sanewcomb

Lin, Make sure the Blu-Ray player you plan to buy actually plays DVD burned discs in the high definition format you want to use. Many of them do not play user burned DVD discs, or at least that was the case a little while ago. The HD format was more open to user created files as well as the internet. Blu-Ray doesn't play as nice. We have a Samsung BDP-1000 player and it will not play high definition files/movies on DVD discs, even with firmware updates. Hopefully the newer players are more flexible, but I think it has something to do with anti-piracy efforts by the manufacturers and has nothing to do with technology issues. The best results I came across when I looked into it earlier was with PS3 game consoles. Cheers, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Peter, I'm quite sure it's not an anti-virus check problem. But some of the slowness I'm observing is probably due to a "long" installation of Win XP and hard drives that are fuller than they should be for optimal performance. By long I mean it has been some years since it was installed, with inumeral programs (mostly small shareware, but they still add up) installed and removed. The Registry is now over 7MB and I have a reinstall scheduled that should clear most of this up, as well as freeing up more disk space. Thanks for the thought. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Igor, I think I should say that I don't expect WnSoft to address all the scaling problems with playback on analog devices such as TV sets. Your product, VideoBuilder, creates DVD discs that follow the NTSC video standards. I was wrong to say it didn't. Nothing to fix with the VideoBuilder. But one of the characteristics that I really enjoy with P2E is the many options, control and freedoms it gives the slideshow producer in making AV slideshows. My TVs are probably not a representative sample of all CRT TVs out there, but they are still the devices I use and show my creations to family and friends. I'd like to have the ability to correct for my TVs' distortions by using the VideoBuilder encoder in the Create AVI function of P2E, if possible. If not, that is ok too because there are alternative MPEG2 encoders that could be used to produce such a customized show. I've provided answers below to your questions, but you don't really need to spend any more time investigating this issue as it relates to how VideoBuilder makes 4:3 NTSC DVD slideshows. Sincerely, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA At first I thought it would be pretty easy to do this. But it turns out I don't have any commercial 4:3 DVDs. Almost all movies are formatted for the 16:9 DVD format (original shot ratio is almost always 1.85:1 or 2.39:1). I guess a TV series DVD would be put into the 4:3 DVD format. I don't have any of those commercial DVDs. As I wrote earlier, when I make a 4:3 DVD using VideoBuilder it shows horizontally stretched out on my TVs, with an aspect ratio for the circle test pattern going up as far as 1.3 (instead of the expected 1.0). Granted, the main TV I use is misadjusted quite a bit, but none of them show an aspect ratio of 1.0 for a 4:3 DVD P2E disc. I have to say I've never noticed the excessive stretching before while watching normal TV broadcasts on this TV. The mind has a way of adapting to differences. I only noticed when comparing what I had been seeing on my computer monitor watching 4:3 P2E EXE slideshows with the 4:3 DVD slideshows made by VideoBuilder on my TV. I almost never watch any DVDs on the computer monitor due to the poor quality in general, and the exceptionally poor quality compared to P2E EXE files. I don't see the point of doing this. DVDs for TVs, P2E EXEs for computers. But to answer your question, the 4:3 DVD made by VideoBuilder looks correct on the computer playing on a DVD software player. It looks like the P2E EXE file played on the computer, except a LOT MORE fuzzy! P.S. My memory of some websites and postings by people dealing with DVD videos and maintaining the 640x480 image size probably had to do with either watching ripped DVD movies on their computers or perhaps confused individuals. The analog part of the situation certainly makes it complicated to understand.

