was very disconcerted to see some images appearing, disappearing and then re-appearing jerkily for no apparent reason (especially in the afore-mentioned Buddha/Lotus sequence). However, the second time I ran the show, this didn't happen, and things went a lot more smoothly (though I still found some of the later images weren't on the screen as long as I'd have liked). I say this in case anyone else plays the show through and sees what might be some glitches in the early sections; wait a couple of minutes and try running it again, it should look a lot better the second time through. Or maybe my aging eyes were playing tricks on me that first time through Or maybe I got the perhaps-buggy version that was alluded to above, though by the time I downloaded it several hundred others had done so, so I'm not sure ... But something definitely didn't look "right" the first time I ran the show. I'm glad I waited and tried running it again later. Maybe I'll go back to the site in a few weeks (I'm away on a trip shortly), re-download it and run it again.

Thanks again to Maureen and to everyone else who worked on and believed in Damor's idea.

Similar behaviour for me but runing it twice doesn't change something.
The numerous jerky slides of this slideshow make it very difficult to see and I confess that I didn't see it up to it's end by reason of these phenomenons !

Patrick if i remember right you copuld not play LumenLuxe's last show with your main system.

Ed - show runs smooth on my system -- the budda sequence is a variety of fades i believe

I guess anybody that is having triouble with the show will not have the processing power for the pan and fade of ver 5.0

ken

You are right, but with Lumenlux'slideshow, things went better after removing all background running softwares.
That is not the case here.


Probably, but as things come up till then, I most likely will have upgraded my PC largely before the release of ver 5.0

I'm glad that Patrick replied; so it's not just my eyesight or my system alone.

My laptop is a fairly powerful computer, in fact it was the top-of-the-Dell line (or arguably one small notch below the very top) when I got it a year and half ago, it has 1 GB of RAM and a 128 MB video card that is one of the high-end ones listed by Igor in his survey of peoples' video cards. Yes I know that many of today's higher-end systems have more than thise amounts of RAM and video memory, but ...

Saying that we'll have to upgrade our systems to use the new features isn't gong to encourage many people to rush to adopt the new software; I for one have no interest in having to upgrade what was a very powerful computer only after eighteen months, I can't afford that kind of buying behaviour on my pension. If that's what it takes to do pan and zoom, well I'll just do without pan and zoom -- probably not a great loss, given the generally tacky and tedious over-use I've seen some people make of that feature in some other software lately.

I'm concerned and disappointed that a show that a lot of us believe in and cared enough to contribute to is going to run so un-smoothly on some systems that some viewers, like Patrick, will exit and move on to something else before the show even ends. That rather defeats the whole idea, IMO.

BTW I thought maybe the problem was with my screen resolution (I generally run my system at 1600x1200, my eyes have grown accustomed to the tiny fonts but I love working in Photoshop on images in that resolution). So I reset to 800x600 and re-ran the show this morning, and there was still some jerkiness especially in part of the Buddha/lotus sequence. So I don't think it's a screen resolution issue. And the credits at the end still race by too fast for me to register all the names; maybe on the fourth or fifth viewing I'll have figured out who all the people are. But what's the point of having a text slide on the screen so briefly that you need multiple viewings to figure it out?

I would hate to see many shows (and version 5) become something that only a relative handful of the technically (and financially) inclined can afford to use properly, because that will limit not only the market for the software but also the market for the shows it produces. Yes, eventually I'll replace my laptop with another one with more bells and whistles, but I'm not doing that for a few more years yet, 'cause I can't afford it and am not interested in constantly feeding money into the computer industry. There are a lot of folks out here (many of whom belong to my photo club) who are very interested in producing and viewing shows like this but who can be very put off by anything that requires frequent, expensive, and sometimes technically-intimidating hardware upgrades to get it to look right. Please, don't market-marginalize a wonderful medium and some great software by making it too esoteric or overly dependent on high-end, expensive systems! (Sorry if this isn't the most appropriate thread for that last bit, but I think the comment needs the context of this show as an example.)

ED
i got a gig of ram
my graphics card
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9000/aiw9000pro/index.html

but i got a 2.8 mghz processor
so i have no problem viewing the show
Patrick was not in favour of the "peace" show from the start and he aint got the horsepower to run the show with his current system and if i remember right you were complaining early on re the direction the project was going
you have to visit the forum daily , read ALL postings in every section not just the one's that strike your fancy

btw
you are listed in the credits
ken

Come on you guys, what are you moaning about?

I use an Athlon AMD XP2100+, 1Gb ram and a Matrox Millenniums G450 graphics card with dual screen display and have NO trouble with running Peace,

The only thing I have is a slight stutter between Budda and the butterfly.

Give Maureen a break she has done a tremendous job of putting a wonderful show together.

