Lin Evans

Hi Mark, Thanks for watching! The area is one big photo opportunity ... I was using three different cameras off and on so probably could have done some post processing, but essentially just snapshots for testing. Since I live fairly close (just a day's drive) I get there every couple years or so - have been going since 1946 and taking photos there since 1952. Here's a couple my wife snapped of me outside Monument Valley in 1975 with her little Kodak purse camera... Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Let's start with "how" you are putting the video in. The fact that you see a "film strip" on your sample means you are not adding a video, you are adding a "picture" or image of the video. PTE has totally different functions for "add video" versus "add image" You have added an "image" of the video. Now, Follow this exactly. Right click with your mouse in the Objects and Animation table (bottom right window in Objects and Animations) and choose from the drop down list "Add Video." Navigate to the video desired and double click the desired video. Whenever you put "objects" (that's any slide, video or whatever) in Objects and Animations, they go in on different "layers." So if the "size" of the object on the top layer fills the area of the selected aspect ratio (it will) then anything beneath on another layer will not show. So the first thing you must do is be certain that your video is on the top layer. You move objects from layer to layer depending on their relative "position" in the objects list. To move objects up or down use CTRL PgUP, CTRL PgDn or Shift PgUP, Shift PgDn depending on how many places you want to move the object up or down. The video needs to be on "top" of the still image in terms of position on the list. Once it is on top, then use the bounding rectangle to side it and move it to the desired position. Now set the time for the still slide to the time for the video in seconds. That's all there is to it. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Didn't you look at the sample I provided especially for you? I told you exactly the steps to take. It's a very simple thing to do in either 7.0 or 7.5..... There is and was no "bug" in doing this very simple thing.... Put the video and slide both in Objects and Animations - size and position the video. Set the time for the still to the time for the video - unless you want still slides to cycle in the background that's all there is to it. It you want to cycle stills in the background while the video plays, see the instructions I provided ealier. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bert, Thanks! I hope you guys get the chance to tour the southwest U.S. - there are some beautiful sights to see. Be sure to include Bryce, Zion, Monument Valley, Moab (Arches National Park) and the Grand Canyon - all terrific and inspiring places. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, Fortunately it was rather quick and she didn't suffer long - she was a wonderful person and great companion for 35 years... Best regards, Lin

Hi Mary, Thanks! Actually, the show encompassed photos from Bryce, Zion, Devil's Backbone, Monument Valley, Red Canyon and the Navajo "Twins" at Bluff, Utah. It was more of a tour of that part of the SW than a show about Monument Valley or Bryce. Yes, the tour truck have become a real downer for me over the years. When I first shot in Monument Valley back in the early 50's things were much different, and over the years it's become more and more commercial. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, Thanks! Yes - I completely agree - the Braveheart soundtrack is exceptional and works well with these types of images. It's a shame that it was upstaged by Apollo 13 but you know how politics are and even in the movie industry apparently.... It's been my experience that there are actually three times during the day when the awesome colors are present: just after sunrise, just at sunset and, as strange as it sounds, pretty near high noon depending on your position and the exact area in the canyon you are shooting. The best ones for me on this trip were from Sunset Point and those two were taken at sunrise and noon. In only a few seconds the colors can go from incredible to mundane and you just have to be ready and "wait for it" to catch it right. Some of my captures were very "flat" and uninteresting, but those few which were timed just right are worth the waiting. I was chatting with another photographer standing down the trail at Sunset Point where there is a "window" opening through the rocks with a protective metal barrier and an incredible view of some of the Hodoos. It was near sundown and I had given up on getting anything spectacular at that point. A young friend of the other photographer was standing in the window with a little digicam - just one of the many 12 megapixel point and shoots and while we were talking the young man was all excited and showed us what he had captured. It was absolutely beautiful. He said it was there and gone in about five seconds! By the time we looked - everything was flat and normal, but for that brief few seconds, it was incredible. I wish I had planned another day because I would have liked to try to duplicate the timing. The two people in the bio picture are me and my late wife Sherry and that one was taken by a friend in 1977. Sherry passed away with brain cancer three days after her 53rd birthday. I know you are a cancer survivor and I hope it's under control. Damned thing just takes too many way before their time. I'm 70 and here's a snapshot made by Sherry about six months before she died: Indeed that is the "Twins" at Bluff, Utah. I'm not sure on the "shooter." - I'm certain we share the same sentiments about many things! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your great shows and maybe soon one from Bryce! Best regards, Lin

