Colors in slideshow do not look like originals

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

...well, now you can fully understand my frustration. I may have to contact them directly about this....

If you can, call them on the phone because it's a lot faster.

Barbara

[debngar Profile Private message]

There is no .exe extension. My show is saved like this: Gina's Birthstory.psh

When I double click on it, it immediately pulls it up in the proshow gold program.

Should it be saved as an .exe extension?? How do I do that? When I was done creating my slideshow, I hit SAVE and it saved it the way it's saved now.

Designing/creating your show is not the same as creating the output for viewing on other devices.

A psh file cannot be viewed on a TV. The show must be put through the rendering process and be burned to a DVD in a compatible format for the equipment it's going to be played on. I'm just guessing here but sounds like you may have copied the psh file to DVD and maybe expected it to play on the TV which will not work.

Recommend first reviewing explanation of ProShow file extensions - DickK's FAQ post may help you better understand what is going on.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6262
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then read/review the instruction manual, specifically the section related to creating output / burning a DVD.

That topic starts at section 15, page 323 in the Gold documentation. For a forum member to type it all out here would be unnecessarily redundant when it can be read there. Try following the steps for the output you're trying to achieve, then if you have further problems, ask questions.

http://files.photodex.com/docs/manuals/ProShowGold6.pdf

A caveat Many users choose to render their show to an ISO file with ProShow, then burn with Imgburn (free program) to the DVD as it seems less troublesome than trying to do the burning using ProSHow.

Quite a while ago, Mikey (gpsmikey) posted a STICKY thread on ISO file rendering/burning in the tutorial section. While its dated 2007, it was updated in 2008. Though the post is over 5 years old, the concepts are the same.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=5446#p39722

These are all terms necessary to be familiar with and understand to make things work.

Good Luck.

[TinaMB Profile Private message]

My husband called them. He's a system's analyst and he knows all the technical lingo. He gave the tech full control of my computer and was able to figure out that the program is having trouble reading/creating on the type of DVD I am using, which is a DVD-RW. He also encouraged us to save it as an iso file and then burn it with my Roxio program. Once we did that, it played fine on the computer AND Tv.

As for the psh. file, it DID and WAS playing just fine on the TV. My computer was reading the disk as blank as a psh. file. But on TV, it played it fine.

Saving it or creating it as an iso file, however, plays it on the TV and the computer now.

In addition, after desaturating by 80%, while saving it as an iso file, the colors were horrible! I changed it back to the default, which was simply un-checking the desaturation box, and the colors looked normal. This has been an incredible learning experience.

So, the tech recommended that I NOT use DVD-RW disks. He also noted, when he had control of my computer, that the box to simulate test under the burning section was grayed out and we were NOT able to use that but it was usable when creating an iso file.

He said he would research why we could not use the dvd-rw disks with this program.

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Are you sure it was the .psh file being read by the DVD player?

Barbara

[debngar Profile Private message]

Are you sure it was the .psh file being read by the DVD player?

Barbara

My 4 cents....
It's unlikely. Given that a .psh file is only used within the program when designing it and is not the file format produced for final output burned to a DVD meant to be played via a DVD player viewed on someone's TV.

I would encourage the user again to read/study the documentation to better understand how all this works to be able to complete the task of creating the desired DVD next time it's needed.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

A dvd player would not have a clue what to do with a .psh file - you can look at one in a text editor - it is simply a text file with all the settings and changes stored in it for Proshow to be able to create the show (the same way a .vf file for Sony Vegas Movie Studio is the instructions for the program). As to the difference between DVD-RW and DVD-R, the files on the disk should be exactly the same (for a standard DVD, basically mpeg2). Some players have trouble reading RW, -R or +R disks but the data on the disk is a series of digital files and the data should be the same for either format (you'll notice for an ISO file creation (which can be used to create your DVD later), there is no mention of RW, -R or +R when you create it. A dvd player would have to have proshow somehow installed on it (not possible since the player does not use a compatible operating system) to be able to parse the .psh file - there was some other file on there it was able to read.

One thing that many folks do not understand is the difference between the "source file" (.psh in this case) and the output. We run into the same thing in the video editing world. When you just "save" your show, you are saving the .psh (instructions) file. The .psh file for proshow (or .vf file for Sony Vegas Movie Studio) simply is a series of instructions and settings to use for processing the supplied media files (images, video, sound etc.). Once you get the preview the way you want it, you have to "render" the output file - in Proshow, they call it basically "publish" - in the video world, it is "rendering" - in either case, that is where the source instructions (.psh) file is used to process all the various media clips (.jpg, video, sound etc.) into the specified format - that can be mp4, DVD (Mpeg2), px stream (sharing on the Photodex site) or any of the other formats supported (see the docs for Proshow for "output formats" ).

mikey

[TinaMB Profile Private message]

How would I be able to tell what file it was on the DVD since I could not view it on my computer? This is very puzzling. When I made the very first DVD, it was on a DVD-R and it saved all kinds of files on it that I could view very easily from my computer. It was also viewable on the DVD player for my TV but I could not re-write to it since the colors were horrible, I discarded the disk. Then I started using DVD-RW disks because that's all I had available. I swear, I put the disk in my DVD player to be viewed on the TV and could see it just fine. Then I putit in my player for the computer, it came up as a blank disk. It made no sense to me or my husband. We erased the RW disk, we reformatted it, put it in the DVD player for the TV and it was blank. I re-saved the show to the disk, and again, it showed it was blank on the computer, but it played on the DVD player for the TV so I have no idea what it was saving as on the disk. The tech said it sounded like the program was having a hard time with the RW disk.

The tech said to save the show as an iso when I am using the RW disk. He said he would research this dilemma. I have no idea why it would be different but apparently there was a problem...

thank you ALL for your help. In addition, since I saved it the iso file, I had to change the saturation back to what it was by default because the colors were WAY off...again. Just all very odd to me that it would work one way saved one way, then changes were made and it wasn't working....just very odd.

Sincerely,
Tina

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Note that there are a number of utilities out there (like WinRAR etc.) that can open an ISO file - it is just another container much like a zip file. As to why you could not see the files on the -RW disk on your computer it may have been an issue with if the disk was "finalized" - the files were there, but the index may not have been written correctly. I'm not sure on that issue though, however, the files on the -RW and a -R (or +R) disk should be the same data - there is a standard structure of the files on any DVD disk - see this link for more info: http://www.videohelp.com/dvd

Also, the free VLC player can play most ISO files (at least ones you make for a DVD - ISO files can actually be an image of many different disk types including install CD's/ DVD's for example so you can save a copy of that install disk you have in case the disk itself gets lost, you can re-create it from the ISO).

Another thing to keep in mind when trying to view a DVD - many systems are configured to "auto-play" the DVD when it is inserted, which takes it away from the expected way to view it. You may need to work around auto-play when you want to view the contents of a DVD.

mikey