mhwarner

Hi Dom, The pictures are lovely and the music you have chosen is just exactly right for the show. The animation was smooth on my PC as well and I'm not sure that my graphics card is the best. However, for some reason, I found the animation a bit annoying. I did not like the way the photos came in from the back of the pile. Don't ask me why but for some reason I prefer the type of animation in your photopiles template or your 3D photopiles template where the picture comes off the top of the pile and flies off the screen. This one was just a bit disconcerting or something. Can't put my finger on it. But hey, we all have different tastes! Anyway, I still enjoyed watching it and appreciate your sharing the pictures with us. A photo safari in Africa is on my list but I am not sure I will ever make it so it is nice to enjoy it through the photos of others who have been there.

dxdiag reports 256 meg, which is what I recall when I purchased the laptop.

Hi Lin, I have viewed the YouTube show in HD full-screen and also experienced the "stepped" transitions. Although I am on a satellite connection, I did let the video download almost to the end before I actually played it. Interestingly, after it played, I went into my Temporary Internet Files cache and copied the video to another folder. I then ran the MP4 with Igor's recommend Media Player Classic Homecinema player. The transitions were greatly improved, but still a bit "stepped" or jerky and not quite as smooth as we are used to in the .exe files created by PTE. I have a Dell I6400 laptop with 1.66GHz dual core Intel CPU, 2 GB of Ram and my Flash version is 10,0,12,36. Graphics card is ATI Mobility Radeon X1400. FYI, I did purchase the Transparent player but haven't had time to upload anything. I have experimented with it some locally however, and I noticed the same sort of "stepped" transitions on a test .mp4 show I created with PTE. I was wondering if it was just me or something unavoidable. I don't recall now how I sized the show or the settings when I created the MP4. It will be interesting to see if we can come up with some overall settings that will work well with less than "top of the line" hardware.

Although I can't find the reference on the forum, I believe the answer to the question which I previously asked is -- unfortunately -- "No". So those of us who are unable to obtain updated ATI drivers (I have a Dell Laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 for which Dell has no update and the ones from ATI do not work) are still screwed. The good news for me at the moment is that since I have recalibrated my monitor with the latest Spyder 3, when I run PTE slideshows my monitor now lightens up somewhat (instead of getting darker) when the shows display. Igor's solution of getting ATI to issue updates was not a solution as far as I am concerned since they (ATI) apparently can't be bothered with issuing updates for Dell laptops. Bummer!

Thanks, Lin. I experimented a bit and figured out that I just had to substitute my filename "testfile.mp4" for the "player.flv" reference in the sample html file. Now I will experiment with sizing and transitions to see what works best. My sample file that I have tested locally is 1280x720 and about 37 MB. The transitions (which were simple fade transitions in PTE) seem to be kind of jerky. I would probably not put files that large on my site so I guess I need to figure out settings in the PTE Video Builder to determine what will make the smoothest videos. I appreciate your responses.

Thanks for the explanation on the compression. But I am still confused about whether or not I need an additional piece of software to convert the MP4 h.264 output from PTE to FLV or is there a way to use this transparent player to directly play the MP4 h.264 file. Sorry for being so dense. And thanks in advance!

Quick question, Lin. If one were to purchase this transparent player product, would it be necessary to purchase any other programs to optimize videos (to obtain the results available on Josh's website (no jerkiness or loading delays) or would we be able to do this using settings in the video creation piece of PTE? Or do you know? Thanks in advance for any insight.

Wow! This is pretty amazing! I am on a satellite internet connection and as I watched the videos on Josh's page, I had absolutely none of the jerkiness and stuttering that I usually experience with YouTube or Vimeo (or any other online videos) while waiting for the videos to load. I am impressed. I have been toying with the idea of putting some small slideshows out there, but I have been reluctant to do so without the control I would have when placing them on my own website. I think I might just purchase it -- and the lifetime license (like we have with PTE) sounds quite appealing. Thanks for sharing this info, Lin.

Hi Anthony, Here's a small show I made a little while back which included some masks. While the effects could have been achieved in previous versions of PTE using transparent .png files, the masks were much easier once I came to understand them. http://www.mhwarner.com/azautumn.zip

Thanks anyway Dick. I did take a look again at PhotoME, which I had apparently downloaded at the time I did my original search for editing tools. It does allow editing of some EXIF fields. Unfortunately, "User Comment" and "Image Description" are not editable with PhotoME. So for now, I will stick to the one I found which seems to work just fine.