Mary, Thanks for the link. I noticed there was a free utility on the site Dick mentions that claims it will convert IPTC text entries to EXIF format. So this might be an easy solution to those who want to use IPTC comment fields for their regular work, and in one step transfer these to the EXIF field for P2E uses. Have not tried the utility myself. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Hi Igor, I have to apologize for my statement that some of what you wrote or your understanding of the NTSC standard was wrong, but there is an interesting story behind all of this related to reality (or at least a small sample of it). But first to set things straight, you are correct that the VideoBuilder follows the NTSC DVD standards and creates slideshow movies according to the standards. So don't change any of that. However, my observations and measurements are also not wrong. What explains this? Although standards are created to try and provide a uniform experience to the end user, sometimes reality gets in the way. Since most TVs are analog devices, and the DVD format is "locked" into an analog device along the path at some point anyway, there is no precise control over the actual dimensions of the final image the viewer sees. Each individual TV takes the signal and displays it according to its own scan settings, which themselves change over time. On all of the CRT TVs in our house the Option B method I described produces a more accurately scaled image on the screen than the VideoBuilder output that follows the standard. That is why I prefer making DVDs this way. I've also read about others who make home DVD movies doing this and I've observed various DVD Authoring programs like Nero Vision and Ulead Moviemaker treating the aspect ratio differently, which is one reason I felt strongly keeping the 640x480 "frame" intact was correct. I've never seen the black bars on either side. They must be "lost" in the overscan area which all TVs use. A side benefit of Option B is seeing almost all of the horizontal image content on the screen. I know 3 TVs in one household is a very small sample size, but I wonder if the majority of CRT TVs are "misadjusted" in the same direction, or perhaps drift in the same direction over time so that any older CRT TV distorts the image the same way. I'm no longer advocating changing the output of VideoBuilder. It should stick to the standards. But given the reality that TVs are not all adjusted the same way, would it be possible to allow the Create AVI function to use the VideoBuilder's encoder so that the end user can alter the settings if he so chooses? It is funny. I've watched the same TV for years and it never really mattered, but as soon as I saw a P2E DVD slideshow on it after viewing the same show on my computer many times, I instantly saw the distortion and it bothered me. When all the TVs in the house showed it I concluded there must be something wrong in the way P2E was making the videos. If the majority of TVs are actually adjusted this way, maybe it should be an option for the user. Besides, even on a correctly adjusted TV, Option B shows everyone taller and slimmer, a preference most people will take over appearing shorter and fatter on misadjusted sets! Attached are two pte slideshows with 4:3 grid tests. One will give you a 1024x758 test pattern stretched to fill 720x480, as the VideoBuilder does it. The other scales the test pattern to 640x480 and adds 40 pixel black bars on either side as described by Option B. They can be burned to the same DVD. Run them on a number of CRT TV sets and measure the x and y axes of the circle directly on the screen. Divide x by y to give an aspect ratio. Would be interesting to see what numbers pop up for other people's TVs. Depending on what DVD authoring program I used, the numbers ranged from 0.98 to 1.30 across our TVs. One might think HDTVs solve this problem, but in ways it remains. Since I ran these tests we bought a Sony HDTV 1080p and a Samsung Blu-ray player. What I found, which may be limited to these models, is the image accuracy depends on how the two are connected. Using the RCA or Component connectors, the HDTV can be put into what it calls a Normal mode and the measured aspect ratio was 1.01 for the VideoBuilder Output. There was lots of padding of course on the left and right, but I was surprised the top and bottom were also cropped. Perhaps related to overscanning in the NTSC standard. When the HDTV is connected using the HDMI connector, the way one would hope most sets would be connected, there was no Normal setting. The closest setting was Full, where the image filled the screen. The aspect ratio in this case was 1.33 for the VideoBuilder output, and 1.18 for Option B. As I wrote above, other HDTVs or Blu-ray players may provide different options leading to different results. Sincerely, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA 720x480ARatio.zip 720x540ARatio.zip

