Lin Evans

Hi Gary, This is not strange at all, it's the way the program is intended to work. Whether still slides or video, object's life begin at the zero point of the timeline for that particular slide or object. Control the appearance with zero opacity and hold the opacity with a second keyframe. It has "always" worked this way since version 5 when Objects and Animations became possible. This may run contrary to your way of "thinking" but it is perfectly logical from a programmer's perspective. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, It would be a question for Igor to answer. Without knowing the internals of PTE programming - I really don't have a clue about using the Shift/Mouse Wheel and setting it to do as you question. As for the iterative approach - that works too, but perhaps would ultimately be more work than using a substitute image and stop-watch to get it precise with minimal "tinkering." Putting text into the middle somewhere is quite easy to do. Remember, the first keyframe is always set to 100% opacity and always at the beginning of the timeline for the individual slide by default. So to achieve what you want, just change the opacity to zero for keyframe one of your text animation. Next clone the keyframe and move it or set it to any point along the video timeline. This will then be the defacto "beginning" of your text animation with zero opacity. Now set the third keyframe for the text animation to 100% and the time between keyframe two and three will be the "fade in" time for your text. Animate as desired with additional keyframes... Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, The quick answer is no. There is no way to expand the view to make it easier to work with this. If you are trying to synchronize the text effects to correspond to particular frames of the video, it would be very difficult to do visually. The work around, on the other hand is fairly straight-forward, but perhaps not obvious. What I do is use a stop-watch. Inexpensive digital stop-watches are available at places like RadioShack. The work-around is to first time the area of the video where you expect the text effect to happen. If there are particular frames where you want specific things to occur, then write down the specific times from the starting point. Next, take the video out and substitute a conventional image and set the display time to the exact time of your text animation. Now you have an expended view to work with. Do your text animations with the substitute image then "copy" the object. Load your video back and delete the substitute image and paste the copied text object. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric,You're interpreting my response improperly. This entire post belongs in the "off-topic" section because it is not about PTE at all, it's a question about forum software. There is and was no "put down" implied or intended. You appear overly sensitive. Many of our forum participants are non-native English speakers. It helps to be very clear or we contribute toward confusion. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, You mean "the Forum" refused your clip? PTE didn't refuse your clip - just clarity for the record.... Best regards, Lin

Well, "The mystery masked man was smart He got himself a Tonto, 'Cause Tonto did the dirty work for free.... But Tonto he was smarter, and one day said kemo sabe, Kiss my ass I bought a boat, I'm going out to sea" Lin

Here's some results Ken... I could definitely live with this. These were from a Japanese user and are taken respectively at 24mm, 1200mm, (optical) then 2400mm and 4800mm digital zoom. It's the duck standing just in front of the post.....

From coal mining to Egyptology to high tech - cool! Welsh technology is evolving!! Best regards, Lin

The amazing thing is that you don't need a tripod, even though it does have a tripod stabilization mode. That's something new to me. Most of the optical stabilization configurations require you to turn off stabilization when on a tripod. This one has a mode which lets it be used on a tripod. 600mm F1.8 - that's one I'd like to see - LOL. - probably couldn't lift it - HA! Actually, Sigma has a 200-500mm F2.8 which I had a chance to use. It's about $34,000 MSRP - the thing was so heavy you almost need a truck to carry it. (34.6 pounds to be exact) I think the largest lens I've seen was this one which was for sale on ebay a while back. It was made by Canon and is a 5200mm F14 Zeiss once made this 1700mm F4 for a one-off client. This thing weighs nearly 600 pounds and had to be mounted on a truck. I took some pictures of it at PMA in Las Vegas years ago - but I can't find them... Here's a link to some info about it... http://theonlinephot...super-tele.html Lin

LOL - yep, it's difficult to stay up with the new toys. I have actually got decent usable images (seriously) with my little Canon S30IS which goes to optical 840mm at 4x digital zoom. It has allowed me to get wildlife images I couldn't get with my best dSLR's and some incredibly expensive glass. And - hand-held on top of that! Lin

