starfish

Ken, et al... Sorry my URL was giving you trouble. I may have capitalized that "S" in Sharon when I listed it. But...I am here, now. What can I help you with? Sharon

Hi, Thanks for all the comments. For those who like slow and easy, well...this isn't a slideshow, it's an animation. I like slow and easy for slide shows, too. For the record, I have done a few slow and easy fractal shows, but don't have any up on my site just yet. The problem with posting PTE shows online is that for people like me, with a dialup system, it takes forever to upload them...and to download them for viewing, too. When I get broadband (whenever that is, here in this little town) I'll go hog wild. As for morhphing, I have done it. It's a pain in the ___. :-) But, fun too. But it's very slow going, because to get a good morph you have to come up with as many matching points as possible. Someone asked what size the pictures were. The short answer to that is, TOO BIG. I have learned better, however, and won't repeat that mistake again. Anyway, thanks again. It's all a learning experience. Sharon

P. S. Sequencers I use are Cakewalk and Power Tracks Pro Audio. Sharon

Sigh...It was synched with the music on my machine. I have done some MIDI music on my computer, and synth, but not lately. I've been spending most of my time on graphics. Sharon

Hi, I have put up a new fractal animation on a private page on my website. Here is the URL: http://www.fractalus.com/sharon/anims/exeanims.htm This animation is an 8 MB download. It uses MIDI music, as MP3 would have brought the size up to 11+MB. The animation is of a sliced 3D quaternion fractal, mirrored on the X and Y axis to give a kaleidoscopic effect. What you will be seeing if you d/l the file is slices of a 3D fractal, turning inward upon itself. Sharon

Guido, You would think that classical music from 100 or more years ago is not under copyright, but that is not the case. The performers of the piece can hold copyright for their renditions. For example, although Tchaikovski is not under copyright, Van Cliburn's rendition of him is. Sharon (Starfish)

Final note: "Jazz"...my fractal animation, is now ready for download from http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/index.asp Sharon

Guido, Never mind. :-) I just realized that the first link you gave was the upload link. duh. :-) Thanks. Sharon

Guido and all, Just went to the URL you gave, and that is where I have been before. The URL is for downloading, but where is the URL for uploading? Thanks. Sharon

Guido, Thank you. I had been to the Beechbrook site many times, but never saw any mention of uploading. Sharon (Starfish)

Hi, I have a fractal animation I can share with members if any would like to see it. It's a sample from a fractal animation CD I'm creating. Is there some place for members to upload files like this? It is large---3.5 MB. It would have been bigger, but I have substituted MIDI music for the MP3 file I plan to use later. If so, please let me know where. The animation is a "dive" into a sliced quaternion fractal made into a kaleidoscope. Thanks. Sharon (Starfish)

Bart, Another oops...you're right. :-) Sharon

Question: Can beta 4.0 be installed over the previous version? or should the previous version be deleted first? Sharon

Yes, thanks. I know. However, when I am running slides as videos, each slide displays for extremely short periods...that is, anywhere from 2 to 20 microseconds, so that a file of say, 35 slides would run through in an extremely short time. Therefore, I would have to make hundreds of copies of the slides for each animation. Without a search and count function for segments in PTE, that would make putting together a show designed to run for an hour so unwieldy as to be nearly impossible. The show would end up with 10,000 lines or more in the code. To make this even more impossible would be to try and get the numbers right to sync to the music. What I'm trying to say here is that while the music sync feature works well with normal slides which each display for five or six seconds, it doesn't work at all with slides set for microseconds when the ability to loop segments is not implemented. This could be solved easily IF there were a way to loop segments of the show instead of just the entire show. But thanks. :-) Sharon

Oops... I should have mentioned that the lines... [autorun] open=start.exe icon=start.ico ...presuppose that your main P2E .exe start file is named "start." If not, adjust accordingly. Sharon

