Lin Evans

Hi Daniel, Yes - sometimes it's just fun to "play" with PTE.... Lots of great features for sure! Best regards, Lin

Hi Boogie, Thank! Fun things for snowy days. Just as an aside - several years ago there was considerable interest in learning how to move an object in an elliptical orbit. One of our French forum members, JPD (Jean-Pierre - now deceased) had a brilliant mind and left us a virtual legacy of amazing ways to accomplish things. Though several of us were doing it in other ways, JPD had a simple, but brilliant solution which was discussed and he even created a model to show us how he did it. The problem is that unless one was around in those days and just happened to remember, the thread would be most difficult to find. When I made the little sample show I thought about the fact that we had never really "formalized" this and make and posted a tutorial to show others this solution. So I created another tutorial (#33) in the PTE Made Easy series which is now available. Perhaps some newer members might want to know how to do this and some older members may have forgotten how it was done. Best regards, Lin

LOL - what a project that would be! I made a little sample for you to play with: http://www.lin-evans...sample/trio.zip Lin

Hi Erik, It "might" be a nice step forward, but I'm not too impressed with the samples so far. The "detail" just doesn't appear to be that great at the pixel level, even in the D800E model without the AA filter which normally robs a good deal of resolution. Hopefully, more samples will be coming before too long, but right now I don't see anything much better than my meager D7000 with less than half the pixel count. I think for real detailed images, the Sigma SD1 is still the present best for anything ISO 800 and under. Of course the price difference will make the new Nikon line a clear winner. Below is a 100% crop from one of the samples from the 800E without the AA filter. Even with some pretty heavy-handed sharpening (see the sharpening halos indicated by red arrows) there still is very little "detail" in the leaves, etc. Best regards, Lin

O.K. - these snowy days have me housebound so have to do something to kill the boredom. Here's a little fun project. I used Celestia (free program) to run a simulation of Earth in rotation then screen captured as a video with Screen Recorder Gold. My system isn't quite powerful enough to get the video capture completely smooth, so I apologize for the slight "jerky" motion of the Earth in places.... http://www.lin-evans...spacedebris.zip (about 37 meg zipped pc exe) Lin

Then probably to suggest it in the Ideas and Suggestions forum would be the best way to get the idea considered... Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks! Just a fun little experiment - not very difficult to do, but different I think. I have to keep my old brain active or undoubtedly will suffer the consequences. Today - I get to listen to the Superbowl on the radio. I dropped my television subscription - too expensive - and only get a few channels now on "rabbit ears" for an antenna so no coverage of major sports, etc. - PTE keeps me busy trying new things for fun, so nothing "serious" gets done, just play. My pups think I'm a bit strange when I "could" be out playing in the 15 inches of fresh snow with them, but hey - I will just reflect on when I was 10 years old and playing in the snow was "fun" LOL. These days making little PTE demos is fun and playing in the snow is just "cold." Maybe someone will find something useful with this construction - or not - it's still fun to play..... Best regards, Lin

Hi Xaver, Thanks for trying it, I'm glad it could be useful. Sometimes these things can be fun to play with. Being retired, I have lots of free time these days to experiment and it keeps me out of trouble - LOL. Best regards, Lin

Hallo Xavier, Die XMedia Recode Programm, das Sie vorhin vorgeschlagen scheint gut zu funktionieren, um die Audio extrahieren und zu pflegen, wenn die Synchronisation als mp3 eingefügt. Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Lin

Hey Tom, LOL - Yep - those things look like lots of fun! I can imagine turning one loose in a large mall where you could stand on one of the upper floors and control it and freak out people on lower levels - HA! Lin

Hi folks, An email discussion led me to create a little demo and a tutorial for those who would like to play with the concept of a transparent cube. A transparent cube, in and of itself, would be invisible, however, if we use a border around the transparent sides, it can be seen. We can easily add PNG transparency objects to each side of this cube and outside of these objects, we can see completely through the "cube" to whatever lies beneath. That could be a background, slide, video or whatever. One might ask "why would we want to create a transparent cube?" Good question. My answer is "because we can." Besides, it's fun to play with new ideas and some of you may find a useful animation where such a construct might be entertaining. To that end, I've posted a new tutorial "#32 in the PTE Made Easy" series. Also I've included a "Cube Template" and the transparent side which can be used in your construct. http://www.lin-evans.org/sample/transparentcubedemo.zip (about 18 meg zipped pc exe file) Lin

