Lin Evans

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

Hi Steven, I think I see the problem from looking at your captures. The first song has a length of 4:40 but you have set the duration to 3:18.347 - or, the program has because that's the length of the slides. So to get the second song to start at six seconds after the first one, you would need to set the offset for song two to 3:24.347. On the other hand, I assumed that you had 4:40 in slide length so told you to set the second track to 4:46. The question is why you have a different value in the duration for audio one than the 4:40. If you really only need 3:18.347 then just set the offset for slide two to 3:24.347 and it should begin playing six seconds after the end of the first audio. As it is now programmed, there would be a delay from 3:18:347 to 4:46:00 before song two begins because you have terminated song one at 3:18:347. It's a bit difficult to sort it out without actually seeing the show. If this doesn't work for you, make a zip file of the PTE project using "File" Create Backup in Zip and post it and I'll sort it out for you. Best regards, Lin

Hi Steven, Let's take it one step at a time. Click in the circle beside "offset" for slide two and change the 0:00:000 value to 4:46:000. Mute the sound for the third selection for now. (or just remove it from the track for simplicity).... Now run it and see if audio selection two doesn't start where it should... Once you get it right, they the next step is to put in the proper offset for selection three and uncheck the "mute" - Or, if you removed track three, put it back in and set the offset for it for the time you want it to start. The fades are not important - they have nothing to do with the issue. Best regards, Lin

Hi Steven, To simplify this for your application, put the three songs on separate tracks. This isn't necessary, but it will make my explanation easier. For now, just forget the envelope waveform and do it like this: Determine the length of song A and set the "offset" for song B to six seconds longer than the duration of song A. For example, if the duration of song A is 3:43, then set the offset value for song B to 3:49. The "offset" determines where, along the entire timeline, that an audio selection begins. The "start time" determines how far into the full length of run time for a song you wish to begin hearing the sound. The fade-in and fade-out times for each selection are determined from the start and from the end of the song respectively. I think this will sort out your issue... Best regards, Lin

Hi Ray, Excellent images on those huge higher resolution screens. It's coming - it will take some time because the industry will try to squeeze all they can from the 4K market first, so the 8K displays will probably be a niche product for some time. I just wish that the developers would stop using the term "resolution" improperly. The 8K displays are decidedly "not" 16 times the "resolution" of the 2 megapixel HD (1920x1080). I actually got into a rather heated discussion via email with a tech magazine editor who parroted this marketing language in an article about this technology some months ago. He simply bought the manufacturer's message and couldn't understand how simple math is used to calculate the requirements for optical resolution with all other factors being equal. By simple math, it takes four times the pixel count to "double" the theoretical optical resolution. That's double the horizontal and double the vertical pixel count. So to double the actual optical resolution of an HD display which has the equivalent of two million pixels would take an eight million pixel display. It follows then that to have sixteen times the optical resolution of a two megapixel (HD) display with the identical sized display would take far more pixels than the approximately thirty two million pixel display design. And this is not even taking into consideration the pixel density differences of the much larger displays used for this technology which decidedly dilutes optical resolution from what it would be with identical pixel density of the HD display. To be exact, the 7680x4320 matrix of pixels can't theoretically out resolve the lesser of the two dimensions which, in this case is 4320 pixels. This equates to exactly four times the theoretical resolution of the 1920x1080 matrix of the HD system. So to be honest, the manufacturer would have to say that their new 8K display is four times the resolution of the HD system on a same size display. So they have inflated the true resolution by around 400 percent - LOL. It's too bad that marketing people have made the mistake of "equating" resolution with pixel count. The new display certainly has sixteen times the pixel count, but not even in the universe of sixteen times the "resolution" of an HD system.... Why they can't just say it has sixteen times the pixel count is beyond me. Resolution is complex enough without further confusing the buying public with distorted claims. Best regards, Lin

Premiere Elements outputs a format with the extension .f4v After looking into this format I discovered that it is more or less a mp4 h.264 compatible format so I took one of my videos and rendered it with Adobe Premiere Elements as a f4v Then, noting that PTE does not "see" this file in the file list, I changed the extension to MP4, imported it into PTE and used the internal converter to output the compatible AVI which played perfectly by PTE 7.5 beta 6. The question is: Could PTE not be made .f4v aware so that it would not be necessary to rename the file with a compatible extension to allow the user to load it and convert it? It appears that it's just an Adobe name for an MP4 h.264 file... I also found this interesting tidbit about it which explains a minor difference: http://www.leebrimelow.com/?p=748 Thanks, Lin

Yes, You can't get any "wider" than 360 degrees and I've built numerous one slide panorama's with PTE of 360 degrees.... Lin

