centreofengland

The King of Rome, Famous racing Pigeon from 1913. Download The King of Rome slideshow here (15Mb) I was asked a few months ago by the local museum if I would create a slideshow/video to help promote one of their exhibits that’s been in storage for some time. The Museum often receive phone calls from people in America asking for more information on the famous bird, so the idea is that this presentation will help promote the story of the bird, the music and also a Childrens book that is about to be published. The Museum will soon be expanded to make room for exhibits such as this so the plan is to have the slideshow running along side the exhibit. (I could use the DVD burn option in PTE to make a DVD for this!). Normally I create a slideshow and then try and find suitable music to suit it. This particular project was the other way around, I was given the song and had to come up with suitable images to tell the story. I found this a really exciting challenge. Its quite a challenge trying to select suitable images that flow and work with the lyrics. The song I have used for this slideshow was written and performed by local folk singer Dave Sudbury, His song “The King of Rome” was used in the 1997 Ken Russell film 'In Search of the English Folk Song' sung by June Tabor. The show is around 4 min 26 sec (6 mins with the credits). For more information about the Pigeon and the owner : The King of Rome web feature. If you liked the music and want to buy a CD : Dave Sudburys CD. Obviously this show is not about "high quality photography", its about telling a story. Some of the images used are over 80 years old where as others have been made to look old. I have used colour where relavent to try and lift the emotion of the song at the right point. I also created a version for YouTube and a high definition version (1280x720 pixels) on Vimeo. Both created using the Create AVI video mode in PTE. If you have a slow PC then then you may find the transitions in the video versions to be smoother. The King of Rome - Youtube video version Hi-Def version (click play button then click again to pause and wait for it to buffer before hitting play again. Click the fullscreen icon in the bottom right of the video): The King of Rome - vimeo video version I do hope you enjoy my little show and the inspirational story that it tells along the way. Thanks. Please leave comments if you enjoyed the show. Cheers Andy

I have a few on my youtube channel. Such as ... The quality of a pictures2exe show can never be met by a video on youtube BUT youtube opens up the audience to millions around the world, don't forget that fact. You can always provide a link in your description to the full exe version if you wish.

Outstanding !, 11 out of 10 Amazing whats possible. by the way whats the music called? I love it. Really works with the images very well. andy

Hi Colin, The playback speed I selected for my show was such that it would work for most people. You CAN make it playback faster (and therefore smoother) by reducing the "Display Each Slide for" value in the Main tab. In the show I uploaded it was set to 40ms which in theory should give a platback rate of 25 FPS but in reality it gives 12FPS. (This is based on my 3.4GHz Pentium Duo Core, 2Gb ram, 1280x1024 screen) I have just tried some other values to see what it will do.. 0s 10ms will playback at a rate of 21 photos per second. This seems to be the fastest it will run for me. I have set it to 1ms and it is still the same speed. With respect to V4.48 - in the Effects tab I remove ticks from all effect and also from Enable Transition effects. Then scroll down to the bottom of the list and tick.. Quick (No Transition effect.) Set the Display Each Slide for as follows : 0s 10ms will playback at a rate of 21 photos per second. I worked out the playback speed using calculations. I have 950 photographs in the sequence. When I set the show time to 40ms the sequence starts the loop again after 74 seconds so 950/74=12.8FPS With it set to 10ms it loops after 45 seconds so 950/45=21.1FPS Of course you need to compress the photos as much as possible to reduce the amount of processor power required to stream these images to screen at this speed. So don't expect to be able to use 2056x1920 jpgs that are 1.5Mb each as its not going to be able to manage it. I am not sure if you can do highspeed playback in PTE V5 as the last time I tried it on a beta version it was no use for this purpose. If you need any advice on time-lapse issues let me know. Andy

