Lin Evans

LOL - You're absolutely right - just a quickie to see if it would work. Actually, that video is too large and I'll try to capture a smaller one. That one was captured using Celestia - a cool free program, in case you haven't used it - get it here: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Best regards, Lin

Little - "Le Monde" included.... http://www.lin-evans.org/monde/Le_monde2.zip (PTE) http://www.lin-evans.org/monde/Le_monde2ex.zip (exe) It "grew" a bit, but hey, I added the world - LOL Lin

Eric, I sent you the pte file, open it and run it. Look at how it's built. I made you an AVI tutorial - download it here - extract the archived AVI from the zip file and run it.: http://www.lin-evans.org/eric/eric.zip Lin

LOL, Are you telling me that you're "henpecked?" I don't know if there is a right or wrong way to do lots of things - just the way or "ways" that work! I can see where Ctrl E could be very helpful here!! Regardless of the methodology, the "effect" is great. I wonder if it would be possible to bend text horizontally around half of an object? It looks like Jean has done it that way on a couple of his creations? If it is, then with a second set and opacity switches one could have fun with text circling the Earth or one of you soccer balls? Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, That's cool!! But why the second frame? Couldn't you achieve the same effect with one controlling frame and changing the X axis at the bottom and top to opposites such as -32 and +32? Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Probably, for the purposes of what you are doing this is irrelevant, but here is one of the problems with this type of animation. The left wing view is consistent whether the gull's wings are up or down because you see the "top" view of the wing at all times. However, for the right wing, with the position of the gull when photographed, you see the underside of the wing when it is in the upward position, and would expect to see the top side when the wing is down. Because of this, a whole new can of worms is opened if you want somewhat "realistic" animation. A "far" better way to achieve realistic animation with this type of scenario would be to capture the gull with the movie mode. Then take the video into a video editing program and choose enough frames to get one full wing "flap" so you go from full downward to full upward (or vice versa). Crop the frames so that you have only those frames between these extremes. Generally that will be around 10 frames. Then take this small video clip into software which will output the individual frames as jpgs. Next make transparent PNG's from each jpg by copying and pasting the jpg on a transparent background and use the eraser tool to remove all except the bird and wings. Next take these png file into any "animated gif" sortware (there are numerous free ones available) and create an animated gif. When you have done this, you can insert the animated gif under a controlling frame and you essentially have a "real" animation complete with all the nuances of flight. You simply use the controlling frame to adjust size, position of the bird and speed of traverse across your frame. You may have seen my "flying eagle" in some of my animations. That's how it was done. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Quit Kibitzing, you're frustrated because of the time you've spent without results, but you really need to examine each feature thoroughly until you understand it. The manuals are designed to tell you what the features do, not to teach you how to do each step of a particular project. To do that the manual would be thousands of pages and no one would read it. You already know that what you want to do can be done, you just don't know how to go about it and that takes a little time and experimentation to get straight in your head. Here's your pte file so you can see how to accomplish this: http://www.lin-evans...ric/birdfly.pte Essentially it works like this. The first thing which you need, if you want it to really look realistic, is a "good" set of components. The "cut out's" must be precise with no extraneous fragments left over. The png files must have transparency right up to the elements and cutting them out is best done with the eraser, not with the lasso which it appears you used. The right wing of your gull, for whatever reason is backward. That is the leading edge and trailing edge of the wing were reversed. To correct it required a horizontal flip and 180 degree rotation. That's why I asked for the original jpg of the gull. Essentially, you have three components - the gull's body, and the left and right wings as separate png files with transparency surrounding the feathers. Step 1: open PTE and put the png of the gull's body in as a starting place. Step 2: go to Objects and Animations and add a frame Step 3: select the gull's body, right click and choose "cut" Step 4. paste the "cut" (body of the gull) as a child of the frame you added Step 5. add the left wing as a child of the frame and size it appropriately Step 6. add the right wing as a child of the frame and size it appropriately - a little larger than the left wing because it's closer to the camera view Step 7. move the child components (body and wings) so that the gull's body is in the center and the right wing is on the top of the "stack" with the left wing on the bottom Step 8. click on each wing and move them into their rough starting positions. Step 9. click on the small dot in the center (the center) of the bounding rectangle, of one of the wings. Hold down the shift key and drag this dot to the center of the gull's body adjacent to the base of the wing where it attaches to the body of the gull Step10 repeat above for the other wing What you are doing here is setting the center of rotation for the wings. step 11 play with the rotate for each wing to see what happens when you drag the rotate step 12 set the initial wing positions as desired for the beginning of your picture step 13 import your "sea" background and size it appropriately as desired. Do not make it a child of the frame step 14 move the sea background to the very bottom of the stack step 15 set the time for this slide via customize slide - choose sufficient time for your animation step 16 click on either of the wings then at some interval on the timeline set a keyframe step 17 with this keyframe highlighted, click on the other wing and set an identical keyframe so it's on the timeline at the identical time of the keyframe for the other wing step 18 click on one of the second keyframes - see which wing is active and rotate the wing as desired step 19 click on the other second keyframe and rotate the other wing correspondingly step 20. repeat the above with another "set" of corresponding keyframes further along the timeline step 21 with one of the wing keyframes selected, change the rotation of the corresponding wing to the opposite position step 22 with the other wing keyframe selected, change the rotation of the other wing to correspond to the opposite step 23 click on the controlling frame step 24 click on the timeline and set a keyframe where you want the action to end step 24 drag and/or size the controlling frame to move the ensemble to the ending position step 25 Run the preview and do any necessary fine tuning step 26 save your work. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, If you could send me the original gull picture before the wings and body were separated, I think I can make you a quick example to work from. The problem with what you have is that it's not going to look very good because the "cut-out's" are too crude and there is too much residual around the components. Essentially the way I would approach this is to create a parent "frame" which will control the direction and speed of the assembled "bird." Next the bird's body as a "child of this frame and the two wings as same level "children" of the frame. The "children will inherit the motion of the parent (gull's body) via the controlling frame and the gull's body will inherit the motion from the controlling frame. The two wings will be synchronized via exact placement of keframes for each and their motion between these keyframes. It "sounds" much more complicated than it is, but to make it look right I would like to make the cut-outs from the original. The "wings" are probably all right but the body isn't. If you could post a full resolution image of the gull, I'll separate it into the components with the essential clean transparency needed. The best way would be to just post the jpg on one of the file sharing services like MediaFire. Best regards, Lin

