starfish

Igor, I think I have found the problem. :-) I did not realize that V. 4.12 had added and selected advanced hour hand settings to my show, because they did not show up until I scrolled the page. When I disabled these, the shows work properly. I don't know why the pre-saved settings I had for my show didn't carry over to the newest version. Thanks for your interest. Sharon

Igor, Thanks. The shows work well with V. 4.12. I did not install V. 4.14, but went directly to V. 4.20, where the animations became extremely sluggish. I reinstalled 4.12 and no problem. The pictures are 800x600 and show full screen. My screen resolution is 1024 x 768. I can send you .exe or .pte files, but they are larger than your limit of 4 MB. I would have to remove the MP3 files from them in order to bring them down to your required size. I did not save my files as .exe in V. 4.20, because of the way they displayed as .pte files. Sharon

Igor, I am not using any transitions. I have set each slide (100 of them) to a few ms and am allowing the slide show to cycle continuously while an MP3 music file plays. I would like to be able to time the show to run x number of cycles, but PTE does not allow for that as yet, so the user must press ESC to end it. I am running an AMD Athlon 1700+ machine under Win 2000. I have 1 GB of memory and plenty of disk space. As my first letter indicated, these shows run fine under the previous build of PTE, but slow down drastically in the current build. Thanks. Sharon

Hi, I've been working on some fractal animation slide shows, and had them working beautifully in v. 12. When I downloaded and installed the new beta, the same shows did not run properly. The animations slowed down to a crawl. When I reinstalled the earlier version, they worked properly again. Sharon Fractal Images by Sharon Webb

Guido, Thanks! And I hope he doesn't think I'm demanding money, either. Sharon

Here is a Babel Fish translation of an email from France I got: Dear friend, We are in the train of preparer the Festival of Diaporama DIGITAL, demonstration photographic "noncommercial" which counts the patronage of the International Federation of Photographique(FIAP) Arts. We would like to show to the Jury your slide show "Fractal Avi & GIF-SAMPLER". We will esperons to take into account your participation. In waiting of your answer. Photographic friendships. ----------------------------- The original email said: Cher ami, Nous sommes en train de preparer le Festival de Diaporama Digital, manifestation photographique "non commerciale" qui compte le patronage de la Federation Internationale d'Arts Photographique(FIAP). Nous aimerions montrer au Jury votre slide show "Fractal Avi & gif-sampler". Nous esperons compter avec votre participation. Dans l'attente de votre réponse. Amities photographiques __________________________ And I answered (courtesy of Babel Fish): Oui. Vous pouvez montrer ma projection de diapositives. Veuillez me donner le crédit pour lui quand il est montré. ------------------------------------------- I have no idea what I told him. And I have no idea how ungrammatical it may be. Can somebody give me a translation? And in case I promised him my first born child, does this qualify as a binding contract? :-) Sharon

I'm sure Granot can help you with this, because I have a couple of his programs that show scrolling panaramas. Sharon

LumenLux, Thank you. Sharon

Paul, You could make your intro a separate .exe prg. which calls the menu which would be your second .exe. Then the menu could, in turn, call various shows. When each show finishes, have it run the menu, and you will avoid going back to the intro each time. Also, you could put an Exit button on the menu. Sharon

Guido and Ken, Thanks for the input. I remember seeing a short animation piece about the time I joined this forum. I did the sampler because there have been quite a few posts lately asking for .avi and .gif capabilities in PTE, I would like to see more, too, but I wanted to show that there is a lot that can be done with it as it stands. I do feel that the ability to loop a range of files would make everything a lot easier. :-) Sharon

Jim, Thanks. I'm glad it was helpful. Sharon

Hi, I've uploaded a new show to... Beechbrook It's called "Fractal AVI & GIF Sampler" and is a short (1 min. 40 sec) demo of how .avi and animated .gif files can be used in PTE. More details in the PTE Discussion Forum. Hope you take a look. Sharon