Nice first vid, Dave. I think the quality is better if you don't use Interlaced video, That seemed to cause horizontal lines when the subject matter was moving. Also I have found you get best results if you encode the file from P2E as a large low compressed file (using Indeo Video v5.10) quality 100% then import the file into video editing software so you can create better matched format for youtube. Even though it says use Mpeg4 on youtube, this is not the best. I import the video into Sony Vegas 7 and export the AVI as per the instructions on one of many tutorials such as HERE. This format is better matched to what youtube needs, so less information is lost when its converted to flash on there server. To give you an idea, This is a video I re-encoded using this method, as you can see the quality is pretty clear... Time-lapse clouds. You can even play it in fullscreen mode and its still pretty good. Glad to see that people are finding it of use. Cheers Andy

Thanks John, glad you enjoyed it. The poles in the bottom right corner are actually TV aerials, I cropped the images down to remove most of the unwanted stuff. Tip : I used Batch Process in Paint Shop Pro X and made it run a script which I recorded that crops, resizes to 800x600 and sharpens. You can see the FULL frame view version in my youtube version of this video here... This is about 14 hours of cloud footage!, play in fullscreen mode by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner of the player window. As you can see I removed the bottom and left side. Some people prefer something on the ground to give scale. This was shot out of my front window and I am surrounded by houses so its not possible to have nice scenery. It would be nice to do some with mountains etc but due to the amount of time it takes to film these its out of the question. Thanks again. Andy

I have just uploaded a new show, Not a typical slideshow but a demonstration of how you can use PicturesToExe as a great way of showing large high resolution time-lapse sequences. The sequence is just clouds, Very relaxing to watch We all take them for granted but take a closer look. The show is : A relaxing time-lapse sequence of Clouds. Instructions, Download, Unzip and run the .exe. Press ESC at any point to exit the show. Press the LEFT mouse button to pause the show, at which point you can then use the RIGHT mouse button to step back frame at a time. Or best still use the mouse scroll wheel to go back and forth through time. Each frame represents 10 seconds of real time passing. The show is made from 950 photographs, taken at 1600x1200 pixels but resized to 800x600 for this example to keep the overall filesize down. The photographs were taken at 10 second intervals, so the show spans 2 Hours, 38 minutes of realtime. The black specs you see every now and then are Starlings flying around. Hope you enjoy my demonstration. I have tested it on my 3.4GHz Pentium at 1280x1024 screen resolution and also a 1.2GHz Pentium at 1024x768 resolution. This is strictly a demo, for those who did not think you could do such things with this great software. See my youtube section for more time-lapse videos. Best wishes Andy www.derbyphotos.co.uk www.absolutelyandy.com www.youtube.com/comedyhunter

Hi john, The answer is NO to video, it strictly a image program . But P2E can show a sequence of images at 25FPS to give the same effect as video. I often use P2E v4.48 to make fullscreen (1024x768 pixels) timelapse sequences, it has no problems firing the images out at this speed and it looks like video. Just set the display time to 40ms (i.e 25FPS) and set the transition to 0 and No effect QUICK. You can highlight a set of frames at the start of your show so they play at this speed. my example... Timelapse canal boat. And.. .The P2E version uses 1024x768 at 25FPS. Andy

Hi Ralph, The limit of the source movie is 320x240 pixels, clicking fullscreen simply makes the flash movie spread over a larger screen area so the quality will be no where near as good. With regard to your particular problem its most likley an issue with your browser. Assuming you have a PC and are using IE6 on XP SP2... Right click on the movie and see what it says at the bottom of the popup menu. For me it says About Adobe Flash Player 9. If you have an older version such as 7 then try upgrading it HERE. Remember to remove the tick from the Also install Yahoo toolbar option before doing so. Other than that it may have been a glitch. I have not seen a problem with any movies on yourtube myself, but then again I do not use the fullscreen option often.

