AV News Magazine | Page 4

AV News 195 - February 2014 Editorial Jill K Bunting CPAGB & John Smith APAGB CPAGB As this is the first issue of the magazine in 2014 then may we belatedly wish you a Happy New Year. If you haven't renewed your subscription yet, then we hope that the receipt of this issue will act as a reminder and that you will send your subscription to the Group Treasurer, Keith Brown. Editing the magazine is rather like ‘feast and famine’, (and maybe even busses!) Sometimes very little in the way of articles and news stories comes along and we end up having to write things ourselves, then this issue we have received lots. This has meant that we have actually had to 'edit' this magazine rather than send out calls to our kind contributors for further copy. We are grateful to everyone who has sent in reports and articles for this issue, all the time sensitive items have been included and please be assured that any remaining ones will be published in the next issue due out in May. This includes several letters on the subject of the Great Northern Festival and suggestions as to it’s future format. These have been taken on board and more details of the Festival will be published soon on a new dedicated website. Links will be provided from the avnews website so keep checking this for information. We have several articles describing the making of recent award winning sequences, it is always interesting to read how others find inspiration and compile their images and sound tracks. An early Christmas present was the release of PicturesToExe version 8 in December. This new version is now available for download and comes in two editions Essential and Deluxe. For new purchasers the 'Deluxe', fully featured version, is priced at $129 (depending on the exchange rate around £94 inc VAT) and for newcomers to our hobby the Essentials edition is priced at just $69 (£50). If you are an existing user of any version from v1 to v7.5 then of course you can continue to use these but to upgrade to the latest DeluxeV8 will cost you just $34 (£25). If you wish to look at a fully functioning trial version before you buy or upgrade then go to www.wnsoft.com and click on the ‘Download’ button. To purchase a key for the new version then click the ‘Buy Now’ button. Making sequences has never been quicker and easier than with this release and some of the new features were described in Issue 194 Page 47. So with lots of new features to enhance your sequences we hope to see many entries in the Peter Coles IAC International and the RPS International Competitions in March and September. You may just have time to get in your entry to the Peter Coles as the closing date is the 1st February, see Page 15 for details. We hope to see you there. Page 2