[Controling Zoom Speed]

I felt my last reply was too long so I opted to send this separately.

Xaver wrote:

Regarding this forum, your expectations should be not too high. Of course, you can ask particular technical questions, and there are some users who will give you very useful hints (but not all users who rush in with their comments may turn out to be really helpful. You must decide for yourself which ones are good and which ones are not )

If you look at the comments on slideshows you will often read something like "Love it", "Nice pictures", etc. Comments of that kind may be well-intentioned, but they are useless, as well. You do not learn anything from that kind of remarks. On the other hand, if you try to be clinical and express what see (provided that you are in the position to see something) people will start to mock on you. So isn't it the best thing to say something nice or nothing at all?

First off let me say that I have never been disappointed when asking technical questions on this forum. The amount of patience is terrific. They seem to want to make sure you understand their answers. If the answer is does not work then I have a starting place to find the correct answer. If the answer works, then life is good and we march on.

Regarding comments on slide shows. I hope I can convey clearly my feelings on this.

I do not comment a lot on slide shows because I am new to this and I may not understand what they were trying to convey if anything. If there are some technical problems with the photos I may bring it up but then again I may not because I am not familiar with their style. Whether we realize or not we all have a style, even if it is copied. My style in slide shows is part copied and part my own and as I gain more experience my style will evolve completely just as my photography has evolved over the years. But I digress. Back to comments.

There is nothing wrong with "Love it" or "Nice pictures" it is a slap on the back, an acknowledgement of your work. Useless? Perhaps, but an acknowledgement never the less.

Now should someone come along and say "I hated your show" without further explanation that would not make sense.

Look, Mary and Mick were nice enough to comment on my show.

The first thing I noticed was that they were sincere and that a couple of the negatives were similar which told me that there could be a problem. One was the fast zooms which prompted this thread and the other that stood out to me was that I had some photos that appeared to be the same with slight variation. OK, I said to myself. This is just a difference of artistic license, I mean I spent over 5 hours on this show, 1 1/2 hours on the music alone not counting the processing time so I knew they were wrong.

However, I went back to the show and replayed it through their eyes and you know what? They were right! Their experience won out over my inexperience.

You said "So isn't it the best thing to say something nice or nothing at all?"

Of course it's the best thing to say something nice. But when asked why not do as Mary and Mick had done? Say something nice and provide a negative without being negative. Especially if asked. If a person does not ask for a critique then I may just give a pat on the back if I am sincere about it. I would not say "great job" if I did not mean it.

Steven

[Controling Zoom Speed]

Eric wrote:

Re your 6 second animated shot, is that 6 seconds plus transitions & animation? If it is I would only use a setting like that for a trick shot. I try to make my animated shots at least minimum of 12 seconds including transitions.

I tried several different ways using the 6 seconds, then 10 seconds, the 15 seconds etc. I did this to see if I could actually see a difference in the speed between the 2 methods. In other words I was in my play field experimenting.

Also many of the experienced users don't download every show posted. Nowadays I only download those that get plenty of acclaim.

I never expected everyone to download the show. What I was commenting on was 41 downloads and only 2 comments. Please see my reply to Xaver for a further explanation. I will reply to him right after I post this reply.

Finally, don't assume your show will be more acceptable because it has lots of animation, most of us made that mistake,.

I do not animate for the sake of animating. I use animation to enhance the photo or what I am trying to convey. Am I successful all of the time? Not by a long shot.

I have been shooting pictures since I was a kid back in the 1950's so does that make me an expert photographer? Nope. Why? Because if I am trying to convey a particular style or story line it is my interpretation and the viewer may not understand what I am trying to convey (although most do with most being the operative word here) and I suspect that using PTE will follow the same line.

It's like riding a bike, once you've learned, you want to go faster & faster

Funny you would use that analogy. You see when I was a kid and I first learned to ride my 2 wheel bike I was riding down the sidewalk one day peddling faster and faster when all of a sudden a woman pushing a wide baby carriage appeared in front of me. I had 3 choices: go into the street and hit a parked car, hit a steel pole imbedded in the concrete sidewalk, or hitting the baby carriage. I chose the pole and as I was explaining to my dad why I chose the pole (I was pretty proud of that) as he was looking at the damage to the bike (I pushed the fork into the frame) he calmly looked at me and said " You had a 4th choice. Why didn't you hit the brakes?"