Igor, I'm afraid your intellect has clouded your ability to see reality and is preventing you from understanding this problem. Please try what I have asked and because you are so certain in your belief of understanding these video standards, create a grid with a large circle for the slideshow image. Use a ruler to measure the image directly on whatever screens you use. Measure as many screens as you can because there is a variance. I have done this, and P2E VideoBuilder distorts the images by resizing them to 720x480. You are right TV pixels are not square, but this is all handled behind the scenes by the hardware and software and the programmer does not have to be concerned with it. Seeing is believing. Sincerely, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

After further observations I'm pretty sure the thumbnails on the slide line do take longer to load and this is most likely due to the miniviewer or whatever it is called. On slides that have complex animations and multiple files, the thumbnail takes noticeably more time than simple slides. This is not a complaint, though maybe if the thumbnails themselves were cached it would speed up reopening of projects (on a side note, I can't believe IrfanView still does not cache thumbnails). Not a major item and it should be put near the bottom of the list of things to do, to be looked at in free time (if there ever is free time at WnSoft!). Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Igor, Well, I'll try one more time to explain it, and perhaps provide some files for you to test for yourself in a few days time. It has been awhile since I looked closely at this problem. Some of what you write is correct, some is not. I will not try to write a complete answer at this time, but instead will point directly at what I see as the problem. This applies to slideshows made for the 4:3 standard only. A P2E slideshow using 4:3 images and set for a 4:3 output will produce an EXE which has 4:3 dimensions (ie. 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480), thus preserving the correct aspect ratio on a monitor that is set to 4:3 dimensions. You are correct the standard for NTSC DVD is 720x480. When making a DVD movie slideshow, P2E has two choices. It can either A. scale the images to 720x540 AND crop to 720x480 or B. scale the images to 640x480 AND pad 40 pixel black bars on the left and right side to make a 720x480 frame I think option B is preferable because it preserves the entire image area, even though some will be lost no matter what due to the TV's overscan. P2E's Create AVI function actually does option B when creating a custom 720x480 AVI file. This file can then be used by 3rd party DVD authoring program to make an undistorted DVD slideshow. I have done this and this is the reason I requested the option to use the VideoBuilder's encoder in the Create AVI function. Try it out for yourself. Create a short AVI using a MPEG2 encoder of your choice, with a custom output set to 720x480. Then use VideoBuilder to make a MPEG2 file of the same slideshow. Make sure the slideshow is set to 4:3 and you are using 4:3 images to eliminate issues when trying to convert other standards. Then make a DVD movie slideshow using both source files and see the difference yourself. It isn't much and hardly anyone has noticed it for several years. But some have and it is there. I am equally sure it does not! : ) Sincerely, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

It is good to hear some people have the same times. I used to hear the click almost as soon as I hit the button, but now it takes many minutes to make a 100 slide show with lots of animation. I have also noticed a large increase in the time it takes to start the program, or rather load up the previous project to start working on it. The thumbnails take more time to load both on the slide line and the explorer type file window. But both of these are more observations than complaints. I don't do either activity that much relative to working on the shows and I do support adding features to the program over time. For the most part I would say yes. The image files are identical (same camera), the music files are MP3s of 128k and 198k, and the PC is configured the same. One possible difference that may explain the slowdown on my machine is the free space on the harddrives (I have 4 drives, 5 partitions) is most likely less than before, although that fluctuates. What I should do is pull out an old version of P2E 5.x and compile a show to see if it does it as fast as I remember. Could be a memory problem (internal) as well! Good point and true enough. Thanks for your input Peter. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA P.S. I don't have any issue with P2E's code size (it's amazingly small) or CPU use, particularly relative to any other program. My observations were based on previous versions of P2E, and my perceived loss of some "wow" moments while using it. Even the amount of time it takes to do these specific tasks (on my machine) is acceptable for making the slideshows. I'll look closer at my machine to see if the harddrive situation is causing the delays.

