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Needham

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Everything posted by Needham

  1. Mea culpa. My critical comments in my post were unjustified. After posting, I realised there is a tick box option, enabled by default, to 'Open the edit tab' when clicking on a slide. I had deselected this long ago on my earlier installation. Stupidly I had overlooked deselecting it again when inputting other options after updating Photostage. The default slide adjustment popup seems rather pointless, and deselecting this option restores full functionality for changing slide duration easily, on the slide bar, either singly or for a selected group of slides. The latter cannot be done by any means with the default setting. I would recommend users try this. It saves a lot of time with a complex slide show, where slides are being matched to an audio track. Overall I am very impressed with Photostage. A few small things could be improved, but there are regular updates and I am more than happy with the quality that can be achieved.
  2. I'm using 10.81 at present, but also tried 10.19 and 9.71. It's now apparent that the change was made after version 9.61, which I had continued using until recently. I will probably revert back to v9.61 because it does what I need, much more efficiently. I've messaged NCH about this and await their response. In the meantime I've noticed another retrograde change after 9.61. They have removed the ability to highlight a group of slides on the slidebar, quickly change the duration of any one of those slides, and have it applied automatically to all of that group of slides, with no additional action required. The newer method with the pop up pane, cancels out any highlighting of a group of slides, and only allows a change of duration to a single slide, or all slides in the show. It now requires first highlighting the required group of slides, then hunting through yet another menu, to be able to select the action required for the highlighted group of slides, before going to the new pop up pane to change the duration of that group. Then applying the change. With practice, it takes about 3 times as long as previously. I'm sending another message to NCH about this. It really was the perfect example of not following the rule - 'If it aint broke, don't try to fix it'.
  3. I had been using Photostage Professional for some time, and was very happy with it. When I updated my pc there was an issue with the licence, which was resolved by NCH with a fresh download link. This worked perfectly, BUT---- it appears to be a later version and there has been a very unwanted change incorporated. I used to change slide duration by highlighting the time setting of the slide, on the slideshow bar, and simply changing it. It was instant and the result was immediately obvious on the same screen. This no longer works. Clicking on the slide duration box now, brings up a new full screen background on which the duration can be highlighted and changed, but without being able to see the effect on the slideshow. It is then necessary to click Apply to go back to the slideshow, to judge the effect. Then back to the other screen to make another change, then back to the slideshow again and more time wasted. My use of Photostage often involves frequently adjusting slide durations to fit an audio script. This current version adds hours to the process. The current method is so inefficient, I cannot understand why it was changed. Has anyone found a way around this?
  4. Sorry for delayed response. gif looping has been asked for before, but apparently not implimented. Duplication works well as long as you reduce the transition time between each instance of the gif to zero. When you reduce the transition time, the window actually goes down to 0.010 but then shows as zero in the slideshow. This eliminates the jerking when playing back multiple instances of a gif.
  5. Thank you for responding. I did appreciate that it could be done by a complete uninstall and re install. I wondered if I had missed something, because many software programmes have a simple settings option to clear their Recent Projects file, but it appears Photostage does not have this. In fact I have now found the required entries in the Windows Registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER SOFTWARE etc. and it was a simple matter to amend the relevant parts of the Recent Files entries. As a caution, I would strongly recommend users NOT to amend Registry entries unless they are sure about what they are doing.
  6. The bottom of the File Menu lists details of the current or most recent project and where the project file is stored. The expansion arrow below that opens a long list of previous projects, with similar details. Some are quite old. I would like to delete these items but cannot find where they are stored and there is no reference to them in the Help pages. Has anyone managed to clear these unwanted records of old projects?
  7. I used to use a different slideshow software and once came across this problem, and a solution. I was recommended to download a small software package called K-Lite codec pack. It included all the most commonly required codecs. These are just small pieces of linking software and if one becomes corrupted or over written by some other software changes it can cause the effect you have noticed. The K-lite package has been around for years. I have had it installed for at least 5 years with no isues whatsoever. From time to time they advise me of updates. They offer several packs, all free. From memory, mine is the standard pack. To get it just google K-Lite codec pack.
  8. Thanks for the link. I should have searched this forum more thoroughly because I now realise you had mentioned it in a previous post. I will now make use of it.
  9. I post this in the hope that someone at NCH might read it. One of the things I notice about all the NCH products, is that there is no facility for users to make suggestions about product improvements. Having changed my computer, I have been evaluating PhotoStage as a replacement for Photodex ProShow Gold which I have used for many years, but which I cannot reactivate as Photodex have closed their servers. That software was undoubtably the best available, but the only direct equivalent, developed by the same people, is now subscription only, which I do not want. This leads me to PhotoStage. I have found PhotoStage better than I expected, but with a few things that I think could be improved. My first impression is that the workspace is functional, but rather gloomy, with everything in shades of dark grey, although this is just personal preference and has no effect on the performance. More significant is lack of means to vary the workspace proportions to suit particular tasks. While the lower slidebar area can be adjusted vertically to vary the proportions of upper and lower workspace areas, there is no provision for horizontal movement of the vertical bar, situated between the slides display area on the left and the main preview screen on the right. The result is that very few slides can be kept actually in view on the left, meaning constant scrolling, while there is a huge amount of wasted screen space on the right side, either side of the preview area, even in widescreen mode. I note that useful suggestions have been made by others on this forum, like making it possible for a gif to loop for the duration set for that particular slide. This seems a rather basic feature for any slideshow software. I hope the developers might consider these comments, because overall PhotoStage is a good product, which could be excellent.
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