LOL - No, there are no pesky Nikon RAW files but hey, it "does" allow the user to save RAW Canon files which is not possible with some of the earlier super zooms like my S30 IS. 28 to - get this 1200 mm optical zoom and digital zoom on top of that which actually works pretty good - at least it does on my S30 IS. If the IQ at 1200 mm is as good as reported - this will be a tremendous bridge camera. Just to get 1200 mm optical at F5.6 would cost about $84,000 (really!). Canon makes a 1200 mm F5.6 which sells for up to $100,000. They have only made about a couple dozen of these and they have been special ordered by news and sports businesses. To have this magnititude of zoom available in a stabilized lens even with a tiny sensor is nothing short of amazing. I thought my S30 IS with 840 mm zoom was the cat's meow - but this is nothing short of phenomenal if it produces decent images. If this works as well as early users say it does - it's going to make a very big impression on the bridge camera market. Best regards, Lin

http://www.lin-evans.org/deb/horses.zip (PC 27 meg) http://www.lin-evans.org/bob/horsesmac.zip (Mac 28 meg) Lin

Hi Igor, A joy to watch. Moles are almost blind and rarely come out of the ground. They have tiny eyes and ears. This one was probably lost - LOL Perfect music to accompany your video!! Best regards, Lin

Superb! Lin

Hi Igor, Here is a link containing both the original mp4 created with PTE and the Adobe Elements conversion output. http://www.lin-evans.org/igor/testsforigor.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Slide numbers are really "not" the best way to do what you have described. Among the "templates" available (now you know how to use this feature) is a template for "Picture Name." This will always identify the individual picture rather than the "position" of the picture in the slideshow. What you are doing with "slide number" is identifying the "position" of a slide in your show which will change if you add or delete or move any slide. The "Picture Name" is pulled from the EXIF information and unless you subsequently rename a photo, it will remain constant regardless of the position of the slide in the show, or even if you add more photos or delete some. In other words, the "PIcture Name" stays with the photo always. The "slide number" simply identifies the sequential position of slides in your show and will obviously change whenever you move things or add things. For example, if you have 10 slides in your show and you move slide two to the end of the show, all slide numbers will change except slide one, etc. By using "Picture Name" as your template, individual slides will "always" have the same names regardless of position or addition of new material.. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, It's sort of mixing peas and oranges here. The "Quality" slider is designed to let the casual user decide what they want in their conversion. The bitrate and "custom" capabilities are designed for the advanced user who understands the consequences of the changes. Putting a "bitrate" control on the same page with the "Quality" slider would probably not make logical sense. If one had that capability, then it would countermand the very essence of what Igor was trying to accomplish with allowing one to change "Quality." Quality changes probably include bitrate, compression and other factors which the casual user could care less about. The emphasis here is on "Quality" of output. Igor considers 50% to be "normal" and that produces a reasonable file size with reasonable bitrate and reasonable compression. For the "ultimate" in quality, then the bitrate and compression must be adjusted properly for the individual video and that's where the various "algorithms" in Video Builder are implemented. Allowing us to "dink" with the settings of bitrate will very likely adversely affect the quality of output and how then are we to "trust" the relative numbers on the slider if we are messing with settings we don't really understand? So if you really want to tinker with the output, use the custom features to manually modify your video rather than the Quality converter would be my take. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Exceeding the "source" bitrate does not generally improve quality in any way, however if the bitrate is lower than the original it can often degrade quality. If the video came out of your camera at 77 mb file size with a particular bit rate, then exceeding that bitrate will not improve the quality, on the other hand, we have no easy way to know whether the increase in file size with a change in PTE "quality" is due "only" to the bitrate change or due to decompressing a file to make it easier on the system to play back smoothly. It takes "CPU and GPU horsepower" to decompress and play. It's much easier when the decompression is already done. Don't "assume" that because the bitrate change is "correlated" with the file size that it is the primary culprit for the increase. It's much more likely that the compression level has also been altered and that it is much more responsible for file size increase. Read this, it may help a bit... http://www.lockergnome.com/media/2011/08/16/what-does-bit-rate-mean-in-video/ Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Increasing bitrate does the opposite of "degrade" a video. Within the considerations of the playing environment, increasing bitrate lends smoothness and presentation quality to a video and has nothing to do with compression. What it does have to do with is how much data is available to the processing environment within a given temporal period. The purpose of the conversion within PTE is to make your video/slideshow play the best it "can" play in your PTE show. The only time lower bitrate is really needed is when you must spool the video through a bandwidth limited environment. Keep in mind that "compression" is a convenience for primarily a couple of considerations. It give smaller file size for distribution and storage. When the video or image is played, it is "never" played in a compressed mode, but rather expanded in memory to its full original size. For example - when you take an 8 bit TIFF file and compress it with a jpg algorithm - let's say it started life as a 10 megabyte file and when compressed it becomes 800K in file size. As soon as it is loaded into your computer's memory, it expands to the original 10 megabyte size. The "only" differences are the load time and the file size for storage or transport across a bottleneck environment such as the internet. Likewise for video. Once it gets into the memory of the player or computer, it expands to the original pre-encoded size for playback. Igor has carefully determined what works "best" in PTE and if the bitrate is increased from what you created with another product, it's because PTE can and will play it better with the increased bitrate. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, That's a good question. Probably, without extensive testing we will not be able to know that. Obviously, players can account for many of the perceived differences we see. For example, early on, Igor discovered that the Classic Home Cinema media player produced superior results with PTE video output. Later, I discovered that Kantaris Media Player, which uses the VLC engine was the best on my systems. There are indeed many variables which include, but are not limited to system resources including OS, GPU, CPU, player and associated software. What works on your system may indeed not work as well on mine and vice versa. I found that on all of my systems which include XP Home Edition, Win 7 Pro and Win 7 Starter all with different GPU's, the XVID video played my complex animations smoothly while MP4 h.264 was problematic for the same animations. Likewise on my 40" LED Samsung HD 1080P Television. On your systems you found that though the animations were smooth with XVID, the image quality was better with equal animation smoothness with h.264. This leads me to believe that there are some significant differences and that these differences may even have location inferences. Perhaps standards for different countries for television players might be different because of the PAL versus NTSC issues? The important thing, I believe, is for the user to find what works best for his/her own use and "hope" that this will work as well for those who the shows are distributed to. Best regards, LIn