Thanks Dick, Thanks! Yes, to really appreciate the Bryce Canyon Hodoos, one needs to be there for sunup, high noon and sundown since they all offer the myriad changing phenomenon of the appearance of these magical formations. Sometimes only a few seconds separate the mundane from the phenomenal. My dog and I spent three days and nights there sharing our campground with a visiting cougar - fortunately she didn't share our tent! LOL. I was up before sunrise each morning to get on the trail and find the best location I could for the captures. I was hoping for some snow, but was a little early. Perhaps next year I will try again. Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, Thanks! it was a nice trip - Honey and I were getting a bit "stir crazy" and definitely needed to get away and get some fresh air. It's always fun to see the southwest and it was beautiful in October. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Thanks! Yes, John Ford loved Monument Valley - lots of John Wayne westerns were filmed there. I first visited Monument Valley, Bryce and Zion in 1946 and shot my first images there in 1952 with a Brownie 127. They are beautiful places to visit. Lots of tourist these days, and the Navajo are running a serious commercial tour business in Monument Valley. There are so many extended 4x4 Vans and modified pickup trucks carrying about a dozen tourists each that it almost spoils the experience in Monument Valley theses days. They routinely exceed their own speed limit by double, loud speakers blaring, and stirring up huge clouds of red dust. I had originally planned to spend three days in Monument Valley, but one night and one day were all I could tolerate. Honey is an old pup too - she's pushing eleven but still loves to ride, sniff new bushes and pee on new trees - LOL. It was bitter cold in Bryce Canyon and we had to share the camp ground with a cougar. The altitude of the camp ground is around 8500 feet and with the temperature hovering around 15 - 18 degrees F at night with winds, the tent was freezing. Fortunately, I had an extra sleeping bag for Honey. She crawled up right next to me, stuck her frozen nose under my arm and started snoring - LOL. We took turns watching for the cougar - thought maybe we could get a flash shot or two, - Honey was anxious to meet a big kitty - but she didn't make a cameo, at least while I was awake. The font is called Bleeding Cowboy - I think it's available for free download on the web. I've had it for a few years so haven't looked lately. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks! Actually, I used three different cameras on the trip. The high resolution shots were with a Sigma DP2 Merrill, a number of others were with a Nikon D7000 and a couple were with the Canon SX50 HS. I just grab the one which works best for the task at hand. The Sigma has a fixed 45mm lens, the D7000 had an 18-105mm and the Canon has a 24-1200 mm. Best regards, Lin

My old pup Honey and I took a little trip to Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park and Monument Valley - Here's a few snapshots... http://www.lin-evans.org/bryce/bryce.zip (about 68 meg) http://www.lin-evans.org/bryce/brycemac.zip (MacIntosh Version - about 68 meg) Lin

Hi Jeff, Another very enjoyable sojourn into the splendor of the southwest. Looks like you and Sammy are still having fun. I just returned from a 2,000 mile trip to Bryce, Monument Valley, Zion and a few other places - hopefully I'll eventually get around to making a show. Thanks for letting us join you on this journey in photos... Best regards, Lin

Hi Patrick, ATV = All Terrain Vehicle. These are common in the USA and come in a variety of sizes, shapes and configurations. Some are small, four wheel drive two axle vehicles and others are larger and may have three axles. If you do a Google search for ATV you will see many pictures. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dan, All good advice - but sometimes when lighting is tricky, you may just want to use the "bracket" feature which I suspect your camera has. Also the overexposed image can be pretty much totally recovered using a few Photoshop features such as selective desaturation and selective contrast enhancement, etc. Here's one of them after a few minutes ot touch-up. Best regards. Lin

Hi Eric, Just put the video in a rectangular mask. Hold the shift key and drag each of the border sides of the mask rectangle to conceal the black frame. Best regards, Lin

That is a simple task in Beta 10 of version 7.5 - I have no problem doing this in any way... Best regards, Lin

Hi Rob, I've confirmed that the video doesn't countdown to "1" with PTE 7.0, however, it works perfectly with PTE 7.5 latest beta. Bottom line, whatever is causing the issue has apparently been resolved in the next version of PTE. I would suggest downloading the beta and using it to see how it works with your project. Best regards, Lin

