Just thinking

Hi
Harry I guess this would be for you to answer but would just love to know w
hat is a "Menu" that I hear mentioned from time to time on here. It is too
bad that this could not be set up as a regular forum type thing where we co
uld all go over ideas or questions that we have and not have to have Chris
or one of the other show programmers always having to answer for us. I am v
ery new at doing this and have only done one show up so far which I have ha
d good reviews on from some of my internet friends that I sent it to but th
en they are not going to say anything to me about what they think could be
done differently . Sandy Davenport

[photos1232003]

It was brought to my attention that for Chris to answer all our
questions on how to and why might be answered by some of us on this
forum.

Chris, you are doing a great job and I know that this must be a full
time job at times!!

All our email address are obtainable so why not if we can answer a
question just email.

Is that acceptable Chris?

I have a question as to: How do you make a menu! I did do one by
just trial and error and did burn a CD but when I went to make three
wide screen presentation on one CD making a menu a prompt said that a
paraticular presentation had no images and to give it some or delete
it. I know it had images but could not figure out what was wrong.

Do you use 1. Add a file or 2. Add a folder

I could not get any icons up on the menu except one and that was my
title slide for one.

[info_xatcom]

Hello Sandra and Harry

If other users answer first that's fine by me an I often don't answer. In fact
other users often have much better answers especially if its on a Subject I
don't know much about!

