Lin Evans

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

Das ist zu komisch! Lin

Nice job Colin! Your interest in flying is well represented and you've mastered the PNG object extraction process nicely! I enjoyed this. Now that PTE has the ability to use animated GIF's you may want to explore creating some of your own. There are free and inexpensive software packages to help with that. If done judiciously, they can add to some of the effects I think. Best regards, and keep up the good work! Lin

Hey Ken, That "crow" got a "white head" so he be embarrassed with too much "air time." He's looking for a fishy dinner, I think! Lin

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/debbie/dbirthday.zip (Windows PC - About 9 meg) http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/debbie/dbirthdaymac.zip (MacIntosh native executable - about 9 meg) Lin

Hi Gary, It's essentially just a relatively simple math thing. When you "spread" the time evenly among all the slides, you include the one slide you want to have 16 seconds. What happens, as I sure you already know, is that the number of slides are divided by the number of seconds in your music then that quotient is represented as the number of seconds per slide. Now you want to increase the length of time for a single slide so the additional time over whatever the individual slide times are, must be subtracted equally from all the other slides. Let's use an easy example so we don't need a calculator. Let's say you have a song which lasts exactly 120 seconds or two minutes. Let's say you have 10 slides. So each slide gets 12 seconds. Now you want to have one of these slides play for 22 seconds. This then leaves 10 seconds which must be subtracted from the other nine slides. The other none slides total (12x9 = 108 seconds) 108 seconds. Subtract 10 seconds from 108 and you have 98 seconds to be divided among 9 slides. (98/9 = 10.88 seconds). So if you set the timing for all slides to 10.88 seconds, then set the one slide to 22 seconds, the music and image display should end simultaneously. In order to program this, relatively simple math would be used and the program would have to total all the "non - standard" times represented by individual custom settings and follow the logic above to determine what the settings should be for the remaining slides. It doesn't "appear" to be an insoluble issue, but I'm not privy to the inner working of PTE so perhaps there are variable I'm not aware of which make it more difficult. Best regards, Lin

Hi Fred, Sorry, I'm not clear on exactly what it is you want to do? If you are using Photoshop, you can create a transparency around your subject in several ways. Perhaps the easiest is to first open the file you wish to have as the subject then do "Select All" then "Edit" then "Copy." This places your image on the clipboard. Now close this image. Next click on "File" "New" and set the background attribute to "Transparent" and the file size in pixels to correspond to the image you have placed on the clipboard in the previous step. Next click "O.K." Next do "Edit" "Paste" and you will see your original image appear. It will, however, be on a "layer" above the transparency. Next use the "Eraser" tool to erase all of the image you "don't" want to be on your final transparent PNG file. Once you have carefully erased all which you don't want to appear, save this as a PNG file. This, then will appear in PTE as a "floating" object with the parts not desired as transparent. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, Absolutely - this was the most enjoyable slide show I've seen.... Sorry the anti-shimmer didn't help - sometimes when images are very sharp, it doesn't seem to help too much. It's not a huge thing - in fact if the show is made into an MP4 the shimmer may not be all that noticeable. I doubt that whether your images have been resized or not has any real bearing on the effect of mip-mapping or anti-shimmer. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the operation of PhotoStudio, but in Photoshop the "selection" tools have a feature which you can use called "feathering." Feathering softens the edges of any selection and makes the transition much less abrupt. If you are able to use the built-in masks in PTE, they have feathering adjustable by menu. However, only rectangular or circular type masks are available in PTE so when you are making custom masks, you definitely need a tool which allows feathering. Probably it's not worth reloading the large file just for the cursor, but for your own and future use it would probably be worthwhile to turn it off and recompile the exe fiile. Best regards, and congratulations on a wonderful presentation! Lin Hi Lin, I must say that such "strong" comments, coming from you, make me feel even happier! No doubt! Although... I think that they are too much strong! Is it true? Is this the one and most enjoyable? Not possible... Now, speaking seriously, that "shimmering" is really a problem! I can let you know that I did used the "anti-shimmer" all over the project in almost every moving image. Result? Zero! I have the notion that such anti-shimmer reduces picture sharpness (and when I apply I can note such loss), and this should be a good reason to reduce the shimmer, but result is not noticed. I think I read somewhere that it is only effective when applied on original size images, not on resized images (which is my case). This may be the explanation for such useless option. In fact, not considering the "old" photos, all my original photos were 4:3 (2592x1944) and I made my PTE project at 1920x1080 (16:9). Of course, I had to reframe the images and so I always had to zoom/resize. It's really a problem, but I can not imagine how it can be overpassed. By the way: do you know any method to "smooth" razor-cut edges? You certainly noticed in several "double or triple images" (train passing by the windows, electricity post passing by, etc.) where I used "home-made" masks, that such masks' edges are really razor-cut, which is not natural and not nice. It should exist a "method" to create a "black and white dégradé" all around the mask's edges in order to avoid such razor-cut aspect. I made several tests with my ArcSoft PhotoStudio 5.5.0 (not bad at all...) but I couldn't get any result at all. Thanks very much for your lines, and my best regards, Jose PS: Sorry for that mouse cursor, it's really my fault, I forgot that. May be I will replace the exe file at MediaFire, I don't know if it is worthwhile.

http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/ Lin

Hi Peter, Actually, the message was quite effective, but only for those with a prior understanding of the "Burning Man" phenomenon. Best regards, Lin