I was in serious need of an easy way to edit the User Comment field in my photos for use as labels in a photo album creation program I have. There have been discussions in the past about the ease (or lack thereof) and the pros and cons of editing EXIF info in files. While IPTC information is pretty much uniform and easily editable in many applications, including Photoshop and presumably Photoshop Elements, PTE and many other applications do not yet support using the IPTC data for text, titles etc. I have been able to edit the UserComment field in Thumbs Plus and Irfanview but the data does not always show up in the programs where I want to make use of it. I was searching last night for a good (and hopefully free) tool to use for editing the data. I found several shareware options (including the old and mostly out-of-date Exifer) and then I found this freeware tool. It is unforunately a command line tool which is somewhat of a PITA unless you were fond of the old DOS command line manipulations, but there are 2 fairly decent (and also free) GUI interface tools as well. PTE supports both the User Comment and Image Description fields when inserting text in the O&A window and just the User Comment field when editing individual slide comments. <%MainImg.Exif.Description%> <%MainImg.Exif.Comment%> If you are technically savy, you can do some batch editing of EXIF data for a directory full of files as well. For my photo album purposes, this will be a great way to provide image captions without editing hundreds of text objects in the software. For PTE, it's an easy way to add text for titles or captions instead of editing the text box. Here are the links: http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ http://freeweb.siol.net/hrastni3/foto/exif/exiftoolgui.htm http://home.wi.rr.com/dick/ExifAuto.htm

Patrick, I especially enjoyed the photos in the vinyard. Some of them were quite spectacular -- the obvious rows of grapevines and most especially the one with the church/cemetery in the center. As for the sound, I found it quite annoying, but I just turned off while I watched the show. Thanks for sharing.

Sounds like another good reason not to install XP SP3! Thanks for this info.

Actually, it wouldn't be too difficult to set up for a screen saver with a reasonable number of pictures. Here's what I did. Create a single slide that is set to some long duration (maybe 30 seconds). It should just be an empty black slide (or whatever single background color you might want). Then add a mask to the slide (I used a plain white jpg file) which covers the slide. Then insert a picture inside the mask. Now create 3 key frames for the picture object inside the mask. The first would be 0 opacity, the second 100 opacity and the third 0 opacity again. This has the effect of slowly fading the picture in and out. Now copy the mask object (make sure the background picture is selected so all masks are children of the original slide/picture object. Select a second picture by clicking on the image in the second mask object and choosing a different photo. Now move the keypoints for the second mask object to the right. For example, my keypoints for the first photo were 0, 4 seconds, 8 seconds. So I put the second key points at 8, 12, and 16 seconds. Create additional copies of your mask and modify the photo and keyframes in a similar fashion until you use up all the time you originally designated for the slide itself. Now select / highlight your original black image object and insert a text object and put your message in it. Then create 3 keyframes for that object -- say one all the way off the slide to the right, one centered over the slide and a third all the way off the screen to the left. This would have the effect of scrolling your text from left to right. Then you can add additional key frames to the text and move it lower on the slide or higher or bring it in from left to right or whatever. Alternatively, you could add multiple text objects which contain different text or different colors of text or whatever. Once you are happy with this single slide, you can then go back out to your slide list and copy/paste it as many times as you wish. Then you would go into each object and simply pick different images for each of the mask objects. You can also change the text in each copy of the slide or leave it alone. This way, you could have a nice little screen saver with only a copy of slides that does what I THINK you are asking for. Of course, if you like the idea and want to get really fancy, you could even zoom each of the masks in from a different corner, or from top or bottom or whatever for some really interesting effects. Here's a simple demo pte file. MaryScreenSaverPTE.zip

Igor, The file was only 8 mb so I emailed it to you. Let me know if you don't receive it in a few hours.

Peter, I do understand what you are saying and it does make sense. However, it can't be both ways. If you shouldn't be adding decimal values in the "Size / Position" dialog, then PTE shouldn't do it either. All I was trying to do was duplicate values entered automatically by the program to line up several objects.

The only reason I noticed the problem is because if you use the cursor to position objects, PTE actually indicates positions automatically using decimals. I was trying to copy some positions or sizes from one object to another and when I tried to type in the exact same measurement (including PTE's default decimal amount), that's when I discovered it was impossible to manually enter a decimal point. If PTE enters decimals as a default, it should be possible to enter them manually.

This may have been reported before and it may not even be specific to beta 7, but it is impossible to enter a decimal point into the "size /position of pixels" dialog box. All I get is an error sound when I try to do it either from the numeric or regular keypad. So, if I want to enter a fractional amount in one of the size or position fields, I have to type in the full number and then either use the arrow keys to navigate to the right of the decimal or actually click with the mouse somewhere in the decimal area to enter the figures. This is somewhat annoying.