Barry wrote:

I think you have touched on one of THE most common faults in slide shows even those made by the experts on this forum with regards to animation. Any animations we create must move at the same speed as the flow of our slide show and the music will determine that. (its why I can never understand those who say. Your images should have been on the screen longer so I can see them) THEY CAN'T BE ON SCREEN LONGER, because their duration is largely determinded by the chosen music. Its why its called AUDIO VISUAL !.

Anyway, you very often see a smooth flowing slide show then a rapid pan appears that looks out of place, then the show returns to the smooth flowing static slide show with the next slide. Lin has already given the solution as have others. To slow down animation, you either need to allow more time for the animation to run its course, or you need less animation. In full screen animations like a zoom/pan sitting between two static slides, all you need is to move the static slide on the right along the timeline. Give the animation more time to run, therefore it will run slower. The alternative is not to animate the image quite so much. IMHO the tendency is to create more movement/animation than is necessary, so there is one place to start when slowing down animation.

In more complex animations using smaller images and text in layers, rather than full screen images or as well as, the distance between Keypoints is what you need to control speed.

To add complexity, we then have the animation speed controls via the Objects and Animation screen > Animation tab. If you set the option to slow down the animation it can also upset the speed balance between your animation and music. By adjusting that speed control, your animation must start off faster, if it is to slow down at the end. I have found many times that this faster take off of my animation is enough to affect the smooth running of the slide show. It just looks and sounds odd when being viewed. The simple answer is to do what has already been suggested. Give a little more time or take away a little of the animation. Move it less.

I agree to the point that I have copied this text into my tutorials folder as a reminder of what I need to look for. Thank you.

Steven

[Selecting multiple slides in time line 7.5]

I am sure Steven will clear things up, but I think he maybe talking about adding images on the fly. If I am right he is working in the time line and you could click and drag to highlight the images you wanted and then cut the transitions. In 7.5 you now cannot do that as as already suggested you have to use the shift key and click technique.

Am I right Steven, that your clearing the images from the timeline so you can add them on the fly?

HI,

Yes, you are 100% correct. In fact, if I am not mistaken I learned this from your tutorials and once I got used to it really liked it.

Using shift+click does not give me a selection window either so it appears that I will have to shift+click the range of slides to move.

Too bad this method was removed.

Steven

[Selecting multiple slides in time line 7.5]

Hi Folks,

I don't want to be a bother with dumb questions but this is somewhat frustrating to me.

In version 7.0 I could press and hold my left mouse button to select several slides then move them out of the way (cut transition point) I learned this through one of the tutorials I purchased and found it to be very convenient.

In PTE 7.5 I am unable to do this as there is no window when I try to make a selection with the mouse.

I know I can use click and control or shift to do the same thing but it is not as fast or convenient.

Is there a setting that I missed? Or was this feature left out? I went through the preferences menu as well as the project options menu and could not find anything

Steven

[Controling Zoom Speed]

Maybe you should try my way, you may be surprised />, let's see what steven has to say. />

Yachtsman1.

Oh Boy! Nothing like feeling that I am in middle of a couple of football linebackers (U.S. style) huh? I am too old and too new to PTE to be crushed! ( I am just kidding of course).

Eric,

I took your method and cut and pasted it so it was listed in steps so I would not make a mistake.

Then I went to PTE (7.5), did a "save as" of the show in question (Fall in PA), found a slide that was about 6 seconds long, zoomed to 400 so the fast speed would be obvious, viewed it without changing time, deleted the keyframes then tried your method.

I will be honest here. I kept going back and forth about a dozen times trying to see if there was a difference or not and while I thought there was I really don't think so.

Is it possible that the version may have something to do with it? I don't know, however when I extend the slide time to 35 seconds I of course see a marked difference.

At first when I published the show here I immediately said to myself that it was just a difference in artistic license but when 2 very experienced PTE users mentioned that plus my own misgivings before I uploaded it I knew they were correct. I just did not want to extend the time because I had the music laid out the way I wanted it. Next time I will extend timing.

Unfortunately out of 110 views and 41 downloads of the show I have only received 2 comments which tells me that new folks either get the brush off or the show was not good enough to comment on so I shall keep trying to improve.

Steven

[Controling Zoom Speed]

Lin: I had a feeling that was what you were going to say but I was kind of hoping that there was a gold nugget some where in PTE so I would not have to extend the time of the show.

Eric: I just got home from work and will try your method first thing tomorrow. Thanks for the tip.