Hi, It sounds like perhaps you do not have the available codec to play the AVI correctly. If you download this freeware player, I think you will be able to see any of them correctly. http://majorgeeks.co...ayer_d5719.html The Kantaris Media Player has all necessary codecs pre-installed. You might also try just adding the downloaded AVI to a PTE show via the "add video" and see if that works for you. Best regards, Lin

Beautiful Jeff - Bosque is one of my favorite places to shoot birds - you've captured the very essence of its purpose! Best regards, Lin

Of the suggestions so far, I think Stu's idea of using the "Window" feature makes the most sense because when you close the window, the show automatically returns to the slide from where is was called. However, after reviewing the information available starting on page 58 of the User's Guide about "how" to use this feature - I'm not certain it is crystal clear for a new user. You may want to review one of my tutorials from the "Tutorials and Articles" section of the "Frequently Asked Questions" forum link. My tutorial deals with using this feature to pop-up text, but it is actually "easier" to pop-up an image such as a map. Go to #30 in my tutorials from the link below and I think you will quickly get the idea of how this feature works. The important thing to remember is that you must "create" the "window" before you can call it. I demonstrate how to do this in the AVI tutorial #30 here: http://www.picturest...uously-updated/ Probably, it would be worth doing to create another tutorial specifically on how to pop-up or call an image and return to the calling slide. EDIT: Jan 31 - I made a tutorial on this - see # 31 on link above.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Tonton, There is not the "interactive" capability to pan and zoom manually, but for now there is a way to accomplish this by programming "hotspots" using a "frame" and then clicking on the hotspot to "jump" to another slide which has been zoomed to that area. Of course it's definitely not the same as being able to simply zoom and pan as desired, but can be a viable work around as done in my sample here: http://www.lin-evans...jump/jumpto.zip Place the mouse cursor over the license plate of the old car and click, or over the driver of the fire wagon, etc. There are at least eight programmed "hot spots" in the photo. Move the mouse cursor until it changes to a hand to find them. To return to the original photo, click on the upper right corner of each zoomed photo. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tonton, Good idea! Actually, you may already know this, but you "can" do that now if you only have a few things such as a map, etc., which you might like to "jump to" and return. If you use the same version of PTE, or at least create the exe again with the same version, you can use the "Run Slideshow With Return" feature. Just create the map image as a slideshow then use hotspot, button or whatever to link to it with the "run slideshow with return" and after you have worked with the map, end that show and you will be returned to the slide where it was called from the previous show. EDIT: I think Tom and I were typing simultaneously - LOL. Best regards, Lin

Hi Phillip, Post a link to your problematic mp3 and we can check it for you. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bob, I think Jill's suggestion would be an ideal way to achieve what you are trying to do. Remember, you have full ability to use the comments templates to put any IPTC information or several EXIF extractions in automatically. If you do this only on the second image of a set then save as a template having renamed your slides to a pre-determined name, then if you overwrite with new files having identical names for your next show, the information requested via the comments "template" will automatically extract the relevant IPTC or EXIF information for the slides having identical numbers. This would require you to "write" the name of each bird on every slide in the proper place in either the EXIF or IPTC, but as long as you renamed the slides using a batch editor such as IrfanView or Fastone, every other slide would then reveal the bird's identity. Assuming you are already familiar with the comments "template" but if you are not, I would suggest going to Project Options and then the "Comments" tab. Next under "set comments for new slides" (in blue at the bottom) click on the underlined "insert template" and from the drop down menu choose "IPTC" at the bottom of the list, then choose "Caption Writer." What PTE calls "Caption Writer," PhotoShop, under IPTC Content calls "Description Writer." NOTE! Do not confuse this with "Description." If you use PhotoShop to edit the IPTC, be sure you put the information in the "Description Writer" space. Then when you choose the "Caption Writer" template with PTE, what you have written under "Description Writer" with PhotoShop will appear. If you use IrfanView, it is called "Caption Writer" just as PTE says. I don't know about Fastone because I don't use it. So PTE and IrfanView describe the IPTC place which is called by template when you choose "Caption Writer" one thing, and PhotoShop calls it something else, but it's the same physical location. Photoshop = Description Writer - PTE and IrfanView = Caption Writer - same..... If you put the bird's description as you want your grand daughter to see it in each photo, then duplicate each slide so that you have two of each and rename them sequentially once you put them into PTE and call the IPTC "Caption Writer" for every other slide with the " Comment " feature, you will have a template which you can use in the future. All it will entail is renaming the set of slides to the identical names in your template then simply overwriting what is in one folder with the content in another folder. Of course you will want to use duplicates of your originals to keep them safe because you will be overwriting each time. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bob, Welcome to the forums! If you could give us a bit more information about exactly how you go about creating your "comment" with time delay, perhaps one of us can offer a suggestion. For example, are you using the "text" as a zero opacity with fade in via keyframe on the timeline or are you using the "comments" field with a template to call the file name, etc. The more details you can give, the easier it will be to suggest a way to make this work. Best regards, Lin