Hi Igor, Thanks for the quick reply. I haven't followed the entire thread JPD brought up, but I understood one of his last posts in the inherent problem in using %percent calculations over actual pixel dimensions in the math behind the presentation and scaling. But in fairness to you I think I also understand to some degree the coding difficulties brought about by using a 3D model and engine for displaying and moving 2D images. It seems to me like a real delimma. For my purposes the image resolution/precision is high enough, but I don't do the type of shows that JPD does that apparently require or benefit from a true 1:1 mapping/scaling. Yes, it has been a problem for some time with the VideoBuilder. Seems to come and go with different versions/betas. I don't burn DVDs all that often, but when I do it seems like less than 50% chance of success across all 5.x versions, and the errors range across the spectrum (ie many different errors). Good that few people are reporting problems. It is not a big problem for me since I don't use P2E much for DVD movie slideshows and I have work arounds. My real interest and joy is in the full res P2E EXE shows, so don't worry about it much. True enough about opinions and desires. It just seems this development is at cross purposes with your program and I can't see this feature bringing in that many new users. In other words, if a person who uses YouTube a lot to communicate with their friends, they are not likely to want to spend much time crafting and creating an AV slideshow. There are a lot of slideshow products that will make a YouTube video of the same quality of P2E's YouTube output, and do it with far less time/effort. I would think more effort on advertising, marketing and distribution by WnSoft may yield higher sales. But that is just the opinion of one avid user who has always appreciated the very high visual quality of P2E slideshows above everything else. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Tom, Thanks for the reply, but the actual problem I am trying to solve has to do with the distortion the VideoBuilder app imparts on 4:3 P2E slideshows when making a DVD NTSC movie disk (maybe PAL as well but I don't know). I should have stated this in addition to the burn problems I have with VideoBuilder. I can create an ISO file and burn it with the free ISO burner P2E suggests after a failed burn, but that doesn't address the distortion problem. Since there is no setting in VideoBuilder to address how a 4:3 P2E slideshow is cropped/padded/resized to fit the 720x480 NTSC DVD standard, there is no way to correct the distortion problem. The Create AVI File function prepares a 4:3 P2E slideshow correctly (padding 40 pixels either side), so if the VideoBuilder Encoder was available in the Video encoder pull down box in the Create AVI function then there would be a work around for the problem, and it seems like it would involve little or no programming effort on the WnSoft team. I've tried in the past to point out this problem to Igor, but have had no success and don't expect any changes to the VideoBuilder app itself on this issue. Thanks again for the effort. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Beta 13 Create function locked up Windows handles, prevents all other programs from displaying windows To me this falls into the catagory of more severe program errors for the 5.6 betas as I mentioned in a recent post. I downloaded the Beta 13 and opened a project made primarily with Beta 7. Tweaked a few settings, added a couple of keypoints to one slide, and changed the slide duration on 2 slides. I selected Create As function from the menu and made a low res version of this project (it uses 1280x1024 images instead of full size). This created an EXE file fine. Saved the .pte file. Then I opened an almost identical .pte project file, except for high res photos. Copied the full size files into the directories the project file uses. Did the same tweaks, then the Create As function, and P2E program went on its way to create the EXE file. It takes longer to make EXE files than before. When it got to 100% it stopped, or at least stopped updating the window. Did not hear the click audio indicating file was finished, but it may have played. At this time Windows itself stopped updating any window. Could not even see the TaskManager window, which normally over rides all other windows. I could see the smaller task manager window when doing CTRL-ALT-DEL, but still would not display the main task manager window. I noticed that the windows Taskbar would shift from program to program, so I started closing programs using Alt-F4. When I got to P2E, it closed ok and then the windows of other programs began to display. System returned to normal after closing P2E. It did create the EXE file and that file was ok. Seems to be related to windows handles and not taking enough care of them during internal P2E functions. By the way, has anyone else noticed the Create EXE function takes much longer to create the EXE files than before? It is significantly longer on my machine, but I'm not sure what 5.x version the change took place. Sincerely, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Is there a way of using the VideoBuilder encoder in the Create/AVI video file function of P2E? I know you can make a mpeg2 file directly in VideoBuilder, but I would like to be able to select the VideoBuilder codec to make the movie file in the Create AVI video file function of P2E, which allows more options for making the mpeg2 file. I cannot use the VideoBuilder itself to create DVD Movie discs on my system due to errors during the burn process. Thanks for any help, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