Steven

[Controling Zoom Speed]

Hi Steven,

The distance between the keyframes is the way to control the speed of the zoom. The "smooth, slow, accelerate," etc., are ways of controlling the ratios of change within the parameters of two keyframs, but they do not control the "speed" of the zoom. For example, if you use smooth without changing the distance between keyframes, the zoom will begin very slowly and end very slowly

but will be quicker between the end of the slow start and the beginning of the slow end than a "linear" zoom. If you use "slow" the zoom will begin in linear fashion but slow toward the end while the actual time between keyframes will remain the same as if you had used linear. If you use accelerate, the zoom will start slowly and continue to speed up until the end. The overall time allotted to the zoom will be the same as if it were linear. So to make the zoom slower, you move the start and end keyframes further apart on the timeline.

Best regards,

Lin

Hello Lin,

OK, I had the beginning key frame at the beginning and the ending keyframe was all the way to the end. It sounds like what I should have done was extend the time of the slide from say 13 seconds to around 26 seconds to get the slower zoom.

Correct?

[Controling Zoom Speed]

Hi Folks,

I published a show over in the Slideshows created in PicturesToExe forum and received a critique that my zooms in a few areas were too fast.

While part of the critique was that my zoom for a particular slide was too close and zoomed way out I guess you could say that is what I wanted exactly but the poster was right on the money in regards to the speed being too fast.

I did use the slow feature in the objects and animation tab but it did not seem to help that much. I even played with adjusting the graph but again there was no appreciable change.

The slide was 13 seconds long.

Is there a way to control the speed of a zoom (or pan) in PTE other then the slow button or slide length?

Thanks,

Steven

[2012, Croatia]

Hello Patrick,

I watched this show some time ago but am only now replying. I really enjoyed this show. Your photos are splendid and was a very moving experience for me as I have never been to that part of the world.

Thank You,

Steven

[AUTUMN LEAVES]

Hi Mick,

I finally was able to watch the show and throughly enjoyed it. The music, the photography as well as your interpretation in putting it all together.

Steven

[Fall in PA]

Good Morning,

Mary Wrote:

I would have liked to have seen some more closeups or details of the beautiful leaves mixed in with the landscapes, though

I agree and that is what I wanted to do but as you can see from the closeup of the leaves in the beginning of the show they were on the way out. I had to close up a lot of holes in that 1 shot in my image editor as it was. We had had some pretty bad weather prior to what we shot with a lot of rain and wind as well as the tail end of hurricane Sandy so I was stuck with what I had. Maybe next year I hope.

Thank you for you for your comments both good and those to help me improve. I find that I am really enjoying making slide shows.

Mickp Wrote:

zooms a bit on the fast side and went from too close to too far away and they could have been spread more evenly throughout the show.

You are quite right about the fast zooms and to be very honest I just could not figure out how to slow them down unless I added more time to the slide. Learning how to do that is on my to do list.

Thank you for your comments as it all will contribute to my learning experience in learning PTE.

I look forward to seeing your show about Autumn Leaves.

I do want to take the time in thanking Barry Beckham for his great tutorials. Although I cannot afford to purchase the disks I have downloaded and purchased individual tutorials from his site of those areas I needed.

Also a thanks to Lin Evans for his free tutorials and that terrific manual from version 5. I wish someone would publish an updated version like that in English so new folks like me could get a better grip on PTE. I am not knocking the guide here but let's be honest it is just a guide as opposed to a manual. The guide got me started but just when I need a deeper explanation it leaves me hanging which is why I wish there was a manual.

Steven

[Fall in PA]

Hi Folks,

Link:

http://www.mediafire...i3wl674abjlc40a

Show specs: about 35MB download, 5 minutes, 20 seconds long, 33 slides, 16:9 aspect ratio.

Most of the pictures were taken from my "backyard". We live on 16 acres with a small mountain behind (it's called the endless mountains).

Others were taken from a road behind the ridge and the rest was shot at Mt. Pisgah County park outside of East Troy, PA. A couple were shot in NY.

I figured that after receiving no replies for my first show that it must have been pretty bad so I went back to the drawing board so to speak and buried my nose into the guide and spent my birthday money on some tutorials so I hope that this is better and that you enjoy it.

Steven

[The Night of the Hunter]

Jean-Cyprien,

First I am sorry that your friend has passed away. Please accept my condolences.

I wish I had downloaded and watched this video when he had uploaded it here. I was very impressed and inspired in watching it today. In fact I had watched it twice and was as impressed watching it the second time as I was the first.