Hi Paul, There are several ways to approach this. First, you obviously don't want to post a large HD video on your own website for several reasons. I think you already understand this, but for the other readers of this thread it probably is worthwhile to remind them that there are two issues with which we must contend when "streaming" video. The first issue is the speed of your own internet connect. As consumers with limited budgets we are not fortunate enough to be able to afford the incredibly powerful servers and huge bandwidth of YouTube, Vimeo, etc. A few lucky users have very high speed download, but there are still plenty of users who can't download data at much more than 400kbs or so. So these users would have continually interrupted play unless they stopped the play and waited for an extended period to begin the playback. Second issue is the capacity in terms of download bandwidth of your hosts server. Very few ISP's have super high speed servers and when they do, they are generally being used by large businesses and usually too costly for the average user. So we have two potential bottlenecks which impede download speed. The "safe" way around this is to limit the size of our own output to something around 800x600 pixels or roughly the equivalent of that in the desired aspect ratio. Next to that, the next best, in my opinion is the 1280x720 option. This can be formatted by several types of web creation software as I'll explain shortly. The next question is how do we output this from PTE? First, we generally do not want to use an AVI format because of the wide range of codecs necessary to support all possible video output. We don't want our viewers to not be able to see our shows. The "safest" way I've found is to output an MP4 h.264 which is the default for PTE. Generally, If our slideshow is in 16:9 format, then probably 1280x720 is the safest output size. On the other hand, if we want to be more certain that the show will play smoothly, 800x450 will maintain the aspect ratio at a greatly reduced file size. Using "custom" we should have no degradation in performance at all. Next, we need a way to load this on our own website or our own server. My own personal favorite tool for this is Xara Web Designer. Xara is fairly inexpensive and it takes only seconds to drop the MP4 into a Xara page output and format the size we expect our viewers to see and generate all the necessary code to simply upload to our web server. It's fast, very easy to use and works like a charm. It's easy to change the color and placement of the player and we simply provide the viewer with a link to the page or to the "folder" on our website where the "index.html" or equivalent is located to run the show. Anyone needing help with using Xara to do this is welcome to contact me. Other software which allows drop-in media (Dream Weaver, etc.) have similar capabilities. I like Xara because it's possible to take mp4 video output directly from PTE, drop it in and in about 30 seconds have the code generated to upload to my website. It's really easy and very fast. Best regards, Lin

Thanks Robert, Definitely video is becoming more prevalent and important in our photographic lives. It's fun trying to find new ways of creating realistic effects which can be used to tell a story. Anytime, If I can help - I'm available. Best regards, Lin

Hi Davy, Thanks! I guess the idea is to try to make the "process" as invisible as possible - LOL. Best regards, Lin

I made a little short video fun show for a friend who has been conspicuous by her absence for some time due to illness and personal issues. The show has meaning only to her, but I posted it because of the technique used which demonstrates some of the potential PTE has for doing some innovative things with video. Specifically, in part of the show I'm running two videos simultaneously, one inside a mask running over the other. Both videos are synchronized in terms of size and placement with special effects created in other software on each. The image which was chosen for the two videos is running in slide one and slide two (there are only two slides) is not one of my photos, but had the proper significance and meaning for the recipient. I "could" have manipulated it to improve the effect, but chose to leave it as the photographer had shot it. The rising vapor and rain are effects I added and are contained in separate videos. In all there are three videos running on a single slide plus a single still, some text, etc., and a single video on slide two. I though it might give some of our readers ideas to create other shows using some of the neat features of PTE's video. The "audio" track was treated as Igor explained by muting it then adding the video as an audio track. It syncs perfectly. The entire assembly was then output as a 1280x720 MP4. Interestingly, the video output by PTE using the MP4 defaults was only 53 meg while the executable was 81 meg. I only posted the video version because it's very clean and equal on all my systems to the executable version. http://www.lin-evans...yzeenhermp4.zip (zipped mp4 of about 53.5 meg download size) Lin

Hi John, If you know in advance which program(s) you wish to run, you can assign any to either a visible or invisible button or other object. Simply do all the programming on one slide then copy and paste the button(s) to each slide in a known position. You can assign an "action" on mouse click to these buttons or objects to run any program on your system. When that program is closed, PTE will return to the point in the slideshow where is was when you clicked on the area where the invisible button or object (rectangle, frame, etc.) is located. You "could," for example, assign an invisible button at all four corners of your images then say click the upper right to run Powerpoint, the lower right to run Word, the upper left to run Audacity, the lower left to run Media Player, etc. This is done by using the "Common Tab" in the Objects and Animations Screen "Action on Mouse Click." Choose "Run Application or Open File." Of course you can only do this from an executable slideshow and not from a video.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Violet, So, make a tiny PTE show with only a couple images which "desaturate" and post a link to the show AND to the images which desaturate in PTE as separate jpgs and maybe we can get to the bottom of the problem you are seeing... Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Maybe here is where a verbal explanation can help. Since you have the ability with PTE to "start" and "stop" a video at any desired time (as David shows), you don't need to jump through hoops to do what you want to achieve. Just set the "stop time" for the video where you want to insert your first still image(s) then set the "start time" for the same video where you want to proceed, etc., such as the "stop" time for the first instance so it will continue as desired. No need to chop up your video in an editor.... You just drop the same video into the slidelist (multiple times) at the position you want it to begin and for that instance, use the "start time" of zero (assuming you want to start the video at its beginning). Then set the stop time where you want to "pause" the video and continue with your slides. Then drop the video in again where you want it to "resume" and use the "start time" identical to the "stop time" in the first instance. There is no overhead penalty for dropping the same video in multiple times and you can decide where in the video you want to start and stop by simply changing these times. You can "observe" the timing on the video in the mini-player and just write down the various "stop" times. In all, it's pretty straight-forward when you use the features available. Best regards, Lin

Hey Davy, "VERY" creative and I love it !!! Excellent animation and just the right amount in the right places! Best regards, Lin

Hi Bert, It's good to know the new graphical engine is working well on larger displays. I've got to get an HD sized monitor. My old CRT is limited to 1600x1200. I had to sell my super high nine megapixel monitor when we lost the ranch and I haven't bought a high res monitor since. The little stuffed fox is 2640 pixels tall by 1760 pixels wide. I suspect the "ripple" is from the very high sharpness which I probably should de-tune a bit for that image... Best regards, Lin