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

Yes, I guess we are stuck with it, no one else seems to have the problem? Yes I'm from the centre of England, see my site : Photos of Derby and Derbyshire. Thanks

Thanks Jim for sharing a great show. I loved the night time shots with the projected images on the buildings, whats happening there? Is it some kind of show put on by the town, looks great. Initially I thought it was something you had done in photoshop but I can see people looking at it so I realised it was something that was real. Love to hear whats happening. I liked the Squirrel sequence, you can get around the lining up problem by using one shot of the bin and then cloning in the animal onto each frame that way the bin would not jump around. May take some time though! One problem I found was even though I have a 1.6GHz P4 with newish 17" monitor and new video card, 1280x960 is the MAX size I can manage but at that size the refresh rate was only 60Hz so I noticed it flashing. Also 78Mb for a show is on the large side, may be worth doing a web version with reduced resolution images, that way more people may watch it. How long is the show?, I watched as far as the horses jumping but would like to watch the rest when I get time. Thanks for sharing Andy

Hi Ray, Yes I too have that exact problem. I think something must have got in a mess during the upgrade of the forum. I have tried to go in and change the termpory e-mail address it has assigned me back to the original one but it won't let me so can not fix it.!!! Has anyone else had this problem?

Hi, This sounds correct to me as you have explained it. The important thing you have not mentioned in your very detailed description is how many pixels long and high was the image from each camera that you 'printed out', but I can tell by the fact that you have said the 12x zoom one is printed at 153% original and the 5.8x zoom at 315% original size that the 12x zoom image has more pixels in it. As you can probably see by what you have said, you don't have as many pixels in the image from the 5.8x zoom camera so you have had to spread the pixels you do have across the paper more during printing (by 315%). Therefor in this situation the 12x zoom is better as you can get 'closer to the subject' optically and get more pixels representing the image. People seem to get confused by megapixels and think that you need lots and lots, this is not true. You can print stunning 12" photos from a 2.1mpix camera, you can not tell that its a digital print. The MOST important thing is the quality of the lens and the optical zoom range, as you have seen for yourself having a higher megapixel camera has not helped because you can not get close enough to the subject (the moose). The P880 will give you 672 extra pixels in the length of your image (P880 is 3264 pixels width versus P850 with 2592 pixels width), but ONLY if you can fill the frame with the subject at the shooting time. Any cropping you do to an image in th ecomputer after will reduce the resolution. My Olympus 5050 will produce great 18"x12" prints (5mpix) but they look best if you fill the frame so you have as many pixels as possible. I have just ordered a 30"x20" print online from one of my photos to see what thats like, looking forward to seeing it this week hopefully. So to sum up, if you can not get close to a subject (wildlife) then the 12x zoom is worth a lot more to you than higher megapixel camera. If you CAN always get close to the subject then the higher megapixel camera is better. Hope this helps explain, any questions let me know. Andy

Outstanding ! Great images and music with nice breaks in it, one of the best p2e shows I have seen. The only thing I did not like is that it at the end of the show, it changed a web page I was looking at to your website so I had to click back, minor snag but perhaps better to leave a user choice of clicking to visit the site. One question I have is why the white borders around the screen? I find these a bit distracting, are they there to calibrate an lcd projector or something? Thanks

Hi, The resolution of a DVD image is very poor compared to a PC. The absolute maximum resolution that a DVD can show is 720 x 576 pixels (PAL). When you view this on a TV you will generally loose even more pixels from around the edge of the display also DVD is a streaming media format not static like a PC. DVD's can show static images but thats in a different mode, I imagine that P2E would have to convert its image transitions into video effects so it must be in streaming mpeg2 mode to do this. For these resaons you have to expect poor results converting a show to a DVD. Personally I have never tried making a DVD from my P2E shows because I know I will be upset by the quality, this is not a fault with P2E but a limitation of DVD. As you can see DVD resolution is almost half as good as PC resolution! Hope this helps. Andy www.derbyphotos.co.uk

See This post for answers. Cheers Andy

If you have purchased music in iTunes then it will be licenced to your machine, editing/conversion software will not normally allow access to protected music. BUT.... The other way to convert is to select the tracks and burn them to a CD (from within iTunes) Then use iTunes (or Windows media player 10) to rip them back as mp3 files (set 'import Using' as mp3). Ripping them back removes the licence protection, A bit of a flaw if the protection system really ! n.b.) If the mp3 option is not there then you may need to install a mp3 encoder, I have one already installed on my pc so not sure if the mp3 option would not be there if you didn't. If you need an mp3 encoder then there is a FREE one which works great from lame. Download it Lame mp3 encoder. Hope this is of use to you if not, let me know

Hi, Glad you agree. Photography is a very personal thing and so is music, so a slideshow which combines both of these media needs to keep the viewer hooked, Some shows may not keep your attention thoughout the show perhaps because the music used is not to YOUR liking, so knowing the total duration will help and stop people quitting the show because of such things. Thinking about my original idea more I think that another thing which should also be stated at the start of any show is what screen resolution the show should be run at. example 1024 x 768 pixels. Some people use massive screen resolutions as standard such as 1600x1024 pixels, if the show was made with a 800x600 display in mind and the Fit to Screen option was ticked when it was made then the show is going to be very grainy at 1600 pixels, if not ticked then the show is going to be seen rather small in the middle of the screen. Possibly something else worth stating is what minimum spec pc the show has been tried on. Remember not everyone has the latest spec PC so you should consider this when making a show (within reason!) Yes also the Author should be mentioned and best of all a link to your website if you have one. Thanks Andy www.derbyphotos.co.uk

Hi, Personally I like to download and watch all the slideshows that people post here, for inspiration and the fun of seeing what is possible but one thing which I feel is worth adding to slideshows is the total running time of the show. This should be on the first intro slide or perhaps in a forum post when you upload it. I would love to know how long would I be watching a show for. There are some shows that are not very well compressed (jpgs and mp3s). So you download a massive file only to find that it only plays for 3 minutes. Then there are some, which the file size is not that large and yet the shows last for a long time. Out of courtesy I think it would be good to know before hand the total running time. I don’t like to quit a show before its natural ending but sometimes if its going on a bit I have done so but I may be missing out on a really good part of a show. If I knew at the start, the duration then I could decide if I want to wait and see what happens. When I post a show I will be putting an intro slide stating how the long the show will run for. What do people think, is this a good idea? Or would you prefer your viewer not to know how long they will be watching for?