Lin Evans

Hi Marco, That's great news - problem solved. Thanks for the update. We can add to the records that a firewall might prevent completion of the mp4 h.264. Best regards and Happy New Year! Lin

Hi Peter, That's probably possible. I almost always use multiple files to simulate different sized flakes, distance, speed, direction, etc., but if you can email me perhaps I can look at the sequence and tailor the snow just as you like. It's not difficult for me because I do so much of it. Email me at: [email protected] We can discuss the details. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dick, You're quite welcome and no need for credit; glad it helped! I'm working on a tutorial now for a new method of not just creating the snow effect, but of building up snowfall on the scene gradually and mirroring a real snow scene. This one has snowfall, buildup, and cloud change/movement. If you haven't yet seen it, here's a link: http://www.learntoma...ringsnowspc.zip (Windows) http://www.learntoma...ingsnowsmac.zip (Mac) Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, I can help you with that. If you will tell me how long your sequence is, I'll post a link for you to a short animation you can just copy and paste. Best regards, Lin

Hi Marco, It does sound like a resource issue of some type. When you make 1920x1080 slides, even when highly compressed, they expand to their full size in memory while encoding. At 60 frames (60 new images) per second on your MP4 means that you are creating a total of 3600 slides per minute. For a show which is about 17.5 minutes long you will have approximately 63,000 images. If you multiply that number of images by the average size of each image it will give you an idea of how much storage space will be required for storage alone. It really sounds like it may be an issue with either available storage or temp storage during construction. If each image were, for instance, one megabyte, you would need 63 gig of storage space plus work space. If it creates the 100 slide version, you can be pretty certain that it's a resource issue of some type. If you take a look at the average size of each image, you can get a rough idea of how much space you might need free to create the file. Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, The time for slide display in PTE includes the transition time. If you set "quick, no transition," or turn off the transitions in Project Options, the time you have chosen for a slide will be identical to the time your slide remains completely on screen. If you have, for example, a three second transition into and out of the slide then the time the slide remains on screen will be affected by that transition time. You can overlap into the next or preceding slide if you wish - it's very versatile. There is no difference between Proshow Gold, Proshow Producer and PTE in the number of slides in a show for a given time duration, just a difference in the way they are represented on the timeline. To understand this, create a PTE slideshow with only four slides. Set the timing for each slide to 10 seconds and turn off transitions and time the show with a stopwatch. You will have precisely 40 seconds of slides. Now set a fade for each slide for three seconds and time the four slides again and you will have precisely 40 seconds. Each slide will remain on screen for seven seconds and be in transition for three seconds, etc. You can actually overlap slides by pulling the transition beyond the end of the timing set for example, slide one and into the fade-in time for slide two while pulling the display start for slide two back into the ending time for slide one. PTE gives you some versatility you don't have with Producer or Gold this way for specialized effects. Best regards, Lin

Hi Marco, Try to create a two slide mp4 show. Just open PTE and your PTE project. Delete all slides except the first two, save the project to a new name so you don't affect your original slidshow. Get out of PTE and reopen PTE which should open this two slide slideshow. Try again to create an HD mp4 using the same settings and let's see if the mp4 is created. This will eliminate all the time you are spending waiting for things to happen and determine whether the problem is the creation of an mp4 or whether it is something related to system resources. Best regards, Lin

