Lin Evans

Hi Jim, I would agree with some of your observations, but with some reservations as follows: What you essentially would like to see comes down to two new "features" and one feature modification. The new features would be the ability to insert time and "push" the keyframes ahead by the amount of inserted time. I think that would be a very useful feature and it is one which I believe is already under development. The other new feature is the addition of a "background" patch for text. I would agree that this "could be" a useful feature, but in the many years this product has been available, it's not been asked for. Moreover, it is exceedingly simple to use a present feature for doing exactly this. The feature is the "button." Change the name to "text with background" and you have this feature already. You have full control over text, color, opacity, drop shadow and even 3D transforms for the button. Indeed, it can "very easily" be text with a background. Or, you can do it via a mask as described earlier and you can also use the built-in "rectangle" feature or your choice of a PNG transparency created in your choice of editing programs. You'll have to forgive me for not mentioning this sooner, but it's not a feature that I use frequently so I simply didn't think about it. Bottom line is: we already have the text with background feature with PTE - it's just not called "text with background." A quick example here: example The third issue of ease of pan, zoom, rotate, etc., is more problematic. Actually, if PTE didn't offer "custom" motion between keyframes it would be as simple as falling off a log. The program automatically creates a keyframe for each image. You easily create a second keyframe at your own choice of location along the timeline, select that keyframe, then visually size or move the image via the bounding rectangle to the desired size or location. It couldn't be simpler. As long as the motion is "linear" there is absolutely no need whatsoever to use separate or glue features between keyframes. The difficulty arises when you want non-linear motion. There are numerous presentation slideshow products which simply don't offer "any" non-linear motion, or when they do, it is vastly less flexible than with PTE. O.K., yes it could be nice if we could simply select "smooth" and not have to worry about separate or glue issues. But having the "flexibility" of doing so manually lets us do things otherwise not possible. Of course you have no way of knowing this, but some of our French users are presently testing a bezier curve feature for PTE which allows some incredibly smooth and non-linear curved motions for objects. The "flexibility" of this program is incredible! Perhaps the developers will program a feature which will automatically return all keyframes to linear, (this must be done before adding keyframes) allow the insertion of a new keyframe or keyframes then having "remembered" the individual settings, return all to "smooth" (or the other myriad "custom" possibilities which could exist between keyframes). It would definitely "simplify" things from a new user perspective. However, this "option" would need to be disabled at will for some of the very complex combinations used for more esoteric functions. I believe this option is also on the development table for future versions. What someone who has not had lengthy experience with this program can't be expected to know, are the extents to which the program allows customization. We have had users who have created shows which will run on ordinary, low resource systems which use more than 3,000 layers! Can you imagine how "handling timelines for multiple objects" might be a bit compromised by trying to make it a great deal easier or more "intuitive" such as by having separate timelines visible for each object simultaneously? Yes, the vast majority of users will not have thousands of layers or probably not even hundreds of layers, but the potential and power are there for those who want it. As I have said earlier, there are difficulties in trying to satisfy users who have widely varying interests. It's not an easy task from the developer's perspective. It will be interesting to see which presentation software you do decide to recommend as the "best" for historical slideshows. Once you have decided, it would be great if you could let us know here on the forum, I would like to do a comparison between it and PTE. Since I am quite familiar with what's out there It will be an interesting issue to discuss pro and con. Best regards, Lin

Hi Erik, Mip mapping (anti-shimmer) is no longer a "ticked" option, but is automatically incorporated in the new versions of PTE. I suspect he is experiencing resource issues. Best regards, Lin

The attachment didn't work - try linking or upload to Beachbrook or one of the free upload/download sites. From your description, it "sounds" like perhaps your video card isn't up to the task. PTE does hardware rendering so the video card is more important than the processor when considering larger images with pan and zoom. You can slice your large pano image into multiple smaller images using a freeware tool like PhotoScape. Then put them in sequentially and use "Push Effect" (left or right depending on how you want to pan) as the transition with "Low Quality Of Resizing" checked for that selected slide in the Objects and Animations "Properties" tab. This will smoothly scroll your slides as if they were a single pano with no visible demarcation between slides. It will look exactly as if you were panning a very large panorama, but the loading on the video card and system will be significantly reduced. Best regards, Lin

