AV News 196 - May 2014
T h e T e c h n ic a l B it!
Peter Brown ARPS DPAGB HonPAGB
I usually get the task of putting the show together so that the whole
presentation looks professional to the punters who come to admire our work.
This year for the first time we joined forces with the Leicester Movie Makers.
Both sides agreed to a time limit of approximately 40 minutes screen time for
each half of the show, this to consist of a mix of AVs and Movies, making a
total of 17 items, 8 AVs and 9 Movies. Having created the desktop images in
Photoshop, the main one shows the logos of both clubs plus the show's title.
This is projected whilst the audience comes into the hall. Then we changed
to one containing the work for the first half, an 'Interval' slide, then a second
half, and finally a 'That's all Folks' to end. Each piece of work would run from
a desktop 'trigger' consisting of the title of the AV or Movie.
I did a test to see if a Movie would run from within a PTE file, and yes they
would, except that the Movie does not return you to the desktop, it loops and
starts running again, so whoever is projecting has to be very quick and stop
it. Plus it does not go to a 'Full Screen' so another quick move was needed
to press F11 to enter Full Screen mode. Then at the end another quick press
of F11, and mouse up to the red X to stop it running again. Movies don't
respond to pressing Esc to stop them running again. With a bit of practice it
can be done without the audience being aware of what's happened.
The test was fine when I tried it on a laptop running Windows 7, with the
Movies running in Windows Media Player. Having recently bought a new
laptop running Windows 8.1, I thought I would put it all together on that.
Having loaded all nine Movies onto my machine, plus the eight AVs, I set
about making the project, and created an '.exe' file of the whole show. I do
this using PTE 4.8. I know that it is an old version of PTE, however it is so
easy to do in this version. With the '.exe' file on the computer desktop, a click
with the mouse and the number one title slide fills the screen. Press the
space bar and it changes to the first half containing the nine titles of that part
of the show. We start with an AV - this runs perfectly and returns us to the
desktop. Next was a Movie, click the title, but the Movie does not run.
"Why?" I thought, so I try another and that does the same. The third one runs,
so what is the problem with those others? In the end three out of the nine
Movies ran OK. I sent an SOS email to one of the Movie club members and
it appears that not all movies will run in Windows Media Player in Windows
8.1. I was told to go onto the Internet and download a free file titled VLC
Media Player. This I did with the result that all the Movies then ran perfectly.
The only downside is that the VLC software turns all the original Movie files
into red and white traffic cones, quite large as well. Still nobody sees them
as they will run from a trigger of its title. It did cause me a bit of head
scratching though until I got it right. The other downside is of course the
overall file size of the show, which I normally put onto a DVD. Not so this one
as it's nearly 8GB, so I had to use a portable hard drive to transfer it to a
back-up computer. In the end the show ran perfectly on the night.
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