Hi Davy, You got it! I think the person who made the show was quite serious. The issue is that it's just too hard to do the things we can do with ease in PTE using Producer. Producer is very good for what it does really well and that is that it is superb for lending itself to the manipulation of rectangular objects in novel ways. It's also very amenable to "styles" and such making the inexperience user able to produce a decent show with minimal effort and experience. Kudo's to Photodex for this. The bottom line is that when one becomes tired of "toys" and wants a tool, they gravitate to PTE. Like the comic (though perhaps not intended that way) animations in AquaSoft's example, they simply appeal to a totally different user I think. Lin

Absolutely! Lin

Hi Davy, That's true - but what we need to do is to demonstrate the differences between what is "possible" with PTE and what is possible with the competition. Xaver was kind enough to send me a link to AquaSoft's page where they have some demos - worth watching I think: A good one to start with is at the bottom labeled "Windmühle" - really professional animations http://www.aquasoft....ashow.as#videos And I added this Youtube link to a demo of a Proshow Producer presentation on Youtube with a rather interesting title on my prior post - see it here for comparison: Obviously, the above isn't a good example of what "could" be done with Proshow Producer because, unfortunately, it plays to Proshow's weaknesses rather than its strengths. But it does show what some people "think" are great examples of what can be done. I think it works "very" well in favor of what is done daily by members of this and the French PTE forum members with PicturesToExe and demonstrates quite well the differences.... Check it out and I think you will agree that the "competition," when they attempt to "animate" for the most part look pretty much like cartoon characters. There are "attempts" to overcome the obvious with loud percussive music, but if you turn off the tunes and just look at the images and animations, it's pretty sad in my opinion. Best regards, Lin