I've just completed a major project using two beta versions of 5.6 (beta 7 and 10) and noticed a marked increase in the instability of the code. For the first time ever, the program hit an abrupt halt and vanished from the screen. No error messages. Whatever caused that is a major failure in error checking code in the program. It has also crashed several other times leaving error messages like the one attached to this post. I'm sorry that I can not provide exact details of what was going on when these errors occurred, except they happened using P2E and not the video program. I have not been able to burn a successful disk using the video program and have given up for now. I find it odd how a free 650kb ISO burning program (suggested by P2E video after failure) accomplished the task with no issues. The only other thing I can add is I work pretty fast and have an intensive iterative process to set up each slide and sync to music. I am constantly going in and out of O&A, preview, moving key points, etc. Perhaps the problem is related to timing problems in how the program handles different tasks or subroutines, and transfers the handles back and forth as they are started and ended. On a totally different issue, I don't understand all the interest and postings on the new low res output features, or in other words how to take your beautiful high quality presentation and reduce it to average or subpar quality. The last thing I think about after completing a show is uploading it to YouTube. Wish the programmers would return to elements of the program that either directly affect the quality of full screen shows (like the loss of precision JPD has brought up) or user workflow problems. Doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to bring the default settings up to basic standards for things like which file directory appears in different areas of the program once the project directory is chosen, or after restarts, or remembering font settings once they are chosen. Not big issues, but when doing 100 slides it gets tiring to keep doing the same thing over and over again. There are also long standing problems that seem like will never be fixed, like the incorrect aspect ratio in creating standard DVD disks and full support for JPEG captions like IPTC text. I fully support and appreciate WnSoft's aggressive development philosophy, just think they have lost their focus somewhat in this latest version. Sincerely, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Lin, You have this reversed. To keep it straight I like to think of it as what you would see if you were looking out of the bottom of a rocket lifting off from earth. Ignoring the acceleration of the rocket, the image (ground) using "Perspective" Correction would change rapidly at first, and the higher you got the smaller the change would be. BTW, the difference has more to do with the behavoir of programming algorithms than human perception or even the perspective and I tried to convince WnSoft to use a more appropriate name. The typical percent zoom algorithm actually gets the real world physics backwards which leads to a lot of confusion. But I give them lots of slack since English is not their first language. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

There is actually quite a bit of difference on long zooms between the two algorithms. By long I mean the starting and ending zoom percentages are significantly different. Try 100% to 500% to highlight the difference, which occurs primarily at the very beginning and ending of the zooms. Almost all programs with a zoom function, including P2E without checking the Perspective Correction box, perform a simple calculation to change the PERCENT of zoom in a linear way. Said another way, in 10% of the time the zoom percent is 10%, 20% of time zoom percent is 20%, etc. While this is simple to program, it is not what happens when you walk through space or move an actual camera on a stage with a constant (linear) speed towards a photo, as Ken Burns did in his documentaries (though he didn't always use linear zooms). This simple algorithm actually gets the real world physics backwards. With Perspective Correction box checked, P2E uses a more sophisticated algorithm to simulate what it would look like if you were moving a real camera towards a printed photo at a constant speed. In terms of what you see on the screen Without Perspective Correction, the closer you get to the image, the slower the rate of approach. The further you get from the image, the faster the rate of retreat. If you want the image to slow down as it zooms in, use this setting. Most useful when fading from one picture to another. Custom zoom works better if you want to come to a stop and display the picture for more time or pan across. With Perspective Correction, the closer you get to the image, the faster the rate of approach appears (approach is approximately constant, but our perspective makes it seem like it is moving faster). The further you get from the image, the slower the rate of retreat appears. If you want the image to linger as it pulls away from the subject, use this setting. This difference doesn't carry over that well once you start playing around with the non-linear or custom zoom settings, which effectively add additional calculations over one another. Except I will say I get a more predictable (and thus satisfying to me) result with custom zooms if the check box is checked with my work. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