Steven

[PA Hertiage Festival 2012]

Hello,

Below is the link to my first public show called PA (Pennsylvania) Heritage Festival 2012 held in Troy PA this past September.

The show has 38 slides plus 3 videos and is 5:48 long.

The aspect ratio is 16:9

The zip file is longer then I would have liked and I am open to suggestions on how to shorten it. (151 mb).

I think part of the reason is my jpeg files may be bigger then they need to be.

I am open to suggestions as to how to make my shows better as this is only the third time making slide shows with high caliber software.

Thank You,

Steven

Edit: I realized that I Sent the wrong file so I deleted the link until I can figure out how to make a zip file for an exe file. Will do so tom tomorrow. Please accept my apology.

Steve

So much for trying to create a good impression

New link below.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?51vf22g69f4p11y

Steven

[vertical cropping]

Hi All,

As Dave mentioned there is "no right or wrong way".

I appreciate the various responses to questions posted on the PTE forum and have decided to put each reply into my bag of new found knowledge and try each one. By doing this I seem to become more comfortable in using PTE.

That, I believe is what it's all about.

Thank You,

Steven

[vertical cropping]

Hi Steven,

Unless you particularly want to show less than the full copy, you would crop the same way you would for a print. 1920 high by 1080 wide.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin,

Thanks. Being new to this I find that in some areas I may be making this tougher then it is but felt I needed to ask just in case.

Thank you,

Steven

[vertical cropping]

Hello,

When doing a show at 1920 x 1080 I know that I need to crop my images to 1920 x 1080 for horizontal images, but what would I crop the few vertical images to? Normally I would crop to 1080 x 1920 if I was doing a print but what about a slide show?

Steven

[Streaming video from your own web site]

Ray,

Played fine on 2 browsers. Firefox 16 and Opera 12.02.

Steven

[Slides to video]

Thanks guys for all the information. It will be a good beginning.

I intended to use this method for the bird show which will be after the one I am working on now. The one I am working on now will also fit time lapse.

It is about a Pennsylvania Heritage festival my wife and I attended a few weeks ago and there is an sequence of images that I took of soldiers in period costumes firing a cannon. I watched as they began pulling the cord and it took longer then I thought until the cannon went off. Way noisier then I thought it would be. As I was processing the images I was about to discard them and keep just the important ones when I began this thread for the birds. Glad I did not toss them. Hopefully when I will finish it in a couple of weeks I will be able to send a link.

Thanks again for the help.

Steven

[Slides to video]

Yachtsman1 wrote: "Just cheked your post again, are you trying to make the sequence look like video (moving pictures?"

Well, yes, sort of. I know that I can't get it exact but the sequence with their moving around is to tempting not too try. I think Peter knows what I am trying to do.

Peter wrote: "What was the time interval between each shot? Was it one long motor drive sequence or were they taken individually over several minutes (or even hours)?"

I do not remember if was motor drive or not but I remember that the sequence was done over a minute or less. I will check the EXIF data to see what information I can dig up.

Regarding stacking the photos in layers how do I get them into PTE after selecting the sequence or would I simply do a save as into individual images?

Steven

[Slides to video]

Hi,

I have a sequence of 24 slides or so that was taken with a the camera mounted on a tripod of a northern flicker family (bird) nest of the young ones sticking their heads out of a hole in a tree for their first peek of the world.

I ran the sequence as a slide show in photoshops bridge a couple of years ago and shortened the time to 1 second between slides and noted it looked pretty neat but I had no slide show software then.

Fast forward to yesterday and ran them through PTE at one half second but things seemed a bit choppy even with no transitions enabled.

Is doing something like this even possible? and if so how would I go about doing it? Is it doable in PTE?

Thank you,

Steven

[Envelope Tool (SOLVED)]

The waveforms in Project Options are the individual Waveforms - the composite Waveform is only shown in the Time Line. If you click on each clip in turn it shows the Waveform for THAT clip alone.

In V7.0.7 the only way of doing what you want is via the CUSTOMIZE - AUDIO CLIP PROPERTIES.

I hope that I have understood your "problem"?

DG

Yes, Thank you.

Steven

[Envelope Tool (SOLVED)]

Let's hold off on that until we have solved all the aspects. There's one still outstanding.

Could you please clarify exactly what your remaining concern is?

regards,

Peter

Hi Peter,

I am going to quote myself from message #1 to show what I meant.

