mellow

Hi Mick and Yachtsman ... thank you for the kind words. It was a lot of fun making them. They were done in a program called Acid Pro and most of it is loop-based music. Every so often, I collaborate with other musicians over the Net to put these clips together. Let me know when you're ready to boogie, Yachtsman. Best to you and yours to both of you. Brian

Hi, there's a new batch of 30 second music clips ready for downloading. They're completely free and are great for intros, outros and transition pieces for your projects. Enjoy. Brian www.JazzHouseBlues.com

I just uploaded more 30 second music clips that you can use for your projects at www.JazzHouseBlues.com Please credit if you use them. Brian

Hi, Thank you all for the kind words. I have a few more going up in a day or two. Enjoy the clips and please mention JazzHouseBlues.com in your credits if you use them. Brian

Hi, I produced a series of 30 second jazz/blues clips available for free. They're perfect as intros and outros and transitional pieces. They're mp3 at 128 so they're not broadcast quality but should be great for those doing home and multimedia slide projects if you're into this style of music. http://www.jazzhouseblues.com/ Brian

I did some experiments converting avi files to wmv files using Windows Movie Maker with the help of a member of this great forum and found that there's a problem with forcing the frame size to the required spec. I was hoping that the embedded player on our page would snap it to the right size but it sadly, it won't. I did, however, find a small cheap program that will do the job. Sorry for misleading you. Anyway, here's the link: http://www.yasasoft.com/tutorials/avitowmv.htm Regards to all Brian www.tinymedia.net

"I assume that creating an AVI file in PTE there is a loss of some quality" Hi Ron, First, let me say that absolutely no conversion or other editing program program currently available today can produce a quality as good as a photo compiler like P2EXE. Converting from an .EXE file to any other video format will reduce quality. To maintain this high quality, your only option is sharing the .EXE files. There is nothing wrong with this but it's getting harder as more people refuse to download or open .exe programs. There's a stigma attached to them in the minds of people. It was brought about by the tons of virus activity and the hysteria of the anti-virus program developers. I think Igor realized this and added video features to the program to enable the sharing these shows without grief. In my opinion, this was a good and important move. A vast majority of hosting sites will absolutely refuse to have .EXE files uploaded to their servers for sharing. They are afraid. Frankly, it's hard to blame them. So, that leaves you with a loss of some quality if you want a larger audience. The only thing you can do is minimize the quality loss by maintaining the aspect ratios before and after conversion. This is the biggest factor in the degradation of the end product. The other factors are the amount of pans and zooms and fancy effects that converters have much trouble with. But no matter what you do, you will not have the beauty of full screen shows that P2EXE can give you natively if you decide to convert. This is the trade-off that everyone has to accept if they want to share their productions. It's sad. I spent a lot of time and money trying to go against the grain and ended up only accepting converted files on TinyMedia. I wish there was another way. I really do. I've made some beautiful shows in P2EXE that will never be shown outside my family and close friends. Brian

Hi again, Just want to add to what I just posted .... 1. If you're going to use WMM, it appears that you'll have to prepare your visuals at 512 x 288 beforehand. In other words, set the frame size in your favourite image editor before bringing them in to P2EXE. 2. Start a new project in WMM and go to "Tools" and select the NTSC Widescreen 16:9 format. 3. In WMM, after clicking "Save to my Computer" click 'Show More Choices' and then click "Other Settings" 4. Try "Video for Lan" at 1MB. If your show renders with a file size above 5MB, try the 768 setting or the 512 setting. I hope that's clear. If not, I'll walk you through it again. Brian

Hi, Most of you already have the converter on your computer. It's called Windows Movie Maker ... 1. Use Igor's 16:9 aspect ratio to make your show in P2EXE 2. Generate an uncompressed .avi or .mpeg file from P2EXE 3. Bring the file into WMM and click on "more settings" in the 'make movie' dialog box. 4. Set your frame size and bit rate. That should do it. Brian

