mhwarner

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.

I need to make some standard DVDs for playback on unknown systems (i.e., maybe HD, maybe not). What is the optimum (and maximum) project size I should specify for the project. I can do this by trial and error but I thought maybe someone has a quick answer. My pictures are 3:2 format and I don't particularly want to change that. I am open to adding a background on which to overlay them to provide a better format. I've made DVDs before sized at 1024x768 with project set at "Virtual size of slide" but on some systems the bottom of the slide gets chopped off. If this has been discussed somewhere in the forum, I'd appreciate a link as I couldn't seem to find it with a search. Thanks in advance.

Morasoft, What a cool introduction! Thanks for sharing the PTE file. I've downloaded it to study and learn!

Looks like you have a few months to save for it, Paul. Kinda pricey. I had to settle for a new 60D instead.

Tillman, What an interesting and colorful collection of photographs masterfully presented! Your photographic skills are quite obvious. I'm not sure which segment I enjoyed the best -- the market scenes, the portraits, the doors and windows, or the sunflower sequence. I don't usually like such a combination of different sized photos, but your background and the manner in which you presented them seemed quite natural. My only negative comment was that there seemed to be (for me, at least), too many photos of moths or butterflies on lavender. Nicely done and thanks for sharing.

Jeff: Have just spent the last few hours downloading and watching all 4 of the shows you posted. I thoroughly enjoyed them and living in Northern Arizona, I have visited many of the same places so I can really appreciate your skills as a photographer. I was particularly impressed with the clarity of the shots from Newspaper Rock. I also loved the reflections of the red-topped mountains in your latest "Some Dreams Come True" sequence. I don't do as much hiking as I would like, so I don't often get to places like that. Canyonlands is beautiful and your photos do it justice. I even recognized the "Wooden Shoe" arch in one of the shots. I spent several days at the Sand Dunes in late August but unfortunately there was no snow (or water to wade across either). I like the way you have used gentle animations in your sequences, and I always enjoy the shots you include of your dog. I also think the music you selected was well suited to the content. Thanks for sharing these and I look forward to more shows (hopefully sooner rather than later).

Can't you just use PTE and use the Video Builder piece to "publish" it to HDVideo or video for iPad or iPhone? I think there are some postings here referencing this technique but I don't have links at the moment.

A breathtakingly beautiful place magnificently captured by your excellent photography, Maureen! The music was perfect. I will watch this show again many times and wish that someday I might travel there. It reminds me somewhat of both Newfoundland (which has much smaller mountains) and parts of Alaska. Thanks for sharing!

Success! I downloaded the latest project file and created the .exe from within PTE after setting project options to 5:4 to fill my screen vertically. It works perfectly now and I can see all the animations. I think this type of format and animation would work very well with travel/vacation slides. You did a great job on the postcards. I would love to know where you found the stamps and the various postmarks. Thanks for sharing the PTE file.

Sorry, but I don't think this slideshow is working properly for me. I have downloaded all versions including the latest. It takes 20-30 seconds to load a black screen. Then another 30 sec. to show the opening animation. The postcard animation then opens for Machu Pichu. It remains onscreen for at least 30 seconds. After that, there is no animation. The slides just sort of pop onscreen with no postcards (maybe there aren't any?) They remain on screen for close to a minute. I gave up after the pyramid. I have a fairly new quad core laptop running Windows 7-64x. All of the other slideshows with animations and video included that I have downloaded lately run fine. I downloaded the project file and could see the animations, but of course there were too many missing files to actually create anything. The animations in the PTE file look like an interesting concept and I'd love to actually see the complete show (or better yet, get a copy of the complete template).

Graham, In PTE click on the menu item "Help", then "About PicturesToExe". The dialog window which opens will display the details of your particular license (including when your license for the Deluxe features expires).

Just downloaded and installed final version of PTE 7. I am trying to change the directory where my templates are installed. I go to File\Templates\Manage Templates. I then select a different template folder from the "Browser for Folder" dialog and click "OK". I am then returned to the "Manage Templates" dialog. When I push the "OK" button to close the dialog and save my changes, nothing happens. The dialog shows "Not Responding" and PTE is completely locked up. I then have to shut it down and start over. It doesn't seem to matter which folder I choose. Sorry if this is not the correct thread to post this bug report. Follow up: Apparently performing the above action attempts to move any existing templates from the old folder to the new one. I had a lot of templates. I moved them first manually and then made the change. It worked ok then, but it still seems like a bug. Running Windows 7 64x

Hi Morasoft, Your show was a very clever use of PTE. I don't do karaoke but I sure enjoyed watching the video and listening to the music. Thanks for sharing.

Nicely done. Beautiful colors and amazing photography. Having just visited a butterfly museum recently, I know how difficult the butterfly shots must have been and the patience required to get those useable pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Igor, Regarding THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I have waited a long time for this and it will be most useful! And I very much appreciate all of your hard work on the many new features in version 7.