Hi Rob, Best bet is to post a link to the video clip and let Igor have a look. I've seen this type of issue before, but I don't recall what the resolution was.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Rob, If you could post a link to one of the videos, perhaps some of us can sort out the problem. I'm assuming that the actual time allotted to the video is correct. The possibility exists that since PTE may have something else going on "after" the video where programs which only play this video and have nothing else going on may make absolute time of play an issue. Not knowing exactly how pte interprets the time of a video, it could be that if you just increase the time for the video by a couple seconds it will finish playing correctly. What happens if you let PTE "convert" these videos? Do they then play correctly? What happens if you open PTE and only place the video in and do a preview with no slides before or after. Does it play correctly all the way through? It certainly sounds like a timing issue. See what PTE thinks is the total time for the video versus what other players report. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, That's one of the problems with "language." I would never think to use the word "synchronization" (or British spelling synchronisation) in conjunction with matching the proper audio start position to the proper image or video. When we put in an audio track, unless it is assumed that we want it to start in conjunction with the first slide, we logically assume that we must tell PTE what slide it goes with. Likewise, when we separate an audio track from it's video, to me, it is understood that now we have two separate entities and this "audio" could be used as any other audio with any slide or video. So PTE has no way of knowing that we want to use it with a particular video or slide. We therefore must inform the program of the precise place we want to use the audio. In the relevant sense, that is at the start of the video we extracted it from. I suppose it would be "possible" to program PTE in such a way as to "assume" this by the file names, but this would be perhaps limiting. Personally, I reserve the word "synchronization" in the relevant sense for use in precise micro-matching of audio to the video it came from so that speakers (singers) facial features and mouth movements correspond perfectly to that audio track as it "should" be or have been in the original video. Placing the extracted audio at the same instant of the beginning of the video could loosely be considered "synchronization," but I would never use that word to describe this action. What I would use is alignment or start position because synchronization has a different intrinsic meaning for me. Best regards, Lin

Yes, absolutely correct! Best regards, Lin

Have you failed to set the start time on the video sound track to the start time on your video slide? Synchronization isn't really the right term to use because the video's audio is perfectly synchronized as in the original video but you still must set the start time for the audio to correspond to the start time of the video unless the video happens to be the first slide. In the relevant sense, synchronization would be fine tuning the audio to correspond exactly as it was to the video before extraction. When audio is extracted with an external program then added back and with the video start time and audio start time being identical, and the sound track is not properly aligned with the video as it was in the original, then we have a synchronization issue. Then re-aligning it by micro adjustments is what is generally meant by "synchronization." This has really nothing to do with video in particular. If you want a sound track to correspond to the start or middle of a slide somewhere along the timeline, you need to set the offset to that specific time desired. Likewise it is the same when you place the video somewhere along the time line other than at the beginning. This is audio "alignment" when you place the offset on the audio of that video to correspond to the start of the video. I think perhaps we have more of a "language" interpretation issue than a substantive difference in experiences. What I mean by "synchronization" is that there will be no timing differences between the extracted audio and the muted audio on the video. They will correspond precisely. When you use third party software to extract the video then add it back with the encapsulated audio on your video muted, this is sometimes not the case. Best regards, Lin

Sie können kopieren und fügen Sie Folien aus einer Diashow zum anderen. Alle Keyframes, Übergänge und Animationen wird beibehalten werden, aber Sie müssen in der Audio manuell setzen. Wenn Sie die neueste Beta-Version von PTE verwenden, ist es sehr leicht zu kopieren und einzufügen. Wenn Sie mit der Version 7,0, dann ist es ein bisschen komplizierter. Es folgt, wie Sie mit der Version 7.0 vor: Öffnen Sie die Diashow aus kopiert werden, und indem Sie die Tastatur STRG-Taste auf jeder Folie klicken kopiert werden. Dann nicht "schließen" dieses Slidshow, sondern "offen" die Show, die Sie wollen diese Folien kombinieren und fügen Sie am Ende der letzten Folie. Als nächstes fügen Sie Audio manuell speichern. Bitte entschuldigen Sie meine schlechte Übersetzung - ich bin mit Google zu übersetzen. Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Lin

Hi John, Yes, sorry about the confusion. Put the video in then go to the Objects and Animations Screen, Properties Tab and click so that there is a check mark beside Mute Audio. Next open the Project Options, click on the Audo Tab then click on Add Audio File. You said you were using the beta, so next look down where it says "Files of Type" and click on the little blue box with a down arrow on the right and choose "Video File." Now navigate to the folder where your video file exists and click on it. You video file's Audio Track now has been added as an "AUDIO FILE." If you converted the original video file, use the converted video to add rather than the original. Now you can do anything you wish just as if you were working with a "normal" audio file. PTE extracts the audio automatically and the audio track is now properly synchronized with the video. You can fade-in, fade-out, adjust volume, and use all normal audio features. Best regards, Lin