losing saved slide show

[calligrapher]

I've used Elements to create a slide show with music. Tonight I wanted to show it, but when I went back to "Open Creation" the presentation has blank slides in some places, timings have been lost and the music tracks have disappeared. Is there any way that I can recover my work and ho can I make sure it doesn't happen again? Thanks for any help!

[johnrellis]

Did you move or delete any of the photos used in the slide show, e.g. with Windows Explorer? The slide show doesn't have copies of the photos -- it just refers to their location.

[calligrapher]

Thanks for responding, John. I saved all the photos and sound into the Organiser because I had this problem once before. It seemed that by doing this I had solved the problem, but this recent experience shows that I haven't. Any further thoughts? Robert

[johnrellis]

Which version of PSE?

[calligrapher]

PSE 5. Robert

[johnrellis]

I don't have any more ideas about this, but perhaps someone else does.

[ATR]

calligrapher

If you are really doing all the required steps that you say that you are doing, namely saving your Photoshop Elements 5 slideshow as a creation to its Organizer, then we need to look at what you are putting into that slideshow as well as your computer resources to determine why the slideshow is not being saved intact.

a. How many photos are in the slideshow and what is the pixel dimensions of each? How many audio clips are included and what is the audio format?
b. How much installed/available RAM and free hard drive space does your computer have? What is your computer operating system? Is your computer optimized..defragmented, etc.?

Now let us get back to John's question...have you moved the sources files that went into this slideshow from the hard drive location where they were when you created the slideshow in the Photoshop Elements 5 slideshow editor? Specifically, if you go to the hard drive location, not the thumbnails in the Organizer, do you find those files where they were when you were creating the slideshow in the slideshow editor?

Now, let us examine the steps that you followed in saving your slideshow to the Organizer:
1. After you create the slideshow, do you go to the Slideshow Editor File Menu/Save/? After you save the slideshow, do you see a thumbnail for the slideshow in the Organizer and does that thumbnail have a tiny creation tag at the upper right corner of its Organizer thumbnail?
2. If you double click on the Organizer thumbnail (with creation tag), does the slideshow open again with all its components? Instead, if you open it via File Menu/Open Creation, do you see the unique name that you gave this slideshow? When you click on the name, does the slideshow open and does it have all its components?

You say that you have had the same issues before. What have you done in the past...recreate from scratch the slideshow from the source media (as viewed in the Organizer)?

Can you save your slideshow to a .wmv file besides saving it to the Organizer? Try it and see:
a. if your program can write the .wmv file
b. if your program can write and save the .wmv file
But, remember, you can do further edits on the Creation version of the slideshow, whereas you cannot on the .wmv version that is written.

I will be watching for your progress.

ATR

[calligrapher]

Thanks for all these questions, ATR. I'm tied up with a workshop today and over the weekend, but will get the answers to you asap after that. Appreciate your interest. Robert

[calligrapher]

Hi ATP,

Sorry for the slow answer to your questions, which are:

TOTAL 85 slides either: 965 x 646 px @ 96ppi (landscape) or 730 x 489 px @ 96ppi (portrait)
3 audio clips .WMA 5,6, 6 AND 7mb respectively
OS is Vista. Info says that I have 27.6 of 55.7GB of Vista (C) space and 50.1 free 54.5GBof data space. It auto defragments each week.

I have copied the pictures into the organizer from my Pictures folder using File>Get Photos>From Files and Folders. These pictures are still there in the Pictures folder as well as in the Organizer.

Re saving. As I go along I regularly click on "Save Project" and then when I have reached a significant stage I go Save As and give the project a name. A creation tag appears. In the past, I found that I had lost material between final saving and re-opening via File Menu/Open Creation. It was for this reason that I started saving all material into the organizer. Whilst I was in the process of editing the show it all remained there, but when I came to look at it again recently several pictures were missing and all the audio.

I can't remember how I re-created in the past, but at that time I might well have brought the pictures directly into the sequence from the Pictures File. Revcently, I have been able to re-create from the Organizer.

I have successfully made DVD's from this kind of presentation. I am currently attempting to save as .wmv. It seems to be doing this OK, but I don't know where it will be saved to.

Robert

[ATR]

Robert,

I just did a quick read of your details, and the first thing that caught my attention was the very low amount of free hard drive space (27.6 GB) with which you are working. You need to up that amount significantly. Computer files cleanup time. Do you have an external hard drive (format NTFS, not FAT32) that you can use to free up your internal hard drive space? That other drive that you mentioned...I believe that is a drive that Vista uses for its Vista operating files (I have Windows XP, not Vista).

I do not recall seeing how much available RAM that you have. That is something else that needs looking into in Vista's System Information.

ATR

[calligrapher]

Sorry - this isn't helping with the real issue of whether I can recover lost work. Should I assume I can't?

I only used the laptop with its small amount of space for this presentation because it was the one I was going to link up with my projector. So far, I haven't seen a way to make a presentation on my PC and then transfer it to the laptop when I want to project it. (My PC has lots of space, RAM etc and is XP. (I hate Vista, but all that was available in my price range at the time).

The .wmv file wrote OK. Can I transfer .wmv's? If that's possible, I'd work from my PC, which would be better all round.

Robert

[Barb O]

The .wmv file wrote OK. Can I transfer .wmv's? If that's possible, I'd work from my PC, which would be better all round.

Robert

Yes you can transfer a .wmv file of a PSE slideshow from your PC to your laptop.

When you do the PSE slideshow editor Output command to a wmv file, you choose the Windows folder to which it will be saved and the result is a normal WMV format file.

To transfer the .wmv file of the slideshow (from the folder on your PC where you saved it) to your laptop - either use a USB flash drive as a transfer medium or if your hard drives are shared on the network just copy the .wmv file.

[ATR]

Robert,

I see that you have been made aware that you can transfer a .wmv file from computer to computer via a USB Jump Drive (Flash Drive) and other means. So, now you can plan your strategy accordingly.

With your very last post, your situation between laptop and desktop clarified.

I was very pleased to learn that you did create and save a .wmv version of your slideshow. But, I would ask "Did you remember to play attention to the File Sizing in the dialog just before the writing of the .wmv file (executed via Slideshow Editor/Output/Save As File, Movie File (.wmv)?" If not, your .wmv frame size could be 320 x 240, 720 x 480, or etc).

As for any lost earlier work, if saving did not occur because of a laptop resource issue, then what you wanted to save is lost. But, is there any possibility that you saved, but just did not keep track of the save location. If that is the case, maybe a Windows Explorer search might turn up some prior versions of the slideshow (as Save As).

Be sure to give yourself enough time to check out what you have, using your laptop and projector (if that is your means of showing the .wmv file). Please let us know the outcome. Good luck.

ATR
(By the way, are you using the same version of Photoshop Elements (v5) in laptop and desktop computers?)