Hi Davy, Good comments and as expected! Actually, the purpose of the first demo has done exactly what was intended - stir up interest and commentary. 1080p on YouTube won't work for animations - there actually is no need to even try - been there, done that. The bandwidth is far too low and the quality goes down the tubes quickly (pun intended). 1080 works for simple transitions and stills without animation, but simply is, in my opinion, useless for trying to demonstrate smooth animation on Youtube or Vimeo. I'm completely familiar with the "right" approach for marketing. I was married to a very successful marketing executive for 35 years. This first example wasn't intended to be the end-all for demonstrating PTE's capabilities but was indeed intended as a challenge to stir up controversy both here and on Youtube about slideshows. So far it's woking perfectly for that purpose!! It's quite O.K. to "challenge" the competition. They can then post their best efforts and we all know what that will unveil... We here know that the competition can't compete with either quality or animations with PTE. The "world" doesn't know it yet, but maybe we can make more people aware of the differences. Competition promotes advancements in both features and quality. Tip toe through the tulips is not the way to get there in my opinion. I spend lots of time "looking" at what the competition can and can't do. It's a fun hobby. Some even here on this forum are fond of telling us where PTE has shortcomings and how thing are better with certain other products. Funny thing is, I can't find a single example of this demonstrated and I look very hard. Please, if someone has a slideshow done with m.objects or Wings Platinum or Proshow Producer, or Polaroid new "prize winning" software, which demonstrates superiority. lead me to them so I can see this superiority for myself. I'm not holding my breath because I use most of these products also and am pretty familiar with their strengths and weaknesses. Yes - the snowglobe took exactly as long to develop as it was intended and necessary - LOL. That was the absolute purpose. One doesn't go from Spring to covered with snow in a few seconds if the intent is to convey some modicum of "reality." Only the first (the snow globe) was a "complete" show. The remainder were only parts of shows designed to fit the intended background music and demonstrate, at a leisurely pace, some of the possible effects with PTE. Future examples planned as marketing devices and will be short and focused and should include something for everyone. There should be examples of fancy and animated and examples of smooth, beautiful and family oriented. The intent is to show people what can be done with this product. If in doing this a few feathers are ruffled with users of other products, that's fine. Maybe it will stimulate them to do better work. Keep the comments and ideas coming - the more discussion we can generate, the better things will be in the future... By the way, here's some of the "competition" .... Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, Here is the Youtube link: If you get a chance see if you can post this link in a response: http://www.thebestslideshowsoftware.com Thank, Lin

Hi Mick, Those are great ideas, and one's we can implement in future uploads. This one is already on its way and there are technical reasons why I can't speed up this snow animation. With a "different" one, yes - but the one I selected has to stay as is. For future demonstrations, I hope to have a variety from PTE users which represent not only the animation capabilities, but also the true "slideshow" superiority via award winning shows if possible. Hopefully, we can get input from a number of not only this, but our French forum as well where there are some amazing demonstrations. Best regards, Lin

Lately, on YouTube I've seen several presentation slideshow companies post videos demonstrating why they think their product is "best" for creating slideshows. Some are pretty decent and some are, in my opinion, pretty pathetic - especially in their animation effects. We all know that PTE is the "best" available for our purposes and even though the competition has some pretty neat features, PTE can do things with the others either can't do or do with much difficulty. Each of the main competitive products have strengths and weaknesses, but my personal opinion is that "we" have the very best right here with PTE. Polaroid (not the same photography company, but someone who bought the name) has purchased a domain name (bestslideshowsoftware.com) and advertises their slideshow software as the "best" - see link here: http://www.bestslideshowsoftware.com This software has been winning "awards" from a company which "tests" and "rates" slideshow software. Of course they haven't tested or rated PTE or Producer or Wings Platinum or m.objects or any of the really "good" products - but I believe that the Wnsoft product needs to be advertised and promoted and the world shown what a "really" good and "professional" grade presentation slideshow software looks like. To help accomplish this, I purchased two domains (thebestslideshowsoftware.com and thebestslideshowsoftware.net) and put up a single page which when clicked leads to the Wnsoft site: http://www.thebestsl...howsoftware.com Further, I plan a series of YouTube video's demonstrating not only fancy animations and effects, but also simple and really "good" slideshows of the type found in major AVI competitions. I've made the first attempt which is one which demonstrates some of the more esoteric and "fancy" capabilities of PTE, but I'm asking for assistance from everyone to provide some really superior work. Let's all work together and get material which will knock the socks off of the competition - can we do that? So here are links to what I plan to post to YouTube later today. The show runs a little over 10 minutes and is about an 85 meg download, so for those with reservations about downloading large files, you can click the video link if you want to see it. It's a combination of a number of my previous shows and designed to show off some of the fancy things possible. However, I want to make it clear that my idea is to equally promote "quality" shows in a series to knock the socks off the competition - so I need help, suggestions and donated shows.... http://www.lin-evans...ample/index.htm (video which was done at 1280x720 but smaller for this post) the upload to YouTube example will be 720p http://www.lin-evans...lideshowmac.zip (84 meg MacIntosh native exe) http://www.lin-evans...stslideshow.zip (84 meg Windows zipped exe) Start Video and immediately click on Pause - Let the video buffer until the "gas gauge" is about half way across then restart for uninterrupted play back. Lin