Hi Ron, The site seems to be OK now. You gave me quite a fright. Anyway, thanks for the kind words. Some of the shows already up there contain sequences done in P2EXE. Igor really built a great program. Using all the new features of the latest version, it was quite easy for me to convert the shows to the required format. I'm hoping more posters here will take the time to prepare and share their shows. All of us at TinyMedia are just hobbyists and we're having fun developing and showcasing our work. I've seen some really great shows by following links from forum members. They really should be seen by a wider audience. If you want, we can use this thread to answer any queries about preparing and uploading shows from forum members. I would enjoy doing so. I can't think of a better way to promote Igor's program than to see it as part of the toolset in the Producer's profile. I also posted on the other audio-visual software developers forums and we are getting quite a large number of "hits" on our site so we know people are definitely coming back to see the new shows as they are uploaded. What we're missing is the fantastic photography done by the members here. We look forward to seeing them on TinyMedia. I realize some posters may be shy or hesitant to share but I assure you they would be well received. There are no "rights" issues at TinyMedia. We don't want to retain any rights to what's uploaded. We just want everyone to watch and enjoy the shows. Thanks again for the kind words. Brian www.tinymedia.net

Me and a couple of semi-retired friends have developed a web site for the sole purpose of showcasing the audio-visual creations of anyone who wants to share them with the public. We not only celebrate the Producers but also all the audio-visual software developers who provide the tools to help make this magic happen. We love PicturesToEXE and Igor, the Wizard of Russia! This post is your invitation to submit your productions. Our website at www.tinymedia.net explains how to do this quickly and easily and it provides some suggestions on how to plan and output your productions. It's all free. Click around the site and view the 'tutorial' series to help you get started. We had a lot of fun putting all this together (we don't have much else to do). We want it to be fun for you as well. Brian www.tinymedia.net

Currently, you have the words "cover slide" etc. as a choice for positioning the photo in the slide. In other image applications, these are the regular naming conventions: Fit Width Fit Height Fit Slide Original Just a suggestion to make it easier to understand.

Thank you ..

Will a show built with 4.48 in "windowed borderless" mode play correctly in Vista? ... TIA in advance for any info.

Al, thanks for the comments .... Dom, I have all the pieces on seperate layers and will animate each over the next few weeks ... this was just an initial trial of the software .... I will update the show with the new effects soon ... thanks for the kind remarks ...

I do compositing work from pictures I take myself and from other sources to build collages. I hope you enjoy the show ... CosmicBallet

Ebenist ... The show will be burned to DVD Widescreen. I've searched the forum extensively for info on this but there seems to be different solutions and they apparently don't work the same on all TV widescreen sets. This whole DVD widescreen thing is a real pain for everyone, it seems. The square vs. rectangular pixels is a nightmare. You'd think there would be standards that would work across the board but I'm finding out this is not so. And to top it all off, watching any photo on a big widescreen TV doesn't even come close to the quality you get on a computer no matter how well you prepare the slide. What a pity. Anyway, thanks for your input. I'll see how that goes and get back.

I know cameras shoot square pixels but I need output for full screen (no bars) 16:9 without zoom, just pans. What exact measurements do I need to make my photos before bringing them into PTE Beta 8R ..? TIA for any help.

... yes, it does ... thanks ...

... I finally got around to playing with pte5 ... wow ... this is one great photo/animation package ... hope it gets finished real soon ... the interface with the animation is not fancy but is very well thought out when you play with it for awhile ... anyway, what's this "transparent to selection" all about? ... I tried checking and unchecking it when making shows and didn't see anything happen .... TIA for any explanation ...

Thanks, Ken ... The 'sync slides to music' is the most important for me. I haven't downloaded any of the 5.0 betas yet until it can do this. I realize this puts me behind the learning curve but it's great that many here are testing out the features as they become available. I hope they put the 'sync' stuff in the next beta release so I can start playing too.

Can anyone tell me what basic functionality is still needed to complete version 5? I don't mean any feature suggestions or requests, just the functionality we had in version 4.48. Thanks.

" ... gif not "nearly" as nice and do not work as well as the PNG approach ..." ... that's because .gif format can only show 256 colours and the .png format shows millions of colours ... only use the .gif format for logos or objects with few colours in them ...

" ... but they have small load for CPU ..." OK, I now understand the decision you made between CPU/GPU ... thanks ....

" ...picked up the wrong end of the stick mate..." ... I don't think so ... I'm talking about previewing the samples Igor and everyone is posting ... most chips being made today are dual cores ... the exe files generated by pt5 are only using one core ... this is a limitation for faster playback on future computers ... isn't this issue important for Igor ...?