Hi, Like I said Its not about fullscreen high quality shows, its simply a great/free way to get people to see what you have made. You can then supply a link to your fullscreen show. Yes I agree the quality is not crystal clear. My show does not contain any video, its just P2E but looks good.By the way you can embed the video onto a webpage using the Embed code they supply on the page so its very easy if you wanted to show your slide show on your website, also you don't need to worry about having the hosting bandwidth to cope with such things, as youtube host it. Andy

I have seen several posts in the past by people asking how to convert pte shows into a flash movies or formats suitable for the web. So I thought I would let people know about my experience of www.youtube.com I have been using www.youtube.com for three months so far and its a great way to get your P2E creations out there for the world to see. Also because they are in flash format they also work on Apple Mac too. youtube has a very large audience not limited to just the people who visit the P2E forum etc. Basically youtube is a free movie hosting service, you upload your movie in just about any video format and it converts it to a standard flash format, this gets around any problems of people using special video codecs that don't work for everyone. The only limit is the video file must be <10mins long and <100Mb in size, there is no limit on how many you can upload. Obviously this may not be enough for everyone but you can get a free unlimited director account if you really want to. You can assign tag words and descriptions to your movies to help people find them. Personally I see yourtube as a ideal way to get a wider audience to see your creations, Yes I know its not got the wow factor of a high quality fullscreen P2E show but thats not what its about. All you need to do is use the Video button on P2E to make an avi file. I set the format to 320x240 15fps DivX 6 codec. You may like to experiment with settings to see what works best for you. I have found the results are acceptable on most videos, You can always provide a direct link to your own website where you let people download the .Exe file if they want to. Some of my videos are a combination of P2E and video editing software (Windows Movie maker that is built into XP). On the Leawood pumping station video I have combined P2E pan and zoom with real video sequences. I have used P2E to make the Timelapse sequences. Some examples I have posted on youtube for you to watch: (You NEED broadband to watch them:) n.b.) If you have a low-end broadband connection which causes the playback to keep stopping then you will have to press the pause button and wait for the "red preloader bar" to progress a little futher or to the very end before hitting play again. See what you think of my shows These are just a selection of my videos. Cheers Andy www.derbyphotos.co.uk

I would also like to wish everyone a happy Christmas and a great new year. Check out my animated Christmas greeting on my website by clicking the top button on the page here : Animated Derby Christmas Greeting to you all. Really looking forward to trying v5 of P2E. Best wishes Andy

Hi, Thanks Ron glad you liked them. With regard to the shimmering effect, this is real footage of water being effected by wind and not a special computer effect! I just set my camera to take frames quickly one after another, effectivly making a movie from photos. PTE is ideal for making time-lapse movies one I have posted one beechbrook Canal boat time-lapse and a new one I have just made is full screen 1024x768 journey at night with the camera stuck on the dashboard looking forward taking a frame every second. I filmed this at night so the blurred effect of lights is quite effective. Download it here.. Nighttime Time-lapse car jouney Its only 14Mb. The film is made from 393 individual photos joined in a sequence. You can even stop the show and then go back frame by frame then restart. See what you think. With regard to "rollovers" on my webpage this is just javascript which works on all browsers (PC and MAC) and all OS. As you can see I use it on all my web pages, it makes it more obvious to the viewer Example page of thumbnails on my site with roll-over text

centreofengland Invision wrote me that they solved this problem. Please visit your member profile and re-enter again your email address.

Hi Ron, Yes I often use the screensaver option in PTE. There is not really much to be said about doing this. You make a show as you normally would BUT you tick the create Screensaver option in the project settings. On the Advanced tab you tick Exit on mouse move. When you are ready you click Create screensaver (F7) All a screensaver consists of is an executable but with a .SCR filetype, which is why they have put this function in PTE as its easy to do. Things you DO need to do differently for making a screensaver when compaired with slideshow are... 1) Don't use music ! (you will soon get annoyed with it repeating over and over). 2) Make the show so it will repeat for ever. To use a screensaver on a PC you need to copy the .SCR file into the Windows directory. i.e. C:\WINDOWS\ This will then show up in the drop down list in the screensaver selector of windows Display properties. I have a few example screensavers I have made on my site. Some of which are like watching a fullscreen video... Derby and Derbyshire Screensavers. Hope this helps. Thanks Andy