Lin Evans

Hi Eric, Yes, that one will fill the screen on a 4:3 and leave a little black on a 5:4. Too many different ratios available to cover them all unfortunately. I have cameras which shoot 5:4, 4:3 and 16:9 but 35mm is actually 4:3 so most of my dSLR's shoot that aspect ratio. It would be great if the display manufacturers and the camera manufacturers were to standardize on "something" LOL. As for the technicals - it's just a stitched panorama which is scrolled slowly. The animated eagle is an animated gif created from a video of a bald eagle flying. I'm working on a collection of animal and bird videos to convert to animated gifs. It's a long and tedious job to remove the backgrounds from each frame unless the bird or animal just "happens" to blue screen itself as birds sometimes do when flying against a clear blue sky. Otherwise it's a frame by frame background removal then a combining of frames to get the animated gif. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, Thanks for checking it out. It was photographed from about 200 feet south of my front door. The area of mountains is commonly referred to around here as the Front Range. Rocky Mountain National Park lies toward the center and right as you see the mountain range on the scroll. It's about 30 miles nw of my viewpoint. The right side of mountain range is north and the left side is south and you are looking west. Best regards, Lin

Hi Hubert, Actually, the colors are correct, that's pretty much how it looks at sunrise. The captures were made at daybreak and there was only a tiny amount of light and deep shadows. Only the snow on the higher elevations allow enough reflected light to see much in the way of detail. As the pano advances, the area to the far left where the ranch house appears is four to five miles from my lens. The tall peaks are all over 14,000 feet and they get sunlight first. As time passes (it take about 30 minutes) the sunlight gradually illuminates the lower elevations. Those tall peaks are 30-50 miles distant while the foreground especially on the left side is about 4 miles distant from the lens. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, LOL - the Red Tailed Hawk vocalization will wake up the Devil himself. Yep, Hotel California - actually, I have thousands of other music selections I "could" have used, but thei one set the mood and had the proper length for the amount of scroll, etc. Thanks for the link though. Were you playing the wide screen version on your 5:4 monitor? If so, there will be black lines. Trying to decide who needs which is always a challenge. That's why I only made one version to start. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, That's good news. I made an MP4 and played it on my Samsung and it came pretty good too, but I haven't tried svhs - not sure I have that output on my little laptop. That's quite a "scream" isn't it? LOL, I did the same thing that most movie makers do, I substituted the cry of a Red Tailed Hawk instead of a Bald Eagle. Actually, Bald Eagles have a wimpy vocalization - not exciting at all. For years the movie people have used Red Tailed Hawk's vocalizations and most people think that's what eagles sound like, but they really are not impressive at all. I'm not sure on the buildings - I'll have to see if I can drive over there and look. On a closeup of the pano in Photoshop, I noticed a for sale sign on the ranch. I don't think it shows in the pano but got cut off at the bottom. The images were made at 600mm so it's a good distance away to that point - maybe four miles or more. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, It's a multi-frame stitch of individual photos taken with on of my dSLR's. I live on the east side of the Rockies and in the winter the sunrise is from the south east so that casts shadows to the right of the peaks in the early morning. It's good to hear that it runs smoothly for you on the 5770 at 1920x1080. Unfortunately the only way I can test it at that resolution is on my 40' Samsung LED television. I made an MP4 and it ran fine on the Samsung with no apparent issues. I've got to get another monitor soon which works at 1920 x 1080. I sold my 2560 x1600 HP 30" HP monitor when I moved and need to find another so I can test higher resolution shows again. In the past I've made 360 degree panos in PTE but systems with less than optimal video cards had problem so I stopped using large panos for a while. A friend in Maine wanted to see the view from my street so I thought this might be a good time to test a rather wide pano. I thought by keeping the file size down a bit I might be able to get it to work with older video cards, but I wasn't sure since all of my systems these days are upgraded. Best regards, Lin

Thanks Gayland, It's good to know that it can play smoothly on intergated graphics - at least on the one on a newer system with Windows 7. Best regards, Lin

Thanks Xaver, I would expect a 9600GT to do well with it. Sky posterization may be from jpg compression. I had to make the file pretty compressed to avoid lengthy downoads. The original file is over 100 megabytes. The issue with aspect ratios is always going to be user specific. Those with wide screen displays will want 16:9 or 16:10 and those with 5:4, etc., will want the opposite. I made a couple wide screen demos for Mac and PC and posted links on original post. I used less compression so perhaps the posterization you see will be gone. I can't see it on either of my high res monitors so can only guess about it. Music is always going to be controversial. I'm not certain if the word "appropriate" even applies here. Its simply a demo to determine the feasibility of scrolling a very wide pano with less than optimal video cards so it really doesn't matter about the background music. Actually, I like the one I used, but I'm always open to suggestions. What would you suggest? Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks for the feedback! I was concerned about lower video card memory so made the pano as small as possible to still get decent appearance. I'm not sure why the zoom was more subtle. It's always a mystery... You might want to download again - I added the "little birdie" - LOL Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, Thanks for the feedback - with that configuration it "should" play smoothly - LOL Best regards, Lin