You do this right in PTE. When you choose "Create" from the main menu, then choose "DVD Video Disc," then click on "Next," one of your choices is to "Create ISO image." Just put a check mark in the box and if you don't want to burn a DVD uncheck that choice. That's all there is to it! This is assuming you have PTE Deluxe with Video Builder. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, Yes, what I meant by paying attention when making a DVD is that you must plan for the DVD by paying attention to having everything within the TV "safe zone" when creating your slideshow if the DVD is to be the final display. Unfortunately, you are correct that it's not possible to have the show with no black borders when you are displaying on devices at different resolutions and specifically with different aspect ratios. To display properly on the different devices requires preparing the same slideshow differently for the different display devices. Yes, if you create at 4:3 then you will "usually" have all content at 5:4 or 16:9 or even 16:10, but there will be black borders. If you create at an aspect ratio where part of the content is near the borders (such as titles, text, etc.) then subsequently display your slideshow on a device with an aspect ratio which cut's off that border portion, you will loose part of your text, etc. Some televisions have settings which "force" all the image within the borders. This is what I meant by "distortion." For example, if you have a DVD formatted for a 4:3 display and display it on a television which has a 16:9 aspect ratio, depending on the individual television and setting chosen by the user, the image may be "squashed" vertically and possibly still have black borders on either side. So you can't "depend" on all the image being visible if you create it at 4:3. It depends on the settings and the individual television. Unfortunately, they are not all the same and you can't be certain how the user has their television set up. It would be great if all were standardized, but unfortunately there are too many variables to be absolutely certain. The best way of getting it right that I've found is to format your slideshow for your intended audience. If it is to be played on a wide variety of output devices, then "better" to make several versions than try to depend on one version being adapted for all devices. However, in the case that you already have the show created, the Pinnacle zoom solution may be your best option now for insuring that all parts will be visible on most devices. It's always a learning experience when trying to create a slidshow for many different display possibilities. In the future, you can create multiple versions of the same show, then burn these multiple version on a single DVD with a menu for choice. It's like the commercial DVD's which have you choose "wide screen" or "normal" from your menu before playing your DVD. When you choose "wide screen" and you display it on a 4:3 aspect ratio TV, you have a black bar at the top and bottom, but you see all the show undistorted. When you choose "normal" you actually loose that portion of the image on the left and right, but are usually unaware of not seeing everything because the movie fills your viewing area and the "cropped" portions are not the main subject. When commercial movies are made, they usually confine the scrolling text, etc., to the portions which would not be cut off on a 4:3 or 5:4 viewing area because they realize that when it goes to DVD it will be formatted both ways. Another possible way to deal with this problem is to create your slideshows with a "border" and the main content of the slides within that border. Rather than just having black, you could use a background color. Then keep all content within a smaller viewing area so that when portions are cut off, it won't be the actual content of your slideshow, but rather the background. Here's a link to a site which you may find useful for learning about various aspect ratios and how different systems might be configured: http://www.nobell.org/~gjm/pc/aspect.html Best regards, Lin

It appears that your best bet right now with the time constraints is to go with Pinnacle and edit the video. I believe your mistake was in using the 5:4 aspect ratio which is going to be wrong for HD television which almost all have 16:9 aspect ratio. To get it right you would need to make your original slides cropped to 16:9 and then pay attention to the safe zone when creating the DVD. Sandard DVD is either PAL or NTSC format and neither will play with the correct aspect ratio on an HD tv or monitor set at other than the 5:4 you created the show with. If your friends have older televisions playing at NTSC or PAL resolutions, then you would normally be O.K. with the 5:4 and the safe zone. On the other hand when you try to play a DVD made this way on your Plasma monitor or on an HD TV and change the aspect ratio, you will be distorting the image and not get the proper aspect ratio thus loosing your carefully crafted work. Merry Christmas to you and your family as well! Best regards, Lin

Hi Lennart, It would appear that you need to output a "custom AVI" file at 800x600 resolution and use a DivX 4 or 5 video codec. You might try a custom mp4 with the same 800x600 resolution via the SD 800x600 link and see if that works. If it doesn't, then you will need to download and install a DivX codec if you don't already have one for the AVI. It does sound like perhaps the MP4 h.264 would work if you output it at the SD 800x600 resolution. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, It seems that's part of the issue indeed. There are many variables which appear to react in different ways to complicate trying to unravel this mystery. Best regards and Merry Christmas, Lin

Hi Luc, Thanks for the report - it's a bit taxing on some video cards. I toned it down a bit, but still pretty heavy on the graphics. Best regards and Merry Christmas, Lin

Hi Gilio, And a Merry Christmas to you and your family also! That snow seems to be traveling around the world. A week ago we had lots here in Colorado, but now it's moved East and the eastern part of the U.S. is buried in it. Stay warm my friend! Best regards, Lin

Hi Morgan, It runs smoothly all the way through for me if I let it completely buffer. I don't think making it smaller would help too much. Youtube will only convert to HD if the output is at least 720p. They won't even convert a 1024x768 to HD, unfortunately, but they do convert the 1600x1200 and it plays properly at full screen so that's probably about as good as it will get. The speed of the snowfall has little to do with the smoothness so probably its fine just as it is. One thing I've noticed about Youtube is that the playback can somewhat vary depending on their server loading. There have been times when I've noticed some slight jerky motion even after complete buffering. This tells me that the internet connect at the time, or their internal loading probably has something to do with how it performs. They convert the mp4 h.264 to Flash and I'm not certain if they actually convert to FLV with preload (which is by far the best way) or whether they use SWF without preloading. SWF is played directly from the remote server where the show is hosted. FLV with preload is actually spooled to your own hard disk on a temporary and hidden folder and played from there using your own system. It differs from true "spooling" in that with true spooling the file never actually leaves the remote server. With Flash FLV the file is actually downloaded to your system but playback begins before the entire file has spooled depending on preload settings. My guess is that Youtube doesn't really use Flash FLV with preload, but rather spools the Flash file from their own server via some proprietary algorithm. This could account for the discrepancies in performance at different times. Your show looks great! The only suggestion I have would be to insert a black jpg with opacity set to zero at the start of the show and with another keyframe set to zero at about 3 seconds before the end of the 40 second display. Then set one more keyframe to 100% at the end of the show and you will get a fade to black rather than an abrupt ending. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, if you just use the PTE zip feature from the "File" "Create Backup in Zip" and post a link to this PTE zipped file, I'll be glad to make the quick modification for you and post a link. Then your show will fade out rather than stop abruptly at the end of the animation and song. Best regards and Merry Christmas, Lin

