Thanks for the shell scripts, they work great and with a bit of editing, work with xine too. I still have the problem that 1)The bloke wants the last frame to freeze- I don't think this is possible unless you capture the last frame and tell the script to show the appropriate last frame i.e. clip11 slows lastframe11 is this possible? Is there any way of getting it to display the last frame as a sep command i.e. show clip11 show last frame of clip 11 wait for input show clip 12 show last frame of clip12 it's also essential that you don't see the desktop, although I could rig this to just be blank. 2)I can't find a blank avi I am using powerpoint at the moment :@ which is so damn slow on processing the avi files. it sucks BIG TIME. It basically makes the video unusable, as it plays slower than it should, about 30% of the frames are dropped and it just looks awful. The way powepoint works, it takes 3-4 seconds for the next clip to load, missing the cue and making the video look unprofessional. Any advice other than banging my head against a brick wall (or rather windows). Haha no pun intended...