mhwarner

Sorry, Eric. Would love to watch it (and some of your other recent shows, as well as a few others posted by Goddi) but 130 MB is about a 3-hour download for me. I am on a wireless broadband card so I'm not usually willing to go over about a 75 mb download at most. Unfortunately, that has limited me on some of the newer shows using large video clips.

Maureen, Well done .. as usual! The photos were nicely blended with the music and I especially love your detail shots. Gorgeous colors. You were fortunately to have had such nice weather. Another keeper. Thanks for sharing!

From my perspective, tutorials and templates are the best means of learning to use the more sophisticated features of PTE (or any other program for that matter). But consider Photoshop. It comes with a manual (Help file/system). Actually, the latest version doesn't even include one in the download. It's online only at the moment with a downloadable version "coming in June" (maybe late June?). But I digress. That's pretty much all that you get from Adobe included in the cost of the program -- a program I might add that has more features and can do more things with pictures and other graphics than most of us can learn in our lifetime. However, there is a huge third-party market (some free, some not) providing books, classes, tutorials, actions, templates, etc., not the least of which is NAPP -- an entire empire built around teaching Photoshop. If you just want to edit a picture, resize it, sharpen, color correct, etc., you can find that in the Adobe manual. If you really want to learn how to do something more sophisticated, you're pretty much on your own, but you can usually find the answer somewhere on the internet or in one of the many books or tutorials. I think it's the same, on a much lesser scale, with PTE. I think the manual gives you enough details to create a basic slideshow, include a video or two and do some animations. Beyond that, you either need to experiment or spend some time here reading the postings and downloading the templates of the very clever people who have taken the time to learn these tricky things and are willing to share their knowledge. Or buy some of Dom's templates, or purchase some of Barry's tutorials or download one of the tutorials from Lin's site. Obviously, I wish it were easier to learn some of this fancy stuff in PTE, but I don't think we could ever expect Igor and his team -- for the small price of the program (which many of us paid once 10 or so years ago) -- to provide this kind of technical documentation. I'm not opposed to paying for it personally, but I just wish more 3rd party technical tutorials were available for download on demand.

Les, It looked like a really fun trip. I just loved the elephants. The sound effects were most suitable as well, although I think I might have added a bit more soft music in the background overlayed with the sound effects. Thanks for sharing this trip of a lifetime!

Just for the record, I have been playing with the video editing capabilities of the new Photoshop CS6. While probably not as sophisticated as something like Adobe Premier (don't know about it, haven't tried it), they are quite easy to master and splitting clips is a piece of cake. It certainly isn't worth paying $699 US (or whatever the full price is), but if you are considering the upgrade from CS5 and you are getting into video, it would be worth your time to look at it. There is probably nothing there that you couldn't do with PTE, but it sure is a lot easier and more intuitive (your clips come in as layers and you can rearrange them by rearranging the layers) and you can then export the finished clip/movie for use with PTE. You can insert fades and cross-fades and trim and you can even add and edit a soundtrack. Oh, and you can even apply adjustments (curves, levels, etc.) and layer styles to your clips. You can also add stills to the mix and there is some limited key framing to add pan and zoom to the stills. Very cool and way easier than some of the other video editing programs I have tried. If you are at all interested, there are several videos on youTube that demonstrate the capabilities:

Paul, What a lovely location. Very nice photography. Would love to visit there some day. Thanks for sharing!

Maureen, What can I add to all the compliments that have already been given? This -- and the first Venice show -- were well done and most enjoyable. Each had it's own merits and I loved them both. I especially loved the music in this latest show, though. Your photography is stunning and you have become a master at selecting images and putting them together. Thanks once again for sharing them with us!

Jean-Charles, Another fantastic show! Thank you for sharing it. Outstanding photography, appropriate music and a well put-together show. I had never heard of this area and had to go look it up on Google. How lucky you are to have been able to visit such an amazing place. This is another show I will keep and add to my collection of shows created by you. I look at all of them periodically for inspiration.