A test of scrolling panorama. I'm especially interested in how smooth this is with marginal video cards - any feedback appreciated..... Lin http://www.learntoma...rangepanopc.zip (about 10 meg Windows PC zipped exe) http://www.learntoma...angepanomac.zip (about 11 meg zipped mac native executable) http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demo/frontrangepanowidepc.zip (about 15 meg) For Wide Screen PC 16:9 http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demo/frontrangepanowidemac.zip (about 15 meg) For Wide Screen Mac 16:9

Hi Dan, The bottom line is that you really need to get a video card for your system. There are dozens of good and inexpensive choices. An integrated video chip such as you have, will not be able to handle video embedded in executable code so what I would suggest is to have your son find a card suitable for your system. When I got my last Dell computer, it had one of the Intel video chips similar to what you have. I installed a video "card" into the dedicated video card slot and the system now works perfectly. What you need to find out is which type of video card slot your system has. There are essentially two types it probably "could" be. It could be a PCI or an AGP. type. Depending on which type it is, you will need a video card made for this type. Ask your son then get back to us here on the forum and we can suggest a video card which will solve your problem. If your son isn't sure and you could take a picture of the inside of your system and post it, we can figure it out from the appearance of the "bus" slots. Usually a PCI slot is white and the older AGP slots are black. Their physical appearance is quite distinct so it will be fairly easy to tell by looking, but someone familiar with the differences needs to look for you. In the case that no one is available, if you could take pictures then someone on the forum can help. Best regards, Lin

Another brilliant creation!! Best regards, Lin

And, Mr. Spielberg, this demo was brought to you "without" the aid of Video support in PTE - just imagine what we will be able to do when video "IS" supported! We promise, no video pixels were molested in the making of this production..... Lin

Hi Daniel, I can smell it now - The aroma of Cholocate Cake and Tresor, by Lancome of Paris - Yummy mix for 8.1 - LOL Lin

LOL - I "love" chocolate cake..... Yummy..... Lin

Oh yes!! Let the fun begin!! Come on Wnsoft - We're anxious - LOL Lin

Just a little fun folks - http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demos/plasmaproject.zjp (PC Only - about 20 meg) Lin

Hi Fred, That's interesting to know (That Berthoud - is a surname in Switzerland). Presently, I have no slideshows with images from Berthoud, but perhaps when the weather improves I will take some photographs and make a short show. Berthoud, CO is a relatively small town with a population of around 4,000 and has little of true scenic interest, but perhaps enough for a small show. It's a nice idea, thank you! Best regards, Lin

Hi Shirley, Not yet, but you can put in animated GIF's. Video clips will be available "very" shortly in 7.0 beta 1 though, and most video file types will be accepted. Also you will be able to do some fantastic things "with" the video such as 3D transforms, pan, zoom, rotate, layers, etc., etc. Lin

Hi Barry, I don't believe that they will play on older MacIntosh units prior to the change from the Motorola to Intel processor - I no longer have one of the old systems to test this theory on, but I doubt that MP4 would necessarily be any safer than the Mac native executable. Hard to say without being tested.... Lin

Hi David, There are actually some decent animations possible with gifs, but one must be discriminating since there are limited colors available. Certain scenes such as with clouds in the sky, etc., can be problematic, but you can actually get half-way decent results. Here's a little exercise I posted a couple weeks ago using animated GIF files... http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12809 Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, Love it! Perfect!! Lin

Hi Nicky, Though you can't directly drop in video clips yet into PTE, you "can" use animated gifs and if your video clips are not too long, there are a number of products which allow conversion of video to animated gif. If you can give me some details of the length of the video you need to use, perhaps I can help you determine whether this method might be feasible for your application. The quality of a conversion is quite good, but it's not suitable for really long video. GIF's only allow 256 colors, so there won't be the same "richness" of original video, but all video content doesn't necessarily need more than 256 colors depending on the content. Best regards, Lin

Hey David, It's been a while! I threw him a fish - LOL. Actually, since a few versions ago, PTE has had the ability to incorporate animated GIF's. There are all types of animated GIF files out there from pretty rudimentary to quite sophisticated. Some of the software allows taking a video and converting it to an animated GIF. I suspect that the process involves first breaking it into separate jpg files, then removing the background and substituting transparency. This one was quite probably done that way since it is extremely fluid and anatomically accurate for flight right down to the shadow of the wings on the eagle's face each time it flaps the wing. The position of the sun on the eagle happened to match the position of the sun in the photo which adds to the realism, I think. So in the future, when we need to get some realistic animation, we "can" drop in a video (coming in version 7), but also with software which allows conversion of video to animated GIF's, we can save lots of storage and system overhead and convert applicable video footage to animated GIF format. Of course we only have 256 colors with GIF (at least as far as I know), but for small objects or objects which are darker in nature, that's often enough. I think that the realism in our shows will be limited only by one's imagination and creativity in the years to come. Some of the smaller cameras coming out today such as the soon to be released Sony HX100V can, according to advertising, actually shoot in 3D. One of our French PTE users already creates PTE shows in 3D but they are done with twin cameras with synchronized shutters. This is not something that "everyone" is technically capable of doing, but this new Sony will make it easy and we should begin to see some interesting slideshows. A couple years ago I created some 3D shows with animation. Now when and if consumer "video" cameras are able to use the Sony technology, our PTE shows in the future might be something else indeed from a realism standpoint. Best regards, Lin