Probably this is something stupid that nobody would actually ever do, but I originally did it by mistake while experimenting and found that it crashes the PTEViewer5.exe everytime. For some reason, I never noticed the little "Add Sound" button in the upper right-hand corner. So I thought it would be a cool way to add sound without going into project options. I happened to have the last slide in the show highlighted and I clicked the button and I picked the same music file I had originally added (without bothering to check project options). The show previews ok, but of course the last slide sounds weird as the second copy of the music plays over top of the first. But when the previewer shuts down, it crashes with the two messages below. I realize that this is not likely to be something anybody would do on purpose, but it is a bug, though somewhat obscure. Maybe an easy fix is not to allow a "Sound File" to be added that already exists in the list of project music files. Again, probably not something anybody would actually do on purpose if they had a clue. (As an aside, yes, I know NOW that the actual intent of the button is to add a sound overdub or whatever to a specific slide. But it is certainly not one of the more intuitive features of PTE and it was driving me nuts trying to figure out where I could find an indication that the music/sound file had been added. I kept going into the "Customize Slide" window looking for it, but it never showed up. I could see by editing the .pte file that it was there but otherwise, I couldn't see any references to it. Nor could I find any indication of it on the timeline. I FINALLY figured out that the indication ONLY appeared in the location of the "sound button when I clicked on the slide or when I advanced to it in the animated preview window. Obviously I haven't ever used the feature, but I can understand the use for it with narrations and the like. I just think it is something that should somehow be indicated somewhere else more obvious. Not a major flaw in the program of course, but one of those things that could perhaps be handled more elegantly so that newbies or those not into every nuance of the program might understand it better (and not spend time figuring out how to get rid of a sound file added in error, either. I finally did once I noticed that indication in the upper right and realized that if I clicked the button again I would have options for removing or replacing the file. If it is possible to add at least an indication to the "Customize Slide" window -- even if you can't change or modify the sound file there, that might be an improvement. Or maybe I am just dumb and it is intuitive to everybody else.)

Happy Birthday, Igor! Have a wonderful day and do take some time off to celebrate. And thank you again for a great product which just keeps getting better with each version!

Once I got into it, the masks were so easy. All I did was some quick batch resizing of the images and I could manipulate them to my heart's content inside the O&A editor to get exactly the right look. I must have hundreds of masks saved up and I recently discovered in another program how easy it is to create more exotic ones (like state maps, for instance) using dingbat fonts. The other thing I really liked was the ability to easily constrain a large pan/zoom photo inside a mask to eliminate the need for 4 black rectangles or a "picture-frame" logo technique to keep the zoom in the same borders as the other photos. The mask method saves a lot of back and forth in Photoshop to get exactly the right transparency in a picture. You can just squeeze or stretch the mask and move the photo around in side it. Anyway, thanks to both of you for the comments. Now I have to drag myself back to my "real" work for a while when I would far rather be playing with PTE!

I finally took some time to play with the demos generously posted by Lin and Andreas so that I could learn how to work with masks. The result of my learning is a short slideshow using various mask techniques to display the beauty of autumn in Northern Arizona. http://www.mhwarner.com/azautumn.zip I would be interested to know how it looks on smaller monitors as mine is a 19" with 1920x1200 resolution. Most of the slides were set at 1600 px width so there are black bands both side and top. I used masks to constrain the one slide with a large zoom/pan and also the last one and got them pretty close so that there is only a little perceptible change between slides. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

Andreas, Thank you so much for taking the time to put this together and for sharing it with us. There are some wonderful ideas in the presentation (and lovely photos, too). The project files will be a great learning tool and I can't wait to spend some time figuring out how you've accomplished the effects. Thanks again!

Thanks Ken! I had forgotten Igor's recommendation. The video looks just fine using the MPC Homecinema player. So the moral of the story is don't use the Quicktime player even though it will in fact play the video -- unless you want crummy results.

Not sure if this is a bug, a limitation in the program or just ignorance on my part of the correct way to do something. I have created a small show with 11 slides. The slides are 1044 x 703. Each image is surrounded by a 20 px white border (looks like a snapshot). (The borders are created and saved as part of the image, not as object rectangles in PTE. And there is in fact no object animation on any of these slides -- just than the transitions selected from "Screen" in project options. I am using all 4 of the "Flip 3D" transitions with the "Rotation axis in middle of slide" UNchecked. Previews and show look fine in PTE and as .EXE file. They are also OK when created as DVD. Problem comes when I choose "Create HD Video for PC and Mac". Because the horizontal borders at the top and bottom were being chopped off, I selected "Custom" and unchecked Pan & Scan as indicated by Igor in an earlier posting today. Width is set at 1280 x 720 and mode 1-pass, quality at 100 (although I have tried a number of variations of these settings with no resolution of the issue at hand). There is currently no audio. Anyway, the problem is that when I view the created mp4 file in quicktime, each time the images flip, the white border is sort of "broken" into pieces (maybe pixellated would be a better explanation) until the animation is completed and the picture shows "flat". I also just created the same animation with 4 slides WITHOUT borders and the same pixellation of the edges is visible (not as obvious as with the solid white borders, of course). Is this a bug, should we not use the new 3d transitions when creating mp4 files, or should I be using different settings to create the mp4 file?