mandarinfish

Bill, I should have been more clear. My point was not about the shows that folks have been posting in this forum that were created using the PicturesToExe 5.0 beta. I was referring to all the use of pan and zoom in various shows that have been posted for years all over the net, or that have been made by my friends, having been created with other software that supports pan and zoom. I just found that after watching ten minutes of pan and zoom on every photo and moving text as well, I got very tired of the effect.

I won't install bootcamp, because I don't want to maintain two copies of Windows on my laptop disk, and I don't want to have to reboot every time I need to use a Windows app. This is not a solution for me. I just won't use the PicturesToExe version that requires video acceleration hardware. I mainly wanted to bring this up so that you know it is an issue not just for folks with older PCs.

I don't most folks don't care about Macs any more than they care about old PCs, but I'm bringing this up as just another data point. I have a brand new Macbook with a perfectly reasonable video card (Radeon X1600). However, I have to play PicturesToExe slideshows within a Windows virtual machine (Parallels Desktop for Mac), which only supports a generic VGA adapter. The 5.0 beta slideshows don't work at all on this. Parallels isn't planning on supporting video acceleration hardware, because gamers aren't their target. I'm one of those who responded to the hardware survey here, identifying a usable video card, but not thinking that I cannot use it for PicturesToExe. Another point that I'd like to bring up is that after seeing many slideshows that use pan and zoom (not just from the PicturesToExe beta), I really don't like the overuse of the effects as so many people seem to need to do, e.g. using it on every single photo. Overuse of an effect leads to less "effect", or impact and I think it also detacts from the photography (my opinion, and I'm sure it differs from others' opinions!). The same issue comes up in video circles over their very fancy transition effects. One of the things I have appreciated in PicturesToExe is the time and effort spent on ensuring the best quality of the basic cross fade effect. Not saying I wouldn't use pan and zoom, but would only use it very selectively, and I also won't use it (even though I can on my Windows machines) until I am able to play such shows on my Mac, which is what I use to travel with and for my public presentations of slideshows.

Update: Parallels released a new beta today with sound support, and my slideshows play beautifully! They are still working on fullscreen support for the Macbook resolutions, but in a window the shows look and sound great! Thought some folks would be interested... Linda

Special thanks to Ken who provided me with some useful versions of PicturesToExe. I also tested with the latest version, and created a slideshow without audio. This one works, so I am certain that the other shows were stalling only because of the lack of audio support in the VM (in the beta). Parallels plans to put audio support in their VM before they go to product release. I'm hoping they'll put it in a beta beforehand too. I'll test again when support is there, but I anticipate it'll just work! I'll post an update when I'm able to check that out. By the way, this VM is *fast*, at least for the things that I've tested on it. Thanks for the support and help! Linda

Thank you Ken! Does anyone have 4.14 or something earlier than 4.20? That would be helpful too. Thanks....

Hi Brian, Thanks for the hint about the history file; that's provides alot of information. I'm guessing that I was using 4.20 (and later) for the slideshows that don't work, and 4.14 for the ones that do. The major difference is the ability to output AVI files, so I'm not sure how that's related to the problem. It could be something else. I just downloaded and tried Igor's beautiful Far Worlds slideshow and verified that it does not run past the first slide on my Mac with the Parallels virtual machine. If you still have 4.20 and maybe 4.14? I would be interested in trying them to verify that they can create shows that work. I'll also retry when audio is working to see if that is all the problem is. Let me know if you have those versions, I'd appreciate it very much. Thanks!

Thanks, Ken, though these don't help much, and I've seen them before (have been monitoring such threads for years...). I have an Intel (not PPC) Mac, which does not require emulation, but just virtualization (or dual boot) to run Windows. VirtualPC is not yet available for Intel Mac. The first virtual machine available for Intel Macs was released in beta just this week. That is the VM I'm trying to use. As I mentioned, some of my PTE slideshows are working fine (other than audio), but my newer ones (since 2004) are not. This beta VM does not yet have audio support (the product release will, I'm told). It may be that this was when PTE changed to using all internal audio support? (can't remember) If this is causing the problem, I can just wait and try it when the audio support comes available. If it's something else with the graphics engine, then I'd' like to scope it so that I can report it to Parallels. This is a beta, and they are listening to what people want in the release. I've already done the route of converting to AVI, to QT, to Flash with Riva, etc, etc.... I also have another package that will produce QT slideshows directly (Liveslideshow) None of these give the kind of quality (and/or file size!) I'm after, or that PTE gives natively. That's why I am pursuing this. I know it's a long shot, but I still hope I can gather enough info on what is going wrong, rather than just giving up and using something else. Thanks, Linda

I realize I'm in uncharted territory here... I recently acquired a Macbook Pro, having previously used XP to create and play my slideshows. The first VM for Intel Mac (Parallels) was released this week (my thanks to those who flagged this on another thread with the Boot Camp and brought it to my attention), and I installed it along with XP, and have been trying to play my slideshows on it. Slideshows that I created prior to May 2004 are playing. Sometime between Feb and May 2004, I upgraded my Pictures2Exe, and slideshows that I've created since then stall on the first slide. I'm trying to troubleshoot this a little to see if I can provide some useful information to Parallels. Were there some significant changes to the display engine or other components in PTE in the late 2003 or early 2004 time frame? All of my newer slideshows stall on the first slide, unfortunately. I'd like to try to get to the bottom of this, since PTE is one of my major reasons for wanting a Windows VM. Thanks for any clues!