Gary, What a huge mistake! I watched this video before lunch while I was hungry and by the time it was over, I was drooling and felt like I was starving. Seriously, though, great job. I really liked the concept of the overlayed videos. Any chance you would share the PTE file minus the videos? I'm thinking I could use something similar for my rafting videos. Also, just wondering ... do you buy the food there to take home and cook or do they cook it for you and you eat it on the spot? I did try not to think too much about what our local health departments might think of the operation. Anyway, thanks for sharing.

Although I expect Ken will probably move this since he doesn't understand or chooses to ignore the difference between importing video clips and outputting video movies of various sorts, my question is related to getting video clips into PTE. I have about 40 short AVCHD clips from a Panasonic TS3 that I took on a Grand Canyon rafting trip. The file extension is MTS. PTE doesn't seem to be able to read them. They are pixelated and have strange looking gray blobs when viewed. Using the video converter doesn't seem to help. Yet I have several other AVCHD clips from a Panasonic DMC-ZS3 that seem to work fine. The software which came with the camera allows me to convert them to MPeg2, but that sort of defeats the purpose of capturing HD. Assuming it is just a problem with PTE not supporting the file type (why does it support one and not the other), I would appreciate it if anyone could suggest a free or relatively low cost coversion or video editing program that would allow me to get these clips into a format which PTE actually understands. I am attaching a very small clip (actually one I plan to trash)in the hopes that one of you video experts might have a suggestion for converting it to something useable00028.zip. Thanks in advance.

Wow! It's so hard to pick. There have been so many great ones -- Maureen Platt's shows, those by Patrick Bantzhaff, the American Southwest shows by Cagney and the narrated Norway costal voyage by Mark Allen, to recall a few of my favorites. This one, however, made a big impression the first time I watched it and it is one I have gone back to from time to time for inspiration. I can't even imagine the amount of work that went into putting it together. La Creation by Jean-Charles Pizolatto: http://diapositif.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32386 (click on the "Telecharger" button to download).

I would agree. Either the author of the show's description is intriguing enough to make you download it, or it's not or not. When you start the download, it tells you how big it is. If you're now willing to download a show that big, stop the download. I admit to stopping most downloads above about 70MB unless I have previously downloaded shows that I like from the author or unless it sounds like a really interesting show. If the slideshow is great, I could care less about the details other than where it was taken. My two cents, but I really think some of you folks need to get a life. And Ken, you really need to quit shouting. I thought this was a civilized forum.

And I would like to point out that if you use Bill's site at all (posting or downloading), there is a button at the top which allows you to easily make a donation of any size via Pay Pal for the maintenance and upkeep of the site. If you haven't ever contributed, think about doing so. We would hate to ever lose this excellent resource! Thanks again Bill for keeping it going!

Hi Dom, I enjoyed your show and I really liked the presentation style. My only comment is that I did not feel like the reflections enhanced the show and found them a bit distracting. Thanks for sharing.

Gary, I downloaded and played the show on my Windows 7 x64 Home Premium machine with no problem. Barry, Beautiful photos. You said that you just photographed them in ordinary places where anyone would have access. I can't imagine seeing that many amazing looking birds outside of a zoo here in the US. Australia must be an amazing place. Were some of those birds kookaburras (not sure of the spelling)? Anyway, thanks for the presentation. It inspired me to grab a long lens and be on the lookout the next time I'm around birds that are more colorful that the large black ravens we have around here.

Hi Gary, I enjoyed your latest show, although it was perhaps a bit long. While I enjoyed the many views of temples, the thing that caught my attention most was the kind and amount of stuff that people are able to carry on their bicycles and motorscooters (the pig was really amazing). I wondered a bit about safety while looking at these temples and noticing the number of wood and other props to shore up the buildings. More than anything I was impressed by the fact that these places were built so very long ago by a society that had far less than us in the way of technology. My only comment was that in some of the verticals there was a bit of distortion (not sure if it is considered "pincushon" or "barrel" distortion) from what I assume to be a wide angle lens. You might try using a standalone lens correction filter or one of the lens correction filters in Photoshop. Anyway, thanks for sharing this series. It must have been a fantastic trip and I'm sure your slideshows don't begin to cover all of the amazing sites you must have seen.