This can be done now by pressing Shift-End Shift-Home selects all the slides to the left Shift-Left Click selects the slides between any two slides Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Personally, I've never thought any of the standards designed for Television were appropriate for viewing video on computer screens, and the videos never look as good as on a TV set. The main reason is the resolution of the computer monitor has far exceeded television standards for a long time. I don't understand people talking about making HD videos to play on their computers with P2E. It will always look better in the P2E EXE computer file format. It seems the problem you are referring to is the failure of HD movie software to set the computer monitor at the refresh rate of the video. On multisync CRT monitors, this should be easy to fix since the monitor can be set to any frequency within a range. It's different physics I think for LCD monitors, which don't have a scan rate to produce the image. But the video card probably still produces a frame rate, particularly if it's connected with the analog connector. So the video card output should be synced to the frame rate of the video, similar to CRT situation. I don't know if the same is true of digital connections with LCDs, and that's about the limit of what I know about LCDs. Are there software movie players that have the option of using full screen and setting the monitor to a particular refresh rate? If so, those should play pretty smooth PZR effects, at least as smooth as seen on TVs or HDTVs. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Why doesn't this cause the string to be clipped in other software? I don't know if Exifer complies with the EXIF standard or not. Or if Irfanview, or Adobe, etc does. I do know if I place a string into the image file using Exifer, it remains in the file as I have entered it and can be viewed in its entirety with Exifer, Irfanview, JAlbum and Photoshop CS2. All the software I have except P2E. Igor, No, it has always been there and was in the final release of v5.0. I posted a message to the board about this after the final release but it was never addressed. To me it isn't that big of a deal because I don't think the EXIF ImageDescription field should be used for comments. Or rather the other field, EXIF UserComments, works better for this purpose. I think having them both there in P2E is confusing to some extent. Just my opinion. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

If you are looking for existing bugs to remove before your final release, the JPEG EXIF Description template clips or does not show the last character in a text string that is stored in the EXIF ImageDescription field of a JPEG image file. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

After reading more about JPEG metadata I've made these observations. 1. EXIF is a standard developed to allow cameras to add information, primarily technical such as F-stop, ISO rating, etc, to image files created in digital cameras. It is no longer maintained or updated (neither is IPTC's IIM, see below), but widely used by camera manufacturers, the intended target. Brian has explained that some image programs corrupt or all together remove the EXIF metadata when they save image files. I don't agree with his reasoning. The complete EXIF standard can be found at this link and I can not find any reference to anti tampering or security protocals to delete the header if the image data is altered. Rather, I think some programs don't preserve it because the writers of that program don't have a routine doing so. Brian, do you have a source, or were you speculating as to why it is removed by some programs? I do agree it was not meant to be edited to any real extent and the fact that some programs do strip it make it a poor choice to store comments. http://www.exif.org/specifications.html 2. What is called the IPTC standard is actually that body's IIM standard for including relavent information from a news organization perspective, such as copyright, headline, source. Its scope is actually much larger than JPEG headers and was meant to group together information and facilitate sending it over data lines (now obsolete). It is no longer maintained but widely used by image applications. Its implementation is left to the software developer and varies somewhat across different programs. I don't know if the integrity of IPTC IIM headers is preserved any more or less than EXIF in software apps as I don't have much experience using them. There is more info at the IPTC website http://www.iptc.org/IIM/ I can understand why the P2E developers might have included the EXIF headers first since it is so closely linked to digital photographic images in the JPEG format, and photographers wanting to include information from the photograph files. But as far as inserting and utilizing text strings to use as captions in P2E projects the IPTC data fields would be a good addition and have broader support for editing at the end user level. Does anyone know of any applications that remove or corrupt IPTC fields of altered image files, intentionally or not? (Question for people with experience using these fields). Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA P.S. There is a good overview and use of these types of headers on the JAlbum discussion forum below http://jalbum.net/forum/thread.jspa?thread...=0&tstart=0