Just wanted to chime and add my vote to the request for extracting captions from IPTC description. This would save me *alot* of time.

Granot, it now works perfectly for me. I really like the tool tip; makes it very clear. And the looping works great! I can't believe we didn't ask you to make this a long time ago! Enjoy the rest of your vacation in Thailand! I went there for the first time in April/May for scuba, and it won't be the last... it's a wonderful country. Thanks!!

Hi Granot, Wow, I went to work today and in the meantime, you've made two releases while on vacation! Thanks for adding the loop function. Seems to work, though I have a suggestion, and a question. First, is it possible to highlight the button when looping is on? I have a tough time figuring out whether it is off or on unless I run to find out. The other thing is that it appears that I need to both hit Stop, and toggle looping off, in order to stop my looping shows. Is this the way you think it should work, or should Stop cover both cases? Otherwise, it's great, and just what I need. Thanks so much!

I'm with Marianne and Alrobin; I would love a way to select several images from the light table and apply custom settings to just those. I would use this feature constantly. I like to have my captions for vertically oriented photos in a different place than my horizontally oriented photos. So what I normally have to do is set the caption location for all, and then go in and change the vertical ones, one at a time. Being able to do this from the light table where I can visually see all of the vertical ones, would be super!

Granot, this type of utility is just what I have been looking for for a long time. Right now, I'm just using a perl script to run multiple shows, since that was the easiest way for me to do this. I typically have to set up multiple shows (from various contributors - underwater photo shows from my dive club) and have them run in sequence as background for get-togethers and parties that we have. One thing that I would like for you to add, and then it would be perfect for me, is a way to have the shows cycle continuously. That is, when multishow has finished running through all the shows in the list, it would start at the beginning again. Now that you have added the Stop button, that should work and I would still have a way to stop the cycling. Is this possible? Thanks for your work! Linda

Hi Guido, thanks for your response. Yes, I understood about using the AVI file. The problem I was having was converting from the AVI file to QT, using QT Pro. I did successfully create a QT file, after I found a QT compatible video codec. But you are right; the quality was horrible. I'm now trying to figure out how LiveSlideshow does it. They create a fairly good QT movie from still images without creating a huge file, but retaining detail in the still images. I don't know what compression they are using. If I could use similar compression in the PTE AVI file, I should be able to get that quality, unless Liveslideshow is doing something tricky with the framerate and transitions.

I posted this in the video->disk forum, but not sure that was the right place. Is there any way to create a QT movie from the PTE avi file? I have tried, but get an error from QT Pro that it can't read everything in the AVI file. This is using PCM audio and PTE video encoding. Thanks..

I'm trying to convert the PTE AVI file to a QT MOV file using Quicktime Pro. When I try to read in the AVI file, QT Pro tells me that it doesn't have all the software needed to read the file. Anyone know of a solution? This is a 1024x768 show and I'm just using the presets of PCM for audio and PTE video encoding. thanks... Please see the post "QT movies?" in PicturesToExe forum

This is one of the features that I had really wanted, and it works wonderfully. Thanks!!!

Deep6, I have XP Pro, and I don't have any problems playing Judy's or Seahawk's shows. But I'm using WinAmp as my default player.

Sorry about the double post, guys... Darned net is glitchy today!

I've found Windows Media Player to be a little lacking in MP3 compatibility. For me, it'll play some but not all, and I have the latest one as well. Are you able to separately play these particular MP3s (that were used in the shows) with Windows Media Player? I would suggest that you could install a better MP3 player, perhaps WinAmp or MusicMatch.

Igor, thanks, although there is no need to be sorry! You've done a great job with this. I just wasn't certain if that feature should work for me. I'm looking forward to seeing you add functionality to the synchronized mode, as that's the mode I normally use! many thanks for all your hard work...

Guido, you're right. I was trying to use it with a synchronized show. When I don't synchronize the show, I get the mouse behavior I was expecting. In the meantime, I figured out that I don't need the mouse cursor visible, as the mouse actions appear to work when the cursor is hidden. My problem was that sometimes focus would be accidentally put on something else while the show was starting, and the taskbar or other windows ended up in front of the show.. I have found myself to be clumsy enough to do that when I'm doing a presentation in front of a large crowd! I wanted the mouse cursor visible so that I could change the focus back to the presentation if needed, and then I would hide it myself in the corner afterwards. I just experimented, and found that even if I hide the cursor immediately, I can change the focus if I need to. thanks

With this beta, preview from slide works at least partially for me now (yay!). Here are a few comments: 1) My music starts from the beginning no matter what slide I am previewing; is that the way it's supposed to work? 2) I can't seem to preview from the very first slide using the timeline view (Preview button is grayed out, even when I first bring it up and nothing is selected). 3) Mouse autohide still doesn't work for me. Are there other options that interfere with this feature? I have tried this on two computers, with completely new slideshows, where all I do is add some photos, music, check synchronize to music, and autohide mouse cursor. The mouse cursor disappears after three seconds and never comes back, even if I am moving the mouse the whole time. 4) I really like this program. Thanks for doing such a great job. It is the easiest, fastest and best quality slideshow program I've tried (and I've tried many!). thanks

Update: I did a clean install of PTE on a different PC (Win2k, PS2 mouse) and noticed the same two problems. Mouse never comes back from autohide, and no way to preview from a particular slide. So I don't think it's my setup. Any suggestions? thanks