Lin Evans

Create or find a circle gif or jpg file - there are thousands available throughout the web. Use it as you would any other object and add a click noise as an mp3 or wav file if you want sound effects. Download and view the numerous tutorials and learn to use the software. Best regards, Lin

Create Custom AVI allows you to set parameters for width and height.... Lin

Unfortunately, I don't believe there is any way to do that... Best regards, Lin

Select the slide you want to be 640x480 - then go to Objects and Animations screen. Click on the "Common" tab then on "Size/Position in Pixels" and enter the value 640x480. Do this for both slides you want to be 640x480. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, There are dozens of free tutorials covering about everything you need right here on the forum in the tutorials and articles section here:.... http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/forum/8-tutorials-and-articles/ Best regards, Lin

Hi David, I can plainly see them in your capture, but with much more difficulty on the original. I believe this (my inability to see them) is due to a combination of reasons. I'm looking at a lower screen resolution (1024x768) and on a CRT which has less abrupt shifts in gray levels than an LCD which tends to slightly blur gray transitions of very close luminance. The butterfly effect was apparently made from three slides - one grayscale, one of low saturation color and the final well saturated. I think it would be possible to "fix" this by simply either cloning out the artifacts using surrounding clean areas or by using the "blur" tool in Photoshop, then saving at a lower compression level such as 8 or 10. Otherwise another desaturate of the original color and re-save at 10 or 12. Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, Looked super to me. I couldn't see the artifacts David sees - wonder if it's because of CRT versus LCD/LED display properties? For David: I don't see why desaturating a JPG would "introduce" artifacts. Major artifacts generally happen in jpg files because of excess compression Best regards, Lin

Hi Boogie, The only present way to control sound directly in a video is to mute it or use the navigation bar to manually adjust volume. The work-around (which may or may not be practical depending on the video) is to mute the sound in the video but extract the video sound to an MP3 where you can then insert it and use the full envelope features to adjust it. Of course if the video sound is such that there is precise synchronization between say a "speaker" and the spoken word, then this raises other problems of timings. On the other hand if no such "precise" synchronization is necessary, it's easy enough to either copy or extract the video sound, save it as an MP3 and deal with it that way. Igor has said that in future versions, he will implement more sophisticated audio features for video sound. Best regards, Lin

Here's a couple: one free, one cheap.... http://www.evanolds....ogifsimple.html http://video-to-gif....k-software.com/ Also, once you convert it, you could use various software such as ImageReady (found with Photoshop) to remove backgrounds frame by frame so that you end up essentially with the same type of animation as you might with a chroma key subtraction except you won't have sound. and a couple tutorials about converting video to animated gifs: http://www.makeuseof...ws-movie-maker/ http://www.wikihow.c...a-Gif-Animation Best regards, Lin

Hi Boogie, Until Igor has this sorted out in a future version, there are other viable work-arounds for achieving what you are thinking about. Since PTE already supports animated gif format and since there are a number of software programs which can convert video to animated gif, if the subjects do not require more than 256 colors, it is relatively easy to do short versions via the animated gif approach. Many see animated gif format as a rather simplistic and non-realistic animation. This is probably because of the many web gif which are of more a cartoon-type orientation. However, it is possible with the right backdrop to extract very realistic frames, which when made into sequences via gif animation, are as realistic as other video formats. In addition, PTE already allows the user to vary the gif animation speed so that there is some serious power for using this format. If you want to see an example, download my link below which uses a combination of video, animated gif and still constructs. The lightning is video superimposed over a still image using masking techniques, the rain and water ripple effects on the cube are animated gif - the wolves in motion on one cube face is video - the eagle flying across the screen in the last sequence is an animated gif on top of a video and still frame ...... http://www.learntoma...o/wolfstorm.zip (about 39 meg zipped exe in pc format) Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Nice DOF isolation with the telephoto - good use of the animated intro and closing too. Lots of character in those faces! Best regards, Lin

Hi Freddy, From your description, it sounds as if you "may" be using a different computer (laptop) and that the font you chose for the show was not "resident" on the laptop. You didn't say which version of PTE you were using, but on some of the older versions, PTE used the fonts resident on the PC and in the case where the executable show was later shown using a computer where these fonts were not resident, Windows would choose a replacement font. With newer versions of PTE, the program doesn't require the font to be resident on the system being used. Once you burn a DVD, fonts are not being read from the system but instead whatever font was there when the DVD was burned will always be displayed because the images are not being created on the fly but instead stored as video frames. The question then becomes whether you are actually playing the burned DVD using the projector or playing the executable code from the hard disk? As long as the Brush Script appears when the actual DVD is played, it will "always" appear correctly no matter what equipment it is played on. The executable, however, if created with an older version of PTE, may not work correctly on a system not having the Brush Script font available. The solution, would be to take the original PTE file and open it on a system which has Brush Script and which also has the latest version of PTE resident. Create the exe file again and save the latest file which should then work on "any" PC whether or not the Brush Script font is resident. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jan, It's difficult to be certain, but it "sounds" like a resource issue on the computer. As an executable does this play smoothly all the way through? Which video card are you using and how much RAM do you have available? Is this crash on "playback" or while compiling the video? Try using Ctrl Alt Del to pull up the Task Manager. Click on the "Performance" tab and see what is happening when the "crash" happens..... just some suggestions... Best regards, Lin

Sure it can be done like that, but It's time consuming if you want to do some innovative things. What if you wanted a different color on each letter, you wanted six lines of text with four different fonts and you had 30 letters? Lots of work. Obviously, that wouldn't happen very often but being able to assign individual fonts and colors to words or letters could be very simple as it is in Photoshop or text editors without having multiple objects to keep track of. Another nice feature to have would be auto text wrap and spell check.... Best regards, Lin

A very useful feature for me, and something the competition can't do, would be to be able to have multiple fonts on a single text entry. For example, I create a text heading with one font and the following lines using a different font such as is possible in Photoshop or in text editors. Lin

Hi John, Just a question? Are you aware that you can select one or any number of slides and drag and drop them along the Slide List? The arrows were a redundant means of doing this. I'm not certain whether they will reappear or not in the final version, but as you may already know, you can do this with drag and drop. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Bet you a pint that if you use Stu's key copy program to retrieve the key from the old system and if PTE works on that old system, that it will work for you. (you can get the software from Stu's link above) Best regards, Lin

Hi Bob, Yes, Best regards, Lin

No, actually what you are missing is a bit of an understanding of "DVD" technology. DVD's are either PAL or NTSC resolution. If you want HD resolution, you must use a different technology. Bluray is one one way to get 1920x1080 resolution so you may want to burn your HD MP4 slideshows to Bluray but this will require a Bluray burner and appropriate software. Video Builder doesn't support burning Bluray. The "only" way I know to get HD resolution on a standard DVD media blank is to use software which can do this such as Nero, Toast, etc. You will still be greatly limited in the "capacity" of the media so 15 to 20 minutes or so is about all you can reliably expect... Read the following links for more in-depth information. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=705146 http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/2007/DVDFormatsExplained.asp Best regards, Lin

Open the slideshow you wish to copy from and go to the slidelist. Right click on the slide you want to copy and choose "copy slide" - do not minimize or close this file. Next go to "File Open" and open the slideshow you want to copy to. Again right click on the slide list and "paste" the slide in the slide list. No need to "save" the first show if prompted. Doing this will copy the slide and any associated keyframe actions, objects as children, etc., but will not copy mp3 audio. For example you could copy an entire slideshow to another show, but you will need to insert the audio again. Lin

Barry, The video clip drop-in has not yet been incorporated for Mac as far as I know???? Lin

Well done - beautiful country and beautiful photos. I like the fact that you used a tiny slow zoom with just enough sharpness to give the water in many frames the illusion of motion due to shimmer - it looks realistic as a still video might have looked. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Did you link the correct video? The reason I asked is that there is no really good way to determine what the synchronization "should" be with a training video where there is no visible speaker to match the voice to. To determine synchronization accurately there needs to be visual and audio clues such as the mouth of a speaker to match to the audio. When you are just speaking off camera, about what is happening on camera there is no good way for an observer to calculate the degree of mis-synchronization. Best regards, Lin

Hi Robert, The experiment you will want to try is to now take the executable file to a PC which does not have, and never has had PTE installed on it and see if it will play.... Best regards, Lin

Yes, there is a freeware version .... Best regards, Lin