Lin, Why don't you send a few of these files to the developers directly (to get their attention) so they can see what is going on with their extraction functions. Your file did show the entries in my version of Irfanview and Exifer. But the form of the headers is fundamentally different than the headers in my camera images. Editing the EXIF UserComment or ImageDescription fields and entering new text with Exifer did not change anything with P2E even though this function works fine with my images, Exifer and P2E. I did experience a very odd behavior. When I changed the JPEG Comment* field and at least one of the EXIF fields at the same time, the image and thumbnail disappear from Exifer displays. The file size is the same. Irfanview shows only the thumbnail. P2E reports "This JPEG image can not be loaded Probably the JPEG file is damaged". The image is probably still there, but the header is somehow corrupted. This only happens when the JPEG Comment* field and one or both of the EXIF fields are modified at the same time. I tried reproducing this behavior with a number of my own images and could not. See if you can reproduce it. This is indicating a problem with either Exifer or your software/camera because this behavior has nothing to do with P2E. I have edited the comment fields, all three of them, using various software for several years and have never seen anything like this happen where the ability to view the image is lost. The only other odd behavior I've observed is Adobe Photoshop CS and CS2 stripping the JPEG Comment* field out of files that had been edited by other software. And I did come across and remembered one long standing bug (minor) in the JPEG Description feature in P2E. It will clip the last letter of the text string and not show it in P2E. Putting a space at the end works around this for now. Again, I recommend using the JPEG Comments template for captions included in JPEG image files. I don't really see the point in having the JPEG Description field in P2E. Would be better (and less confusing) to have a IPTC comment field or JPEG Comment* field or both for alternative options. Brian, I have never found this to be the case. I edit almost all my images in one way or another and the EXIF fields are always there after editing. Do you really lose the EXIF header if you simply open up one of your JPEG images straight from the camera in Photoshop, change the brightness or shrink it 1/2 size, and save it? The only time I've seen information removed is Adobe Photoshop taking out the JPEG Comment* field. There is also no evidence, again with the image files produced by my Olympus C5050Z, that any of these fields are encoded and require a special codec to unencode. They exist as ASCII strings as can clearly be seen with a hex file editor. However one possible explanation occurred to me while writing this post. It may be that professional level cameras, possibly Digital SLRs implement a more sophisticated header with security code which are simply left out of the lower cameras. I kind of doubt this though as it wouldn't be much of a standard if it was implemented that differently across products. I'll be interested to find out how Lin's problems are resolved. You can start to understand why WnSoft hasn't spent a great deal of time digging into the JPEG header files. Camera companies as well as software apps have implemented it in so many different ways. I'm sure they will figure out some way to handle it, but sure is a headache. Oh, and I very much appreciate the work they've done on it so far. It's one of the most useful and time saving features for me because I feel it is very important to keep the captions with the images for posterity. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Hi Lin, The P2E EXIF JPEG Description feature for adding comments embedded in images in the EXIF ImageDescription field works fine for me. Using Exifer 1. Select the thumbnail of the image you want to add a comment to 2. Press Ctrl-E 3. Right Arrow Key to move to the EXIF tab 4. Fill in Description (or better yet, fill in the Comment) text box 5. press OK button 6. press No or Yes on whether to backup data Good to go. It shows up in P2E as long as you follow the instructions for adding this type of template to the text comment object. I highly recommend using the EXIF JPEG Comments template in P2E (EXIF Comment option in Exifer - I miswrote before the names were the same in P2E and Exifer, P2E has an additional 's' in the name) . All the cameras I've used leave this blank whereas several cameras have placed text into the EXIF ImageDescription field. Not a huge problem, but if you set the comment option for all the slides and don't add your text to this field, you'll see text when you probably want to see no caption. Now there could still be a problem, but the problem could be in the program you are using. Hard to say which side is in error. Double check to see if the image file edited by Opanda places the comment in the correct field using Exifer. Then try saving this text directly in Exifer. Does that work? It may involve either Opanda using an illegal character in it's routine, or P2E not recognizing a character it should. It is tricky dealing with these types of undifined or poorly defined text strings. As I've stated before, the EXIF specification requires the ImageDescription field to be only 1 byte characters, whereas the UserComment field is 2 byte characters. If the developer of Opanda didn't observe this, there would be a problem in locating the control characters (such as marking the end of the field). Brian, What problem do you see people adding comments to their pictures? In my experience this has not corrupted the header and is readable no matter how many times edited. The name of the main field, UserComment seems to indicate this is what was intended, and I can't see how the developers expected people only to use their cameras to enter this data using arrow keys and a gridded alphabet chart. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Mary, You seemed to be a little perplexed by this whole comment issue with JPEG files, but don't worry. It confuses a lot of people. It isn't a well defined or well standardized part of the JPEG specification. Not sure the history behind it, but somewhere in the JPEG format development I suspect they felt it useful to leave space in the file structure/specification for others to freely utilize. What's wrong with freedom, Good for all, right? It does give the flexibility to add a lot of cool stuff in the future, but at the potential cost of duplicity, choices and complexity. A previous post of mine goes over the official names of the EXIF fields used for comments in P2E and has a link to the standard. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....amp;#entry40152 Anyway there are a number of header specifications available and different programs handle them differently and call them by different names. Individual specifications even allow multiple places to put comments. Each have pros and cons. Users tend to like the format that their chosen image software uses for obvious reasons, but it makes it difficult on the P2E developers to pick one over another. In addition to comments, there have been many other requests for other EXIF fields to add as well as other specifications. The developers have said they will add more in future releases, but hard to tell what they will chose among the hundreds if not thousands of possible fields. There are many more than that. The EXIF specification itself has two places comments can be put. I've looked for a reference for JPEG Comments but have not found it. I know many web pages use this general description to describe comment fields in many different specifications, from EXIF UserComment, to EXIF ImageDescription, to IPTC Caption, to TIFF ImageDescription, to XMP Description, to The JPEG Comment* - I'll use the asterisk to denote this particular field for the rest of this post. Unfortunately it has taken on a general definition in usage. Do you know what specification JPEG Comment* belongs to? I also don't think it is implemented uniformly. One drawback to using the JPEG Comment* field is most (all?) versions of Adobe Photoshop will delete it if you edit the picture after adding a JPEG Comment*. Kind of a pain. To add to your confusion, the P2E developers don't call the EXIF fields by their proper names. P2E name = Actual EXIF field name JPEG EXIF Comments = UserComment JPEG EXIF Description = ImageDescription It doesn't matter what program you use to put text into the JPEG Comment* field, it won't show up in P2E because P2E currently doesn't support the JPEG Comment* field. It supports the EXIF UserComment and ImageDescription fields. It's probably better to use the EXIF UserComment field because it uses 2 byte characters (good for international letters) and most cameras will leave it blank. Some cameras, like my Olympus, will fill in the EXIF ImageDescription field with the camera make. So on slides you would like to have no comment you'll see the camera make. I think you may have filled in the wrong tab box. When I fill in the EXIF Description box in Exifer (yes I know these developers use the same wrong terms as P2E for the EXIF field names - but one bonus is Exifer and P2E use the same wrong names!) it shows up in the ImageDescription box of the EXIF window in Irfanview. Try it again. Which field in the IPTC specification do you mean? The Caption? The Headline? Description? (which I think is the same as Caption, but not sure which one is the official field name). You started off this post talking alot about the JPEG Comment* field, which is not a IPTC field. So I'm not really sure what field you would like added to P2E. Whichever one(s) you want, you should add it to the Ideas and Suggestions For Next Versions forum of this board. I agree with you that the IPTC fields have better editing support in the image applications I'm familiar with, such as Irfanview and Photoshop. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Mary, I agree with Al that the JPEG EXIF Comments work in P2E. However, there could be some sort of bug on some machines. Could you explain what you are doing to see if others can identify a different reason for not seeing them? After putting them in the JPEG image file you'll need to go into Project Options, Comments Tab and press the Insert Template link towards the bottom. Select JPEG EXIF Comments option. This will place comments on new slides that are added to the show. Press the Set for Existing Slides button next to the template link to add them to existing slides. Another possibility is the Offset paramenter on that page may be set to a too high number moving the comment totally off the screen and work area. You can also confirm you've done all this work by opening up the O&A window of the slide with a comment and you should see a second object entry labeled "Text comment" in the objects list. If it isn't there, then something wasn't pressed right (or there is a really odd bug, but I'll place my bet on the former). Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA