Lin Evans

What was confusing me was all the partial transparency inside the vehicle. I use Producer which works very similar to PS Gold in that regards, but all the partial transparency wasn't making sense. The only place any masking would be needed for Gold or Producer would be in the areas of the windows, not on the steering wheel, etc. What I would do would be to make a small mask for the mirror, place an image inside to be manipulated, remove the steering wheel and replace it with a PNG overlay so it could be rotated a bit as the vehicle moved. Then add keyframes randomly and give the vehicle rotation and up and down motion to simulate driving over rough ground. Not too much work to add lots of realism... Best regards, Lin

Hi Xaver, I posted before I looked at your sample, then we posted simultaneously - LOL. After looking at his sample, I was scratching my head about what he was trying to achieve. The only remaining thing other than your sample which may need to be done is to put a small PNG file with a mask on the rear view mirror so that the view changes as the vehicle apparently moves forward... Best regards, Lin

Hi Brian, In looking at your construction, I'm perplexed. You have nothing inside the mask at all and you have transparency - but not full transparency - inside the vehicle in places like the mirror, steering wheel, etc. If what you want is to have the outside image zoom and see that from within the vehicle, you only need full transparency on the front winshield and you don't need a mask at all. If you will post the original from inside the vehicle without any alterations, I'll quickly make a sample for you which I think might help you get your head around the concept better.... EDIT: Never mind - Xaver has done it perfectly - if you haven't downloaded his example please do so.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Greg, Another feature which would really be useful, at least for some animations, is the ability to not only "clone" multiple keyframes simultaneously, but also "reverse" them. I found it quite tedious, for example, when making the venetian blind animation to have to copy/paste hundreds of keypoints in reverse their order. After creating all the keyframes to "raise" the blinds, I needed these same keyframe in reverse order to "close" the blinds. It was copy/paste, copy/paste, etc., one at a time for pull cords (3), pull handles (3), blind slats (15) and each had settings for pan, zoom, rotate and 3D transforms.... It would have saved hours of tedious work if I could have copied the entire set, reversed and pasted. Likewise for any animation where things open and close - doors, windows, levers, switches, etc. Lin

Hi Robert, Hi Robert, Thanks much! It was a fun project and one which the difficulty of making is probably largely unappreciated by most. I'm sorry to hear that Moises (Morasoft) has left the forum, his input and extremely well thought out sequences and animations will be greatly missed. Obviously, there are many uses for a tool like PTE. Animation and the creation of various objects is probably not of consuming interest to most who currently use the product, but the things learned by pushing the boundaries of possibilities and incorporated into PTE will, I believe, eventually be appreciated by more as younger users become interested and join the cadre over time. I think that often we older folks tend to get "stuck" in the past and fail to open our eyes to the changes happening around us. There will always be a place for conventional sequences and well thought out constructions which tell a story and bring the beauty of the world to us in audio and visual splendor; but concepts like video and animation, which are currently and primarily the realm of younger enthusiasts, will eventually filter their way to older users, at least to most of us. Interestingly, some of our now departed illustrious members such as Peter Coles (AV Peter) were very interested in learning and using animation to enhance the AV experience. Even one of our oldest members, Ron Wilkinson (Ronwil) was learning animation and doing quite well with it up until a few days before he passed away a few years ago. Hopefully, there will always be room for all our interests with this great product and it will continue to flourish as a tool of choice for a wide variety of audio/visual interests. Best regards, Lin

Project Options, Comments Tab, Insert Template (bottom of window in blue and underlined), Picture Name With Extension, Click on "Set for Existing Slides," then click on "O.K.".... Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, One of the problems with large shows. Unfortunately, there is really nothing I can do other than make a postage sized video to reduce the bandwidth considerations. It "could" be converted to high quality Flash which has much greater compression, but I lost my super expensive Flash FLV with preload conversion software with my system crash so now have to use MP4. The freeware Flash conversion software actually makes a larger file than the MP4. The file size is about 196 meg so the only thing those with limited bandwidth can do is start and immediately pause and let it buffer long enough to play without interruption. Best regards, Lin

Hi Erik, After reading the linked thread, it's pretty obvious that the boys over there have no clue about hardware rendering and your needs. PTE is rather unique in that it uses the GPU rather than the CPU which is used by the vast majority of other presentation slideshow software. What would be a good thing for you to do is to check the specific testing on the GPU you have chosen. The mobile variant is always less powerful than the desktop version. If you click here and look up your card, however: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ You will find that the G3D rating on your chosen nVidia card is 1016 which is quite nice and should perform well with about anything we can throw at it with PTE. I believe the advice which the youngsters are giving you on the forum is faulty. Stick with the dedicated GPU if PTE is your primary use. Best regards, Lin

Hi Guys, Thanks - a bit of a workout for a video card - less than optimal systems will probably experience stutter on the snowfall in the last scene, but modern video cards will probably play it smoothly. I posted a video version link today Friday 13 January..... I'll repeat the video link here: http://www.lin-evans.org/experiment/experiment.htm Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, For a "clock" type animation, the position of the hands would then need to be modified at each keyframe. In the past, I have created a clock which ran for an extended period by doing something similar, but there is still a lot of manual work which must be done. It would be a great feature if we could just copy and paste keyframes using the hold down CTRL key Windows Copy feature, but that is disabled in PTE on the timeline. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tony, Right now I don't believe that is possible. It would be a nice feature, however. Best regards, Lin