George

ED
i got a gig of ram
my graphics card
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9000/aiw9000pro/index.html

but i have a 2.8 mghz processor
so i have no problem viewing the show -- it runs smooth as silk

Patrick was not in favour of the "peace" show from the start and he does not have the horsepower to run the show with his current system

and if i remember right you were complaining early on re the direction the project was going -- the show was not even put together -- all the picts were not in -- how many picts did we get from 2800+- members -- we got more excuses as to why they were so busy -- we were looking for royalty free music -- no offers

you have to visit the forum daily , read ALL postings in every section not just the one's that strike your fancy

with all the complaining this project generated we will be lucky to get another one to fly
but who knows Maybe just Maybe somebody will jump into the breach and then ??

btw Ed
you are listed in the credits
have done a screenshot for you for posterity
ken

I have had no problems running the sequence, and yet the indications are that my graphics card may not be able to cope with v.5.0.

Maureen did take the sequence off-line in order to do a bit of tweaking. I downloaded this fresh version only yesterday. Are those with problems using the revised version - Peace#8.exe?

Ron [UK]

.... yes Ken but that doesn't mean I am unable to change my mind !!!


... yes but I download each slideshow presented on Beechbrook download page, not to mention the one I download on personal web pages, diverse forums or friend's creations.
That makes a great number of PTE slideshows !!!! .... 5 a week is a reasonable number.
Despite my anemic PC, problems are very, very, very seldom and If they happen they are concerning very few transitions and I solve in most cases the problem... even with the recent Lumenlux's one !

The Peace show (Peace#8.exe) is particular as the jerky transitions are numerous, not overridable by key strokes and not treated by a clean machine (no background working softwares, rebooted machine, ..).
I tried it on 2 other (more powerfull PC than mine) and the jerky transitions where even there .. a little bit lesser but the whole slideshow is problematic.

I don't speak about the theme, I gave my opinion a few posts before but just a remark.
As the photos are not immediateley and clearly peace related, to understand a little bit the subject we have to understand well english... text is english or latin, even the music is in english !!!!
... conclusion, for a non english speaker this slideshow is just a melting of various photos gloryfying sometimes army, sometimes America and Canada, sometimes Christendom but impossible, apart the title, to clearly identify it as a peace message !



And now then !!!!
I am enchanted for you but this doesn't change the fact that I cannot read properly this slideshow, nor 2 of my friends, and Ed Overtsreet too !!
To solve my problem, I propose you to give you, per MP, my coordinates so that you can send me your equipment !

In a normal case the author has to adapt to the public he wants to reach and not reverse !
Sorry, but it is not in my intentions to update my PC just to have pleasure to "read" slideshows dedicated to happy fews.

I am very disappointed as having an other opinion than that expressed by very few is automatically seen as bad.
Having problems are then ipso facto denied.
If so I will come here in the future from time to time and have a look on this forum so that I just don't miss the issue of the version 4 updates !


Hey... be indulgent, one time, for my approximative english speaking. I tried to do my best !

Sorry, I changed my answer for the right place (I mistakenly posted it in Severn Bore's topic where I, of course, deleted it).

well Patrick we generally discuss the presentations in the other section.

to see if i would have a problem on my other system i fired it up
some of it's specs
Operating System System Model
Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C694X

Processor a Main Circuit Board b
1.30 gigahertz Intel Celeron
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: 694X-686B
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: Award Software International, Inc. 6.00 PG 03/26/2002
1 gb of ram
the graphics card i use in it is an ati all in wonder128 with i think 16 mb on board ram -- first edition
i also have a fixed swap file of 1 gb [on both systems]

i ran the /#8 peace show fine on that system as well
but it is a slow puppy to make dvd's with


now how does one xfer files/equipment with google earth

peace be with you friend
ken

Hi Ron.

For the record, the version that I downloaded is Peace#8.exe. The date associated with that file on my system, which is probably the date and time when I unzipped it, is April 13 at 7:25am Eastern Daylight time, which would be 12:25 in England. So it seems to be the version you have. I'm happy it runs well on your system. It doesn't run well on mine. Nor on Patrick's. Nor on Patrick's friends'.

To others in this thread:

I don't want to add much to what Patrick said, I thought rather eloquently, but to say there clearly is a problem with the way this show is constructed (I'm referring here to what the computer is being asked to do in terms of transitions), or with the software, or perhaps, but only perhaps, with some of the equipment that is running it, I'm not sure which, and I have neither the time at the moment nor the expertise with which to debug any of the above.

But I honestly don't think the problem has anything to do with my motivation, nor with Patrick's. I think it unfortunate when someone attempts to point out some problems, we only get personal attacks in response.
Instead of "blaming the victims," how about finding a solution to the issues?

I think I've said all on this thread that I want to say. I see no point in continuing my participation in this discussion, and I am removing my subscription to it as soon as I close this post.

Sorry Ken but I absolutely not understand this expression !
Can you say me what you want to say ?

Concerning my equipment, it's quite anemic (AMD Athlon 1.01 GHZ, SDRAM 512 MB, NVIDIA GEFORCE 2MMX, 32MB Video memory).
You can give me other examples where this slideshow runs smoothly, this does not change anything to the fact that, as I told it in my precedent post, the vast majority of PTE slideshows wich can be downloaded are running without problem with this equipment. This one does not !
Sorry if it is this one !!!

To say truth, as this topic seems to make problem and only one opinion is admitted, I had npo intention to give any comment.
As Ed Overstreet's problems where the same as mine, I was appeased not to be the sole to have difficulties ... that's why I posted a comment.

Ken, whe are not on school benches. We both are largely more then 10 years old
If you think I am saying tomfooleries just because I am not enthusiastic with this slideshow, then it's a waist of time to give any opinion or comment here.

Just a point of reflection. 312 people have downloaded this slideshow... how many gave a comment ?
If giving a personal opinion and not just a formatted one (Oh, how great it is, wonderfull, hard job, brilliant ... and so on) is regarded as an aberation ... no wonder nobody will take the risk of posting.

Sorry but for me, photography is a pleasure and using PTE an other one. Getting angry for such unreal discussion where the speaking of a forum member is questionned is senseless.
So, for me I will stop here discussing about the behaviour of this slideshow. It is working absolutely fine and it is the best one I have ever seen on the web. It is a hit ! A world masterpiece ! Congratulations !

Patrick
in one of your replies you said something about my coordinates so i could send you my equipment -
"To solve my problem, I propose you to give you, per MP, my coordinates so that you can send me your equipment !"


- thought you had a way new way using gooogel earth to xfer files

sorry if you didnt get the pun

maybe we could get one of those Antonov 12 's to do the job
ken

Patrick, your comments are always welcome. Personally, when I make any PTE sequence available, the very first thing I want to know is "Can every viewer see what I saw when I created the show?" The only way I can know, is if people tell me. I learned a good lesson from Igor when PTE was just starting to make DVD output. I was having a particular problem getting the DVD feature to work always. When I told Igor about it, I was afraid he would dismiss my problem because the feature was working well for many other people. But Igor accepted that all I could do was tell him what I was experiencing. So he kept trying to determine why I was getting certain results. His great attitude encouraged me to also try to diagnose the problem and we eventually came up with most the answers. If someone tells me they can not see my show properly, I may or may not be able to "solve" that, but I certainly want to know about the problem.

I've said before, and probably will say again - your ability with the english is remarkable. Of course sometimes, a non-native language can make discussions even more interesting. I thank you and every other non-english member for being willing to write english in this forum. If you were writing only in french, I would get so little benefit, it would be like trying to run a PTE show on the very first home computer I ever had. Thanks again to you and everyone else who ventures to share shows or thoughts through this forum.

Ed

You address your thread to me and in it you say "I think it unfortunate when someone attempts to point out some problems, we only get personal attacks in response. Instead of "blaming the victims," how about finding a solution to the issues? "

My thread was a statement of fact as regards my equipment followed by a suggestion as to what might be the cause of the problem. There was no personal attack.

Amazing how a sequence on "PEACE" can provoke just the opposite.

Ron [UK]

... because it is a serious subject which can not accomodate with improvisation even if there is a great enthusiasm to speak and treat about it.
Subjective meanings, patriotic, nationalistic, religious, sexual preferences are imperatively be left behind in the change room !

Hi all,

Firstly, congratulations to Maureen for the masterpiece that she created from our submissions. I thought that she was an extremely brave person to take it on in the first place, but the end result could not have been better. The music chosen was right for the original idea and reflects the feelings of us all.

I think it fair to suggest that if anyone has a similar idea in future he/she should be prepared to take it to a conclusion himself/herself!

As for this debate about the technical aspects I will merely say that it runs perfectly on my P4 3.02 with 512 RAM Laptop with iffy graphics card (Igor is not sure that it will cope with V5).

BUT, it also runs acceptably well on my P2 450 desktop with 64MB of RAM - (FROM A MEMORY KEY!).

So please, no more about this! There is obviously nothing wrong with the show. If it does not run to your satisfaction on your machine then I think it is safe to say that it is your machine that is at fault.

I want to raise one aspect for debate though and it applies not specifically to this show but to all shows which are offered for download. I think I am correct in saying that Maureen took our 1024x768 images (that is what I submitted) and made a show with the fit-to-screen option enabled? (It plays full screen on both my laptop's 1280x1024 monitor and my desktop's 1024x768 monitor). The end result is that I can see some degradation in some of the images on the 1280x1024 screen due to the upsizing which Igor has said PTE does not handle very well. Personally, I would prefer to see my 1024x768 images (in my own shows) presented at 1024x768 and strive to ensure in my shows that what I created is what the audience sees.

Any comments?

Daveg

NO COMMENT .... it is just the unique slideshow for wich I have this problem and I am not isolated !!!!
Thank you very very much for your great help ! ... it is encouraging for anyone who has problems

This particular topic has been very well supported by forum members and the latest slide show, presented by Maureen, is excellent. I downloaded it yesterday and it runs as smooth as clockwork on my system.
(pentium 4, 2.4 processor and 2 gig of ram).
Some folk have chosen to offer some critisism, but I suggest that it may be that their computer set up is just not 'man enough' to run this show properly.
The work that Maureen has clearly put into producing this superb show is worthy of a commendation. Well done Maureen!

chuffed to bits. Have congratulated Maureen, the welsh lady wizard, for weaving her magic.
thanks and grateful to all for your support. Dave.