Nicely done, Jeff. I loved the javalinas! The photos were beautiful as well -- especially the sunrises/sunsets. My only complaint was that the navigation bar detracted a bit for me. Maybe there's a way I could have turned it off? I had hoped to make it over to the Bosque last November, but family issues intervened. Maybe next year. Thanks for sharing this

Gary, The easiest way to create a background might be to take a portion of the vertical and crop it to a size that would fill the whole screen area. Then use a Gaussian blur, a motion blur or some other blur to make it mostly unrecognizable. Then overlay the vertical over top. You would then have virtually the same colors but the blur would eliminate any distraction. You could add a shadow to the overlayed vertical. Just a thought.

Gary, I liked this one much better! What an incredible place and what an incredible flower! I think the music was quite appropriate (and very soothing). In this case, I think the videos did add to the overall experience. I guess we will always disagree on mixing horizontals with verticals (at least without some sort of background on which to overlay them). I understand the need for inserting them, but I always find the stark transitions a bit disconcerting. I loved your little treehouse as well. The one thought that ran through my mind while watching was that the bugs must have been awful. Thank you for sharing this. I'm sure it was a wonderful trip. I look forward to more in the series.

Gary, Indeed this lake looks like a beautiful place. However, I found the transitions in the show to be a bit too abrupt and to be honest, I didn't think the video really added much to the presentation. I would have been happy with just the stills (left on the screen a bit longer) but that's just my opinion. Just as an aside, though, since I have not yet attempted to add video to a show, is there no way to minimize these videos so that the overall size of the file is smaller? I am on a wireless broadband connection and 130 MB is not something I would consider downloading on a regular basis. I realize I am in the minority, but I'm guessing there are others out there like me. I would love to look at your Khoa Sok video but I just attempted it and learned that on my connection it would take 1 hour and 45 minutes. Not an option for me this evening. But, I guess if you are typically creating a show like this to be shown locally to friends and family, it's not a big deal. Anyway, thanks for sharing your efforts.

Another keeper, Maureen! Like mother, like son? Great photography and I love the way you blended the aurora images at the end. Compliments to both of you.

Andrew, Great show. I loved it! Wonderful opening slides and very nice presentation. You have some excellent photos, both colorful and sharp with interesting lighting, which I am assuming were probably taken under sometimes difficult conditions. Thanks for the tour. A definite keeper!

Dave, Thanks for taking the time to put this together. I do have a question. From your experience, or that of anyone else who has tried it, how does the quality of this method compare to connecting a laptop to the TV via HDMI cable and running an EXE on the laptop (which is my normal and maybe lazy method)? I realize that this method means you couldn't easily distribute the show to others.

Thanks all! These are photos of the riders I took as the photographer on a week-long trail ride recently. In addition to photos, I sold DVDs of a slideshow of the ride with music and titles. It's not something I am interested in watching or displaying for friends (and certainly not anything folks on the forum would be interested in seeing). I only wanted to make sure it could be seen on the least common denominator TV (as I know it would resize if someone displayed the DVD on a computer). What I ended up doing is batch resizing the photos to 1536x1024 (which didn't require any cropping). I set the PTE project options to 4:3, added a background photo and then set "80% of the slide to show main images". That way, depending on the user's display, I believe at least the photo itself will show. I burned a 4 image DVD of the show and played it on my HDTV with my DVD player (rather old) and the main images displayed with a slight bit of the background at the bottom and a larger piece at each side (it's a piece of wood, so it looked ok). On my PC, the DVD shows the whole screen as I see it in PTE. When doing my own shows for display I set them up to display properly on my laptop and then run them through an HDMI cable to the TV. Thanks again to all for the help and suggestions.

Thanks for the quick reply, Dave! The was a setting I had forgotten about.