Nice job - Congratulations you have an excellent CI ! Good use of PTE, Best regards, Lin

Do not add multiple "tracks" if you want the music to play sequentially. Add your music selections one under the other on the first track. Once you have all four tracks added - to get the music to end with the appearance of the last slide, click on the timeline. When the waveform appears, click on "timed points" then on "arrange all points." This will spread the slides evenly throughout the background music and the last slide will end with the end of the music. This should get you through your project. When you have time, go to the sub-category "tutorials and articles" on the "Frequently Asked Questions" forum and look over all the available tutorials. Best regards, Lin

Hi Moritz, There are a couple "solutions" I can think of which you might explore. One is "outside" PTE and the other inside PTE. First outside. Use a freeware such as Beneton Movie GIF to easily modify the animated GIF so it will loop forever. Inside PTE. Enter your animated gif file twice with the identical position and size. Set a keyframe for the first one at the instant when it quits then immediately after another keyframe. Make the first keyframe opacity 100 and the second opacity zero. For the second animated gif, set keyframes at identical positions with the first set to zero opacity and the second set to opacity 100 percent. Set an offset on the second animated gif to begin at the exact instant the first one quits. The "interval" is how quickly your animated gif action is. For example, on the Santa and Reindeer animation you used you could "speed up" or slow down he Reindeer leg motion by changing the interval. The "lower" the number of interval, the "faster" the action. The interval describes the "delay" between frames on your animated gif. The "Offset" is in thousandths of a second. To give a one second delay in beginning the animation you would enter 1000 here. To delay five seconds, enter 5000, etc. The number of "repeats" you already understand. Rows and columns have no practical use for most. they adjust much in the way as a "mask" might. Put your Santa and Reindeer gif on a blank screen, vary the "count" between 2 and 3. You will see what it does. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, If you look very closely at your mp3 in Audacity, you will notice that there is a "repeat" programmed near the end. One of the features of Audacity is to allow the user to repeat a segment and the drum solo, near the end has this programmed. All mp3 players are not sensitive to this, but PTE is and can perform this function. I removed the repeat from your mp3 and it should read the same and work properly now. Here's the link: http://www.lin-evans.org/gary/gary.zip Happy New Year, Lin

Hi Jim, Actually, as I mentioned, there are definitely areas in PTE which could be made a great deal more user friendly. My intent, was to emphasize that no matter how good or intuitive the user interface becomes, there are features and uses which simply can't be made easily understood because some of these features require a much greater understanding of terminology and process than the casual user is likely to possess. A typical example is the parent/child relationship coupled with the 3D transform features, and how they can be used to accomplish tasks which require a fairly sophisticated understanding generally found only with those who have a background in graphics using layers and/or three dimensional animation. It's very much like Photoshop in that regard. The casual user of Photoshop will understand basic image manipulation, but when it comes to understanding layers, layer masking, and related process, either a class or considerable tutoring is usually indicated, and this takes some dedication and effort on the part of the user. Let me give a couple examples. I've authored a number of quick and non-professionally oriented video tutorials to show how to accomplish such things as to create a three dimensional, six sided cube and manipulate this three dimensional creation in two dimensional space. "Showing" the user how to do it is fairly straight forward. Explaining the underlying concepts which make it possible is quite more complex. It would be "possible" for the developers to create a user interface where the user would simply "pick" six square cropped images and then choose "make a cube" from a menu and this would be easily done. However, where would one draw the line about geometrical objects and their "creation" from a very easy and intuitive user menu interface? With PTE it's possible to make myriad geometrical objects which can be constructed from squares, rectangles and triangles. Anything from a "ball" to a "decorative box" can be created and manipulated using the parent/child and 3D transform features. I've demonstrated a way to take a PNG object with underlying transparency and rotate it 360 degrees around the circumference of the display screen while maintaining an upright position at all times. This was done by first positioning the object at the top center of the display, then moving the rotational center of this object to dead center of the display and setting the rotation to 360 degrees between keyframes. But for the object to appear to maintain an upright position, it's necessary to duplicate the object as a child of itself, set the original object's opacity to zero, leave the rotation center of the child at its own center and set it's rotation to negative 360 degrees between the same keyframes and visually "match" the parent and child for zoom. How could I possibly make the above "simple" and intuitive to the uninitiated? My point is that yes, there are many things in PTE which can be made easier and more intuitive for basic functions, but there will "always" be numerous features and potential uses which simply can't be made intuitive and menu driven. The competition such as PSP have tried to make a feature rich software resplendent with menu driven options, but in so doing have, in my opinion, created a nightmare for debugging and for future smooth evolution. The history of PTE has shown that the developers are very responsive to their user base. They continually strive to make the product better and more useful. I believe that future versions will be reflective of past versions in that we will see continual improvements both in usability and features. As I've said in the past, they must walk a tightrope between serving a rather wide variety of user requests and uses for a very flexible program. I'm in complete accord with your impressions concerning the relationship of PTE users versus those from other forums. I too look forward to continual improvements not only with this product but with competing products. Competition is good for everyone since it promotes continual evolution in a positive direction for everyone. As for pricing, I applaud the path taken by Wnsoft versus the competition. I remember when PSP was first launched, they crippled their potential user base by requiring a USB "dongle" and set their pricing at a level which the product couldn't support. Over the years, they have had to reduce their MSRP to less than half their launch price. They have done a commendable job of marketing and their "branding" was well conceived, but as a past user of PSP, I found it too buggy, ponderous and lacking in flexibility for my liking. I'm confident that PTE will continue to evolve in a positive direction and will continue to improve the user interface with each iteration. Best regards, Lin

Hi Erik, Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could, just for a day? Yes, the eagle is an animated gif made from a video. There are several ways that animated gif's can be created and one of the ways is from an actual video. By doing it that way, you get much more realism in the motion, etc. It takes much more time, because you must extract only the few frames you need for the motion and you have to carefully choose the appropriate ones. Then you must paste the jpg extractions to a transparent layer and carefully "cut out" the images leaving the transparency where background used to be. Once you have done that, you can use a number of programs (including newer versions of Photoshop) which allow you to take the independent frames and convert them to animated gifs. The results are, I think, usable in slideshows to sometimes give more of a hint of realism than by stills alone. Of course they should be used with great discretion to avoid a "video" appearance, but when done with care I believe they can sometimes add a bit to the presentation. Best regards, Lin

Hi Erik, Great tribute and I love the feel of the black and white to color transitions - it brings the past to the present with surprising realism! I made a little file for you to check out.... It may be something to consider for future "tinkering".... http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/erik/erik.zip Best regards, Lin

Excellent photos Andrew and wonderful that they have returned and that the campaign in Iraq is over. Sad about the losses, it seems our nations can't stay out of harm's way, and we sometimes wonder if it's all worth it... war is seemingly a large part of our history as a species. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Are you a Photoshop user? If so, you will quickly find that no matter how much you learn about it, there is always something new which you didn't know and can learn. PTE is similar in the respect that it's a very powerful and complex software. I'm not saying that there couldn't be improvements because there are definitely areas where the user interface can be greatly improved, but even if it were theoretically as perfect as it could be, it still won't be something that "everyone" can just automatically easily learn how to use to the maximum advantage and do some of the sophisticated things possible. PTE in some ways is like a high level programming language. There are myriad ways of approaching a desired end. In order to keep the flexibility and power which PTE offers, there are areas which are necessarily complex. Even those who have a great depth of knowledge about the program struggle with certain things. There have been users, in the past, who did things with PTE that even Igor admitted he didn't know could be done. Trying to make the program very simple to use and totally "intuitive" would also preclude some of the incredible flexibility. There are literally "hundreds" of presentation slideshow programs out there if you Google a search and catalog them. The vast majority are of the "cookie cutter" type. Do you want a transition? Here are your choices. There is no other way to make a transition. Do you want to zoom in? Here are the steps you can do. If what you want isn't among the few choices offered, you are simply out of luck. Everything the software can do is available by menu choice. Text handling, for example - fly-in from right, left, top, bottom. But what if you want it to fly in from the side or diagonal? Sorry, not an option. Would you like to import an animated gif which is designed to run for 10 seconds and quit, but you want it to go for 23 seconds? Sorry, you have no control over that. Do you want to rotate your image off center and make a png image "circle" the screen without turning upside down when it reaches the bottom of the circle? Sorry, can't do that - in fact, if you want to rotate it off center at all, (and you can only do this with a very few expensive packages) you will have to get a computer and calculate the numerical coefficients to type in. Drag the center where you want it visually? LOL, Sorry, can't be done. Parent/Child relationships and all that entails? Sorry, not available. 3D transforms? What's that??? Want to move between keyframes six and ten and have different actions in terms of slow, fast, smooth? Sorry - it will never happen. But look how great our audio is, we can have four tracks and see the waveform for all four simultaneously!!! Hmmm, what if you need 10 tracks? Sorry, you only get four, but by golly you can see them all simultaneously! The list goes on and on. Things which "can" be done with PTE but simply can't be made totally intuitive without taking away power and flexibility which presently exists. It's like the difference between Photoshop and Photoscape. One is extremely powerful, but a bit mysterious and not all that intuitive. The other is very intuitive and simple for almost anyone to use "as long as" they don't need to do anything other that what can automatically be done via menu. I suspect what many really need is a "PTE Lite," something which has a lot of the basic functions and which is highly automated and menu driven. Others are very happy with the full, and powerful version which "can" be made more intuitive in certain areas, but can never be made "simple" and "easy" to learn where more sophisticated features are concerned. I suspect that's why Adobe makes Elements versions of a number of their more powerful software. Not everyone needs the full power of Photoshop and not everyone needs the full power of PTE. However for those who do, there is nothing else like it available.... Best regards and Happy New Year, Lin

Hi Colin, Superb job of the use of video mixed with stills. Really great photography and video of interesting subjects. I loved the ants moving the dead wasp body. If humans would only work so well together! Best regards, Lin

Hi Ray, Thanks for trying that. I've confirmed with another friend who has the Lion OS on his Mac that neither clicking on the text nor clicking on the upper left corner works with his Mac. I'll turn the project files over to Igor and let them ring it out. The upper left corner is a "frame object" and the text is a "window object" so for whatever reason those two objects are not being recognized by the Mac OS. It's definitely something we need to fix. Best regards, Lin

Hi Hoodie, You're very welcome - glad it can help with your project, Best regards, Lin

Thanks Igor - it looks great! Happy New Year to you and your family! Best regards, Lin

Hi LRRH, Here's your tutorial: It's a zipped AVI video and it's also now linked on my tutorials list in the Tutorials and Articles sub section of "Frequently Asked Questions and How To" Link To Popup Text Tutorial Please let me know if you have any questions. Best regards, Lin

O.K. "hoodie" I'll make one for you later today. Best regards, Lin

You would like a tutorial on how to click on an object and have text appear or instant navigation to another image? If so, I can make a tutorial for that. Best regards, LIn

Hi Peter, Thanks! That solves the issue of text and rectangle having independent adjustment characteristics but adds complexity for the uninitiated. My idea was to keep the overall appearance of the construct as simple as possible to make it less susceptible to error when choosing the components for manipulation. Along with the improved appearance of the background component (which could be manipulated with Photoshop) having an external PNG rectangular background allows for a nice "button" appearance rather than a sharp edged rectangle. Come to think of it, a PTE "button" could be used as well. Though it would be "cleaner" from a programming perspective to liberally use frames for parent/child controlling, the more components inside the mask, the more room for error and confusion for the novice user. Once the user is thoroughly familiar with the process, I think your idea would be the best approach in the event we don't have the text background feature added by Igor. Good idea, Lin

Hi folks, A recent discussion and a question about how we might have a work-around for a desired feature led me to make an AVI tutorial on how to use text with a background colored block or "rectangle." There are times when having text to identify a person or feature in a slide is difficult to see because of the nature of the individual slide. The question was raised about offering a feature to have a background on which text could lie which could be faded in and out simultaneously with the text and would greatly enhance the visibility especially when the slide was "busy" with lots of color or data which tends to hide the text. The problem with simply making text a child of a rectangle is that opacity is not an "inherited" attribute, so this must be done with a mask or it means multiple keyframes (one for the rectangle and an identical one for the text) to effect the fade-in and fade-out. It's not difficult to use a mask, whereby one simply fades out the mask container, but there are some shortcuts which I cover in the tutorial that will make it very quick and simple should one have the need for this. I think having the "background for text" would be a very nice optional feature and quite easy to program, but until we have such, the work-around involves putting your text on a rectangle, preferably made in PixBuilder or PhotoShop, although one "can" use a PTE "rectangle." There are additional issues if we choose a PTE rectangle, because if we distort the rectangle to make it other than "square" then the child "text" also gets distorted and one would then have to hold the shift key and "drag" the text back to simulate a "normal" appearance. So it's best to use a rectangle made outside PTE. Here's a link to the zipped AVI tutorial for anyone interested - about a 70 meg download and it now resides along with my other tutorials on the Frequently Asked Questions sub forum "Tutorials and Articles." http://www.lin-evans...undtutorial.zip And here are PC and Mac Links to another topic of discussion demonstration of the use of several PTE features for manual control. If there is interest I'll be glad to make a brief tutorial on how this is done for anyone who doesn't already know. http://www.learntoma...e/examplepc.zip (less than 3 meg download for PC) http://www.learntoma.../examplemac.zip (less than 3 meg download for MacIntosh) Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim, Here's a small example of how this can work - a bit less than a 3 meg zipped PC exe and a Mac exe: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/example/examplepc.zip (Windows zipped exe) http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/example/examplemac.zip (Mac zipped exe) Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, Why would you assume that she isn't using 1024x768? That's the resolution I use. I have monitors which support up to 1920x1080 but the print is too difficult to see at the higher resolutions and none of my cameras shoot at 16:9 aspect ratio. I don't have a problem working at 1024x768 and have no problems with image quality. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, I understand completely. Fortunately, the exe format has been around virtually unchanged since the first IBM PC's were launched in August of 1981with PC DOS and MSDOS - over 30 years now. As a former developer, my old DOS software still runs fine under the latest version of Windows, but as you say, who know about the future. You're just a "spring chicken" at 55! In less than six months I'll be 70, if I last that long! I'm pretty familiar with archival storage methods since my wife spec'd and launched Hewlett-Packard's first tape library - internal codename Galactica - and for five years prior to that was marketing director for both EncyNova, Inc (first desktop tape autoloader) and MediaLogic ADL (Editor's Choice) multi-media mid-range tape library series. It was eat and sleep "archival storage" and backup for 15 years - LOL. The "secret" - if there is one - to successful computer archival storage, is constant migration to newer technology. Tapes are good for at least 35 years, optical for at least 100 years but the only way to be certain that computer archives are secure for the future is to continually migrate the data when new technology is available. For several years now there has been rather obscure development of very promising new multi-layered media which will put multi-terrabytes on 5.25 inch optical discs. I expect we will see it mature in a couple years. It's hard for we older characters to accept the fact that this method has taken over and paper and even microfilm are pretty much going by the wayside. I guess we dinosaurs have to change with the times.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Not to speak for Jim, but I think you misunderstood his original statement. He's not intending to use a presentation slideshow program for preserving archival media, but rather as a way of "presenting" the information today to an audience. What alternative in terms of slideshow presentation is there? Video? If so, PTE can create that, but I doubt that today's video formats will be any better preserved than the executable format. Just saving the images in tiff format doesn't include a way of presenting them and to my knowledge, there is nothing out there any better than PTE to use for the presentation. - see his opening quote below: -------------------------------- I’m writing a book on digital archiving and presentation of historical photos and sound recordings. It includes a chapter on making slideshows because I think that slideshows are the most effective way to present historical information and should be used more. Most of my experience has been with Proshow Gold and Proshow Producer (PSP) and I prepared the draft chapter describing them. However, the explanation of all the complexity and pitfalls in using PSP would probably turn off people more than encourage them. -------------------------------