Hi, I have uploaded a new slideshow to Beechbrook which demonstrates how .avi and animated .gifs can be used in PTE. Here's what the readme says about it: "Fractal AVI & GIF Sampler" is a deliberately brief show of five of my .avi and animated .gif animations which have been converted to run in Pictures To EXE. I kept it short in order to decrease download time. Animations require dozens, and sometimes hundreds of slides each. Brief as it is, this one runs nearly 7 MB. The animations used are as follows: Pyramid---raytraced 3D .avi Fractal Drum---3D animated .gif Kaleidoscope---2D animated .gift Balcony---3D fractal .avi No Place To Hide---3D fractal/Poser .avi The sampler is an attempt to demonstrate that it is entirely possible to create slide shows using multiple .avi and animated .gif files in PTE, even though the prg. does not yet claim to support those functions. In order to add .avi and .gif files to PTE at present, it is necessary to break down the animations into frame stacks---in other words, to break them down into a series of individual pictures. I use Corel Painter 8 to do this, but there are freeware and shareware programs out there which can do this, too. [i can't remember any names or links to give you, but I know they have been mentioned on this Forum.] Once the animations are in frame stack form, they can be loaded as slides into PTE. It is necessary to set the slides NOT to use effects and to change quickly. The timing must also be changed to display in only milleseconds. The timing will vary according to the effect you are trying to achieve. Since there is, as yet, no looping function in PTE, if you want an animation to loop, the slides constituting the animations must be loaded several times into your show. It will also be necessary to time any music by hand instead of relying on synchronized music, as the timing of individual segments will vary. The advantage to doing animations within PTE in this way is that it gives you much more control over what your viewers see on screen. You will not have the distraction of viewing windows and controls, nor will you have the limitation of a single viewing of a given .avi, nor the endless looping of an animated .gif. Instead, by reloading the animation's slides, you can exactly control the number of times a given animation loops, and you can start and stop it anywhere. Within limits, you can also alter the size of a given animation by resizing the individual slides. Another advantage is that the animation can be placed anywhere on screen that you choose. Sharon

Hi, I posted this elsewhere, but I'm tucking it in here in the hopes that Igor will see it: Hi, PTE is a wonderful program. I have a suggestion which would make the program much more versatile. I have been experimenting for some time with using PTE for .gif and .avi animations. PTE potentially can do a wonderful job with this with a rather minor enhancement to the program. Basically, if you can break down the .gif or .avi into individual frames, PTE can handle them as animations if the display is set to a few miliseconds with no effects chosen. And it does this well. BUT...to do this in the form of useable shows with multiple animations per show, the frames need to loop. This requires the user to manually exit the loop with a mouse click, and it makes it impossible to match music length with the animation. This is where my Wish List request comes in. I would like to see one of two possible enhancements to PTE: EITHER 1. The ability to declare the length of a looping show---say for 30 seconds (or whatever an appropriate time is) at which time the show would end. This would allow the user to call another .exe at this point so that a multi animation show or a show that combined regular slides with animations could be created. It also would allow a music selection to be matched by time with the running animation. In other words, instead of the program looping endlessly, it would loop for a specified time period and then end. A timer set at the beginning of the loop, would, I think, do the trick. At the end of the time period, the program would call its End Program sequence. OR 2. Allow the user to tell the program to loop a given range of slides for a declared number of cycles before continuing with the rest of the show. This last would be preferable, because it would allow the show to be contained within one .exe file instead of many, and the show would probably be faster and smoother. Without either of these changes, the only workaround at this time that I have found is to copy/paste a number of animation slide cycles into PTE end to end. If the animation is to run within a regular slide show, then each animation slide as well as other slides must then be set --by hand-- for its specific timing in milleseconds. This is not only a laborious process, but a hit or miss way of doing things. Since even very short animations are often made up of dozens of slides, this workaround increases the size of the show immensely. The enhancements I outlined would allow shows that look much better than they would if .avi files were simply ported in, because the shows will run without the window, slider, and controls that show when an .avi files is played as an .avi, allowing a much more enticing-looking screen. Another plus is that a looping show could be set to run for a reasonable length of time instead of the very brief time an .avi runs. If you have a show which loops, such as a kaleidoscope of photos, or a photo montage, or whatever, or if you want to run a looping animated .gif (most of them loop) then the changes I outlined above would make this possible. Sharon

Hi, I _think_ that the 1280 X 960 format is the preferred size for some of the higher end projectors. Sharon