Open Notepad and copy this in: [autorun] open=start.exe icon=start.ico Save the file as autorun.txt Then include it along with your other files and the CD will boot automatically. Sharon (Starfish)

Nobeefstu, Thanks so much for your input. Unfortunately, without a timing function, I don't think autolink would get me anywhere, because it sounds as if one .exe would play indefinitely unless escape was pressed to go to the next. That is about where I am now, with using the menu. The only difference, I think, is that autolink would then go on to the next .exe rather than returning to the P2E menu. That is an improvement, but what I'm trying to do is get rid of the necessity for mouse clicking and let the show run all by itself. Sigh. Gee...if only there were a function in P2E where you could direct it to loop, for example, slides 42-72 for so many times or minutes and then proceed.... Maybe someday.... Thanks, again. Sharon Fractal Images by Sharon Webb

Hi, Another question about autolink. Can looped .exe files be specified to run for a given length of time? This would be necessary, or else they would just run once and be over in a few seconds. And, if so, can a different time be specified for each file? Thanks. Sharon

Hi, Thanks for all your help. Can autolink be called from an opening P2E menu? or must it be run first? And for the person who asked, here's my website: Fractal Images by Sharon Webb Sharon (Starfish10)

Hi, I don't know if there is a solution to my quest, or a workaround, but if there is I'd appreciate hearing about it. I am creating a CD of large full-screen 3D fractal animations. Each animation is first made as a video file, then disassembled into frame stacks, and imported into PTE. The technique works very well, and looks great. PTE is a great program to use with video animations because full-screen presentations are possible without distracting windows and visible controls. It is necessary for me to give each animation it's own .exe file, because each fractal loops continuously. Since there is currently no function for looping certain segments of slides independently of the rest (an addition to the program I'd like to add to the wishlist), if I were to put all the slides within one file, I would have to copy and recopy them and the resulting file would be unnecessarily large and very difficult to work with. So, I created a menu with thumbnails. When a thumbnail is clicked, the animation plays until it is exited by a left mouse click, whereupon it returns to the menu. What I would like to do---in addition---is to give the user the option of clicking a PLAY ALL button, and having an .exe file play for a specified period, then exit, load the next .exe file, and so on---without returning to the menu in between---until all are played. In this way, there could be a continuous show (it's very psychedelic :-) for about an hour's show. Is this at all possible with PTE? Or would it be necessary for me to have a programmer hook all these together? Thanks for your input. Sharon (Starfish10)

Harold, Thanks! A hard reboot fixed the problem. :-) Sharon (starfish)

Lumenlux, Thank you! Sharon (starfish)

Help, please. I've begun getting error messages this evening. Exception EAccess Violation in module P2E_PREV.EXE at 0005B19. Access violation at address 0045B199 in module 'P2E_PREV.EXE'. Read of address 0023F9DE. This began when I emptied a successful slide show of slides, and inserted different slides, in an attempt to use the show as a template. When I selected PREVIEW, I got the error message. I tried several things in an attempt to fix this problem. I moved my files to a different folder, started a New slide show. I continued to get the message. Then I tried several other existing shows which had been successfully saved previously as .exe or .scr files. Some of the older shows preview correctly. Others don't. When I try to start a new show I get the error message above. BTW, the music begins to play. I haven't tried to reinstall the program. Would this help? I REALLY hope someone has a fix for this. Thank you. Sharon (Starfish)

Hi, You said you used TMPGen for the individual .jpgs. What does this mean? What exactly does this program do? I have been to the site, and can't figure it out. Does it do anything that a regular graphics program can't do? Or...did you make a video file first, and then disassemble it in TMPGen? Thanks. Sharon (Starfish)

Guido, Thanks. I knew that no more than 72 dpi could really be seen on a monitor. What I didn't know was whether the projector might make use of it somehow, but I suppose it can't, since it's taking pictures from the screen image. Do you know whether or not a larger resolution than 1280x1024, would give a better (sharper) image with a projector? Thanks again. Sharon (starfish)