Menus
~~~~~

There are several ways of making a menued slideshow...

The easiest is if your pictures are already laid out on disk in a structure
form.

For example if pictures on your disk are in the form:
+MyPhotos
|menusound.mp3
|menupic.jpg
+Hols2001
|sinatra.mp3
|pic1.jpg
|pic2.jpg
+Hols2002
|img1.jpg
|img2.jpg

(+ indicates a folder)

If you point the "Images Folder" on the settings page at "MyPhotos" and leave
"Music Filename" unchecked, xatshow will automatically build a menued slideshow.

In the above (small) example), the slideshow will be called "MyPhotos", the menu
will se menupic.jpg for its background image and menu sound will be used for
background music for the menu.

The menu will have two slideshows called Hols2001 and Hols 2002 which will
contain slideshows of the pictures and sounds contained in the Hols2001 and
Hols2002 folders. In this case:

sinatra.mp3, pic1.jpg, pic2.jpg for slideshow 1

and

img1, img2 for slideshow 2

This can be useful if your pictures are already laid out on your hard disk in
this way.

The other ways to make a menu are with the sequencer.

The easiest way is with drag and drop.

Press the New button and o to the Sequencer tab.

Open an explorer window and drag and drop the images for the first slideshow
onto the sequencer.
Then press the "New Slideshow" button and drag and drop images for the second
slideshow onto the 2nd slideshow in the sequencer. Repeat this for each
sideshow.

Feel free to experiment with the sequencer. Try dragging and dropping files onto
it and you will soon see how it works. If you get in a mess press the New
button.

Regards Chris.

John, could you send me the file on Menu's
thanks, Mike

Hi
that would be great and my addy is sdavenp1@ Would love to see
this thanks Sandy

Hello, If anyone wants to see a slide show on how to create menus I will se
nd one, it is just over 1mb, but a picture is worth a thousand words. You w
ill have to give me your email address.
John

Do any of you folks --read-- the instructions or do the tutorials that come
with the program? How do I make a menu?? C'mon, that's a very basic
function of Xatshow. I also read a question regarding whether Xatshow "can
make a show that will run in a DVD player" (using a standard CD burner to
burn the CD-R disc). Yes, that's what the tab Video CD/ DVD does. In fact,
at present, Xatshow can only make VCD shows so even if you -did- have a true
DVD burner you could not make a true DVD disc.

I think many of the more experienced users will be happy to share their
knowledge and Chris should not have to do it all. But--- When the answers to
the questions you ask are already in the documentation that comes with the
program, it's obvious you haven't taken the time to read and attempt to learn
the program on your own.

Sure... we can keep giving you fish. But wouldn't you rather learn to fish
for yourself?

[nrcems]

Rick:

What you say is basically true. But for me there is something missing in
the Xatshow tutorial regarding menus.

I have been working with computers since the mid 1960s and have developed
many comprehensive computer programs over 3 decades of directing a large
research laboratory.

However, for some reason, I could not figure out how to make a menu for
Xatshow.

Happily, John Greenwood (bless him!) sent me step by step directions which
worked beautifully.

I then went back to the tutorial and still couldn't see how I would have
done it without John's help.

Chris is great. I admire his willingness to help and the speed with which
he responds.

Shier Berman

At 12:09 AM 2/28/2003 -0500, you wrote:

>Do any of you folks --read-- the instructions or do the tutorials that
>come with the program? How do I make a menu?? C'mon, that's a very basic
>function of Xatshow. I also read a question regarding whether Xatshow
>"can make a show that will run in a DVD player" (using a standard CD
>burner to burn the CD-R disc). Yes, that's what the tab Video CD/ DVD
>does. In fact, at present, Xatshow can only make VCD shows so even if you
>-did- have a true DVD burner you could not make a true DVD disc.
>
>I think many of the more experienced users will be happy to share their
>knowledge and Chris should not have to do it all. But--- When the answers
>to the questions you ask are already in the documentation that comes with
>the program, it's obvious you haven't taken the time to read and attempt
>to learn the program on your own.
>
>Sure... we can keep giving you fish. But wouldn't you rather learn to
>fish for yourself?
>
>-- Rick
>
>Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
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><http://rd.yahoo.com/M=246920.2960106.4328965.2848452/D=egroupweb/S=1706030420:HM/A=1464858/R=0/*http://www.gotomypc.com/u/tr/yh/cpm/grp/300_Cquo_1/g22lp?Target=mm/g22lp.tmpl>1d75b4.jpg
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Hi. In some respects I agree with Rick that some people do not bother to re
ad instructions and experiment. But here again I know people who cannot abs
orb info by reading and have to be shown. Fortunately I am a fairly quick l
earner and adapt easily to understanding programs, I enjoy finding out on m
y own.
There again how many people cannot program a vcr, and that is really simple
!
John

Hello Shier,
Thanks for those kind comments, I have sent the slideshow to a few others a
nd hope it helps them also.
I agree with what you say that the Creation of Menu information is not good
. I did master it but it took a little while and experimenting to make it w
ork. When I started to look at it the program was in the beta stage and I t
hink I started with the first beta.Of course then there were also bugs pres
ent that made the learning process more difficult.
But once mastered I think it is an excellent program and I for one am very
pleased with the results.
So there is a lot of credit and thanks to go to Chris and his team but mayb
e they should take a further look at the help files.
John

I think documentation is quite unclear for novices.

If you read the "XATSHOW Overview" in the help file - it would be
confusing if you did not know that "VCD" and "DVD" are entirely
difference disk formats. The section uses the term "DVD player" many
times with no one or two sentence tutorial to help. It says on a "burn
on a CD-R/RW" - but you still have to know what VCD and DVD are to
decipher that:

"VCD is a basic type of video disk that can be created on a standard CD
writing drive on standard CDR or RW media. VCDs can be played on many
set-top DVD players but you must check your DVD manual to be sure if
yours can ."

I think the vast majority of potential users of this software would
never want to signup for a mailing list - even if they knew what one was
or how to find it on the site.

The documentation/samples/tutorials have to be rock solid and
self-guided and written to the user level that is the target market of
the product in order for the product to thrive.

The goal should actually be to get all the basic conversations off the
list by making the product intuitive and the documentation thorough.

Chris and company are working hard on what is already an excellent
product - after 18 months of searching, I've found the tool to do my
job! However, I am a technical user and in order for the product to be
popular outside of technical users, the documentation and interface
needs to be improved or this list will surely be flooded with "how to
turn it on" messages.

Respectfully,
D.
_________________________________
Darwin Sanoy
Principal Consultant / Instructor
DesktopEngineer.com
WindowsInstallerTraining.com



Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 12:10 AM

Do any of you folks --read-- the instructions or do the tutorials that
come with the program? How do I make a menu?? C'mon, that's a very
basic function of Xatshow. I also read a question regarding whether
Xatshow "can make a show that will run in a DVD player" (using a
standard CD burner to burn the CD-R disc). Yes, that's what the tab
Video CD/ DVD does. In fact, at present, Xatshow can only make VCD
shows so even if you -did- have a true DVD burner you could not make a
true DVD disc.

I think many of the more experienced users will be happy to share their
knowledge and Chris should not have to do it all. But--- When the
answers to the questions you ask are already in the documentation that
comes with the program, it's obvious you haven't taken the time to read
and attempt to learn the program on your own.

Sure... we can keep giving you fish. But wouldn't you rather learn to
fish for yourself?



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MessageThis is to Mr. Sanoy
I fully agree with the statements that he just made on here that we who are
novices at doing these slide shows need better clarification but over all
I am happy with the program and the help that I have gotten from the forum.
At least now I do know the difference between a "VCD" and a "DVD".
I doubt that I would ever do this as a money making thing but for personal
pleasure of watching the shows and hope that some friends will also.
One thing I would like to know is if there is a possible way to have someon
e who knows more about this stuff look at a show to give an idea of how it
can be made better or give other ideas on it as we who have never done this
before are going at it in the dark here. Thanks Sandy D

[info_xatcom]

Point taken. Will have to do better in docs and user interface.

Still we are celebrating 5 cows at tucows!

Cheers Chris.