I'm not certain how much help this may be in consideration of the original question, but I think the things to keep in mind are the differences between "standards (organizations), encodings (codecs), and containers." Let's start with a very popular "container" (file format for packaging video data) AVI. The AVI container may contain any of a number of different video encodings. This is why it is usually better to not depend on AVI for popular distribution. The user's equipment must have access to a codec (compress/decompress algorithm) which can play the video as it was encoded. Several popular players now include codecs (Kantaris Media Player, as an example) and this is less of a problem than it once was, but still it's safer to use one widely distributed standard. MPEG is a standard. Within the MPEG standard are various profiles and levels such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4, etc. Levels support variations such as HD or standard definition, etc. MPEG-4 h.264 Part 10 or sometimes referred to as AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is one of the levels used for BluRay encoding. All BluRay players must be able to decode h.264. It's also used by a majority of streaming video providers such as Youtube, Vimeo, iTunes, etc. The idea is to provide a solution with lower bit rate without sacrificing quality while still maintaining wide compatibility. This is why h.264 is probably the "safe" bet for compatibility with the most equipment. So when creating a PTE show for distribution, it make sense to use MPEG-4 h.264 (MP4 h.264). One must choose among the various possibilities according to the final dispensation of the program. Also, it's necessary to choose according to the complexity of the make up of the slideshow. Personally, I've found that on my own Samsung HD TV, h.264 will not run extremely taxing animations smoothly. So for use on my television, I encode with either XVID (AVI) or Igor's PTE equivalent (MPEG4 ASP). David has found that in his experience MP4 h.264 produced better quality in high definition images. So it might be better, if there are no taxing animations, to use MP4 h.264 for producing output for general purposes. Lin

Hi Peter, That's why I really prefer to see the project - much quicker to simply look at the audio tracks in an editor to see if they are correct without extraneous silence, then put them in their respective places whether in separate tracks with specific longer offsets or in a single track. The reason I suggested separate tracks is that it's easier to remove one or more for testing and remote help. Also, using the tools such as offsets, fades and duration helps new users get a feel for how the PTE audio controls work. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, That's why I really prefer to see the project - much quicker to simply look at the audio tracks in an editor to see if they are correct without extraneous silence, then put them in their respective places whether in separate tracks with specific longer offsets or in a single track. The reason I suggested separate tracks is that it's easier to remove one or more for testing and remote help. Also, using the tools such as offsets, fades and duration helps new users get a feel for how the PTE audio controls work. Best regards, Lin

Hi Steven, I "think" you could upload it to Mediafire http://www.mediafire.com Maybe Ken Cox can let us know because he uses it all the time... Best regards, Lin

Hi Steven, It looks like all you need to do is change the offset for audio selection two to 4:46. now and it "should" work if you don't change anything else. It would be much easier to help you if you could zip up the project and post it. Best regards, Lin