Just tested with Google and no malware has been reported - test results below:

No problems here with downloads or music from the site. It's a legitimate site and no malware found by any of my (MSE, Superantispyware, Adaware, etc.) antivirus protection. I believe its a false positive of some type. Downloaded multiple selections and they all play perfectly for me. Best regards, Lin

LOL - This will be my daily calendar! I forget which day it is more frequently these days, but I "will" refresh my memory daily this year! Nice blinds too! Thanks!! Lin

Fantastic Igor - listening to Strauss played by US Air Force Band now... Great suggestion! Best regards, Lin

Nice one Mick - Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla would be proud of that design! Gorgeous sunset as well!! These venetian blinds things can become a time sink - LOL. Best regards, Lin

Just to see if it could be done.... took a while and required creating interesting masks, etc. Warning, tasteful artistic nudity in first two slides ... a number of special "effects" and a little surprise... About 58 meg download... http://www.lin-evans...project2mac.zip (MacIntosh native executable) http://www.lin-evans.../project2pc.zip (Windows PC zipped Exe) For those with less than an optimal video card, or who haven't the bandwidth to download a nearly 60 meg zipped exe, here the video version. It's not quite as smooth as the executable with a top-end video card, but it should play fine on almost any system.... http://www.lin-evans.org/experiment/experiment.htm Lin

Hi Paul, Great presentation which emphasizes the side of Shanghai which the world sees and the Shanghai in which millions of common people live, work and play. It rather reminds me of Beijing in many ways. The incredible wealth and beautiful structures in juxtaposition to the poverty and common folks who help make it all possible. Beautiful photos and wonderful to see Shanghai when smog is minimal (in most of the photos). In Beijing, it's difficult to find any day when one can photograph and actually "see" the skyline from any distance. Thanks for sharing, Best regards, Lin

A couple observations. There have been numerous times when I've needed to remove a drop shadow during an animation. The only work-around so far has been to duplicate the area of the slide using PNG and transparency, overlay this and use keyframed opacity to "correct".. Being able to "keyframe" drop shadows would be a significant improvement. The other "niggle" is that opacity appears to be "additive." By this I mean that if you have a shadow on an object with another object also having a shadow in close proximity, the two shadows "add" their opacity values and with a number of these in proximity, it creates a very "dark" and ugly shadow. A recent example was using drop shadows on Venetian Blind simulations. As the blinds were raised, the cumulative effect of shadows from three or more shadowed objects created an extremely dark shadow under the last shade which followed it as it rose to the valance. If there were an "option" for drop shadows to not be additive, then the animation would look correct. As it is, so far I've found no viable work-around. It's either not have the shadows on the blinds, or have the dark additive shadow underneath. Best regards, Lin

Nice one - I like the exit through the window and the stroll through the building! Best regards, Lin

Hey - that would be great except, unfortunately, until Igor gives us video as a mask we can't "see through" a video transparency so we'll have to just keep on doing it the "hard way" until we can have video with chroma key extraction or video as a mask capabilities. I'll furnish the girls, it you will buy the Chardoney and furnish the wine glasses. Here, it's a "brown paper bag" which distinguishes the connoisseur of fine wines from the "wino" LOL... Best regards, Lin By the way, I'll be posting the "fixed" version as far as the "dropping the blinds" correctly in a few moments - it will be about a half hour and on the same link with the same name....

LOL - you guys are sure "pickey" .... Actually, let me address all three questions here. First the inside window looking "outside" to another "inside room." That's not uncommon where I live. For example, my previous ranch home had a window in the kitchen which, when the blinds were drawn, revealed a large "spa" room with a hot tub, cedar lined walls, chairs, tables, couches and sliding doors and large windows from that room leading outside to the pasture, barn, out building, lawns, etc. Very much like you see in the room with the fireplace... Often here we use windows between adjacent rooms, especially if the room is "common" to several other rooms. In the SW United States this is not an unusual form of construction probably originating in the old "Spanish Courtyard" concept, but the "courtyard" surrounded by walls and enclosed in modern days to make this an "all season" and warm and cozy place to enjoy seeing the great outdoors without the attendant weather issues. O.K. The blinds look neater doing it the way I did without ugly cords bunching up and a big "wad" of stacked blinds being hoisted into the valance. Just imagine that there were channels, gears, and a hoist chain inside the window frame and each "blind" was connected by a translucent polycarbonate rod to the master track chain hidden inside the window channel which lowers and raises the blinds. Anybody buying this??? LOL. For those who are "purists," I'll do another with the more "conventional" look and post it in a few days.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, If you were following the recent discussion of PTE for historical slideshows, we just covered the use of the mask to fade text and background simultaneously.... # 29 on my AV Tutorials....... http://www.picturest...s-for-upgrades/ Best regards, Lin

Continuing the fun: Warning! Tasteful nudity - if you have anything against the cute southbound end of a northbound girl, don't download. http://www.lin-evans...t/projectpc.zip (about 34 meg) http://www.lin-evans.../projectmac.zip (about 34 meg) Lin

Just a thought.... the Venetian Blind could make a cool 'transition" for a part of a slideshow. One could open the blinds and show an image, close them, have a sip of Chardoney, open them on a second slide, etc., etc. Best regards, Lin