Hi, Of course. The speed of a scroll is determined by the distance you move the text within the time frame between two keyframes. Type your text then move and size the text visually. The beginning keyframe is set to zero time for the slide automatically. Create a second keyframe and move it on the timeline to where you want the scroll to end. Highlight the second keyframe and drag the text to the ending position and run the preview. Here's a link to an audio visual tutorial. Click on the Tutorials Link and choose number 15 to get an overview of text manipulation. The tutorial is for an older version of PTE, but the basics are identical as far as keyframes are concerned: http://www.learnpte.com Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Thanks - I'll see if I can do that. It's just a rudimentary beginning. I haven't even put in meta tags yet for the search engines, but I will be working on it on a continuing basis. Best regards, Lin

Thanks Geoff, I've got a bit of work to do on it yet, but I hope to get some more good links to add... Best regards, Lin

http://www.thebestsl...howsoftware.com http://www.thebestsl...howsoftware.net the links above - for easily read reference are: http://www dot thebestslideshowsoftware dot com http://www dot thebestslideshowsoftware dot net Best regards, Lin

I have created two new simple websites which will be expanded later, which link to all my tutorials, demos, Wnsoft and this forum. The tutorials are duplicated here in the Tutorials and Articles section. Sometimes it's easier to give a quick link than to go find the local link here so the duplication may make it easier. Anyone wishing links to their free tutorials or templates please let me know and send me the links. The purpose of these domains are to provide free information about PTE including free tutorials, free templates and other relevant information. Just an announcement which I will delete in a few days. The links are as follows: http://www.learnpte.com http://www.learnpicturestoexe.com Best regards, Lin

Hi Bert, Just place the mouse cursor along the top line of the thumbnail area and move it up and down until it changes to arrows. Hold down the left mouse button and drag upward and the thumbnails will get progressively larger. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bert, The "AB" is the effect duration. By clicking on the tiny AB box, the customize slide window will pop up and let you change the value. By clicking on the number in the lower right, you can highlight and quickly change the display time for that slide. The only "option" you have is whether or not to display the caption and that is changed via the "View" - show captions in slide list check box. If your thumbnails are too small, you will only see these values and need to drag the window larger to make room for the full sized thumbnail. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Mipmapping and unsharp mask are not substitutes for one another. Unsharp mask is a property setting affecting "all" main images in your slideshow. The "sharp/smooth" setting is applied as desired to selected individual objects. Perhaps the best way for you to see this might be to create a very small test show consisting of two slides which have great detail in them. Set the unsharp mask to maximum (200) in the Project Options, Screen Tab. Now add text to one - just the word "text" - no need to do anything else. Now with "text" selected and without zooming in (set the zoom ratio to about 50% - use the drop down arrow on zoom next to the "close" button at top of screen) , observe the word "text" while you manually adjust the slider through the extremes from -128 to 128. The "sharper/smoother" acts on individual objects while the unsharp mask is a universal applied equally across the board to all slides in your show. You will not notice the effect of the sharper/smoother settings very much when zoomed in close, but will notice them more from a distant zoomed out setting. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, You could express it that way (1:.77) but the convention is to use 16:9 and since we can't display less than a single pixel on a display device, we use whole numbers. The answer to Eric's original question is that his topic was setting "slide size twice" when, in actuality, he is only setting the slide size once and the aspect ratio once. I suspect what would have been a better way to phrase it would be to ask why, if we set an aspect ratio do we need to enter the slide size at all. I think the answer to that implied question is that we have the ability within PTE to control the size in pixels we want the display to be regardless of the capability of the display device. Of course we can't display a 1920 x 1080 pixel display on an 800x600 monitor, but we can be certain that if a 1920 x 1080 display resolution device is being used that our slides are taking full advantage of that capability, hence the option to choose between popular display sizes (1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080). Best regards, Lin