When I go to project options, and press the waveform button for music 'A' the timeline begins at zero up to 4 :40 and will not go any further.

When I select music 'B' it goes from zero to about 3:15.

What I want the waveform to show is 4:26 to 4:42 so I can put in my key frames to shorten the time between them. I will also need to do this between music '2' and '3'

The point here is that the expanded waveform will not allow me to bring to the center of the waveform where selection 'A' ends and selection 'B' begins.

Steven

[What customers say about PTE AV Studio]

Hello,

I am new to doing slide shows in general. I have been involved in photography since the early 60's (the year not my age ) in all aspects from behind the lens to final processing. My wife is especially happy about the digital darkroom as I don't smell from hypo anymore.

As for producing slide shows it was something I could live without.
I had a couple of quickie and cheap programs for when my wife or a family member wanted one but there was never any excitement about getting serious about it.

About 6 months ago I watched a show produced by one my wife's relatives and started to become really interested when I saw some of the effects that could be done.
By the way, it was a competing product.
Being on fixed income I started to save up the $69.00 for that program (sneaky way of not telling which product but you now know which one )

As I was ready to spring for the program I wanted to see what else was out there in my price range.

What was out there was one of the best slide show producing software packages I have come across.
Pictures to Exe. Yup! that was the one I wanted. It seemed to be what I needed and after playing with the free download version for a week my wife noticed a creative side to me that I had not noticed. It seems that PTE has awakened a creative side to me that had fallen asleep years ago.

I find the software to be easy if you are in a hurry to get a show up but also rich in features worth digging into that no other programs that I have run across. In other words you can produce a quicky show or compete with the best of the best. Hats off and a bow to Igor Kokarev for the job he has and is doing.

I finished my first show about a week ago of 108 slides, set to music and enjoyed by those who watched it.
Was it easy? Well, yes and no. Just ask some of the forum members who helped me through the resizing and resolution process. They stayed with me until I got it.
One of the many reasons that I got PTE over the other is the support and forums. Generally before I get a piece of software I check out the forums to see what kind of support I can get if needed and how much negativity there is. After all, we are trying to help one another are we not? The WnSoft forums is one of the best forums I have come across. Thank you. You are down home folks whom I would be proud to get to know.

As long winded as this is getting there is one other person I need to thank.
Lin Evans. We have never met, but I know you through your tutorials. You are articulate, thorough, and concise in those tutorials.
Being on fixed income as I mentioned earlier those free tutorials have helped me across a lot of bumps and helped me to learn PTE. You have also shown me that I have a long way to go to become proficient in PTE and as I save up for some really great pay type tutorials I hope to become a person where friends and family are chomping at the bit to see one of my shows.

I am looking forward learning 7.5 as well. I have not had this much fun in a long time. Thanks.

Steven

[Envelope Tool (SOLVED)]

Hello Peter,

Peter wrote:

You have presented among your screen captures one that showed three items in a single track and later, one that showed two items, each in their own track.

The reasons that you see this in the various captures is due to the results of trying various things to try to iron out the problem to which nothing has worked.

Peter wrote:

when you had all three items in one track and were hearing 12 seconds of silence between the end of piece #1 and the start of piece #2, did you ever consider the possibility that this silence was part of the actual recordings?

I think you have hit the nail on the head with this one. I never even considered it and I believe you are correct. I will check it tonight.

I may have sounded somewhat vague about uploading to the forum because not only is this my second show but it is for my wife's family and while there is nothing inappropriate I do not have permission from everyone to post to the forum.

I did sign up for Mediafire last night and was going to send the link to Lin but had to cut it short as I have to work today. Even though I am retired (I am 67) I need to work part time and am going through some medical issues at the same time which does not allow me the time I need to troubleshoot like I used to.

I really love this program and have gotten every tutorial that I could to learn it (can't afford the pay ones right now) and when I saw the one that Lin put out on the envelope tool I did not realize that I would not be able to pick the part of the timeline that I needed to work on so now I am learning the audio properties box (which is a good thing).

I appreciate your input as I believe that will answer the problem and you have given me another valuable lesson in using PTE.

I am editing this as I forgot to mention that Lin has been a great inspiration to me and the fact that he stuck with me through this is proof that not only have I purchased the right program, but the folks here on this forum are second to none. Further proof is that you were willing to post something that as an inexperienced user of slide show programs never even considered.

Thanks

Steven