So let's get back to the original question. What are the proposals to prevent multiple answers to questions which have multiple answers? PTE, like many software programs allows numerous ways to do things. How would it be possible to avoid telling a new user more than one way to proceed and do we really want to do that? The idea in my opinion is to make it as easy as possible for a new user to approach a particular problem. Yes, we can avoid using terms with which the new user may not be familiar, but are we actually solving a real "problem" here or creating a straw man issue. Have there been any complaints about the way users have answered questions? It seems that helping people via a forum is actually an iterative process. One gives a suggestion, asks some questions or asks for more clarification then gives suggestions on how to proceed. I don't recall any complaints or any particular confusion which hasn't been rather quickly addressed. No system is perfect. We do our best to point the new user in the right direction and a good start is to point them to the free tutorials and articles where they can start at the beginning and work their way through the process of learning the various features and process involved in creating a slide show. Other than improve the help within PTE, I'm not sure that there is much more which can be done, but I'm open to suggestion. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Very nice memories of a trip to some incredible country - that was some flower! Looks like the two little bees were having their fill there. While you were in Thailand did you get to visit any of the amazing buddhist temples? In past years, I've stumbled onto several ancient ones which were totally overgrown by jungle vegetation in Cambodia, Laos and in Thailand. Best regards, Lin

As far as I know, there is no "feature" which would cause certain images to come up more often than other. A simple work-around would be to place the same images in your show much more often. There is no resource "hit" for having multiples of the same image so put 25 or so of each of the "important" image in for each single and simple statistical odds will bring them up. As a "feature" it might be useful, but not something commonly used by most I think. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, You don't need to "spend" anything to use video - you already have video capabilities with your dSLR and there are hundreds and even thousands of free video clips and video effects available, the only "investment" is in the time you take to use them and the small learning curve. Mixing video and stills can be done seamlessly and to great effect - definitely the best of both worlds. But, as you say, it would indeed be sad if everyone thought the same. Diversity is indeed the spice of life.... Now that new avatar - hmmm the implications are endless - LOL. Sweet stuff on a walker - Yep... Best regards, Lin

Hi Erik, Nice one! Actually, no matter how carefully you try to use the magnetic lasso, you won't be able to perfectly cut things out for the PNG files. Instead, use the eraser tool and zoom way in on your transparency and carefully cut out the remaining areas which you missed. The best way I've found is to do it all with the eraser. Zoom way in. It takes more time, but the results will be much better. In future versions of PTE, I believe we will have the ability to use green screen video with alpha channel masking. There are some wonderful curtain video effects available, but they require the software to have alpha channel masking capabilities. Actually, right now you can use them in software such as Adobe Premiere Elements and then transfer the "doctored" video to PTE. Even a perfectly executed curtain effect in PTE complete with compression (disconnecting the two X axis values) of the curtains as they open, still looks "stiff" and artificial compared to the incredible three dimensional video effects possible. You are definitely getting the hang of it! Even if there is no place for most of our "animations" in serious AV competition, it's still fun and some amazing creations can be made so keep at it - here's for more "rainy days!!" Best regards, Lin

Hi Frans, What David suggest will work fine. Create a "picture frame" as a PNG file with a cut-out for your images. Place this as a child of the image in the mask and adjust around the outside of both by manipulating the picture frame and mask rectangle. You may click on any of the bounding rectangles around the mask rectangle or picture frame - hold down the shift key on the keyboard and drag the picture frame to perfectly fit around the masked image and the mask rectangle to perfectly fit the outside of the "picture frame" Best regards, Lin