Hi Dave, The configuration of the demo which I originally posted simply wouldn't play right even on my 8800GT so I disabled snowfall inside six of the eight ornaments because they were only visible as a whole from such a distance as to make their simultaneous action superfluous. With only two at a time (per slide) animated, the show played correctly and smoothly on my 8800GT but was jerky on my wife's overclocked 8600 GT. I then substituted the revised edition for the original. Originally I thought we might learn something from the "Video Card Killer" version, but quickly realized that it really served a quite limited purpose because almost no one would be able to play it. If even one of our members had a really top-end video card, we might learn something. However, to my knowledge, no one really has anything much more powerful than my 8800 GT. Best regards, Lin

Hi David, It depends on what you mean by "performance." The GPU is the most "important" variable in animation smoothness, but only a part of the puzzle. A really powerful video card can compensate for lots of system weakness with PTE animations, but a really powerful CPU, plenty of RAM, proper caching, etc., seem to be able to help a mediocre video card perform at its best. When using hardware rendering, it's the GPU which gets the lion's share of the work so what one has in the way of video card is extremely important when trying to play back complex animations. The mystery is in determining just which animations and which "constructs" are most problematic and what the best and most effective ways of building a PTE show with animations are. What theDom and others have discovered is that masks seem to be particularly problematic. I'm discovering that zooms and rotates are not much of an issue, but pans, especially with larger file sizes, can tax a system. I've discovered that pans cause issues with MP4 h.264 smoothness regardless of resolution. What I would like to know is how much the GPU contributes, if any, to this issue and whether the contribution as far as them being problematic is due to problems in the "creation" of the MP4 or in the playback of the MP4. Players seem to be optimized for widescreen and none of them actually seem to be able to play a 1600x1200 mp4 h.264 correctly. When the mp4's are uploaded to Youtube, they are converted to Flash and seem to run properly even at 1600x1200. The downside is the buffering necessary to get continuous smooth playback. It seems that Youtube doesn't incorporate Flash flv preload very well. Apparently, only those with extremely fast broadband can play back large HD quality files on either Vimeo or Youtube without waiting for full buffering before beginning playback. The difficulty is that we have limited resources for testing. Most of us have at least two systems to test with (I'm fortunate that I have about seven - all with different video cards) but to gather facts, we need a systematic approach. Some time ago I posted a link on the "Equipment" forum to a video and system benchmarks site where they run systematic testing without so many variables. One can look up their video card or CPU and determine where it might rank in performance, but we still need to know which specific animation and/or features of PTE cause the most problems not only with executable playback but also with video creation. My purpose in putting up these snow animations in various configurations is primarily an attempt to decypher the variables and find out what works and what doesn't work well with the majority of systems. There are apparently variables which we still don't understand very well. For example, Ken "often" gets really good and smooth performance out of what "should" be a rather mediocre performance video card as far as animations are concerned. On the other hand, with this last "video card killer" demo, he gets better and smoother performance on his wife's laptop. In general, laptops are far less likely to produce good performance on complex animations because even the best of the "M" cards (mobility) are magnitudes less powerful than even medium performance desktop GPU's. Even the top-end Dell (purchased from Alienware) gaming laptops costing upwards of $6,000 rarely have video cards available much better than a mid range desktop card such as my nVidia 8800 GT. Cor's 8600 GT performs better in his system than my wife's overclocked 8600 GT does in her system. The main difference is the amount of system RAM and perhaps configurations. So "apparently," system RAM and perhaps caching can somehow "help" the video card perform optimally. What we need to know are specifics on how this works so we can design test shows which better allow users who intend to run complex animated shows to test systems before purchasing. Best regards, Lin

Hi Morgan, You can come close with Youtube (not with Vimeo), but no video is going to be as good as the executable file which is constructed "on the fly" by the GPU (video card). Your problem seems to be that you are choosing the wrong parameters when you create the MP4. Youtube can play your files at 1600x1200 resolution, but you have to create them with PicturesToExe's Video Builder at a resolution of 1600x1200 then upload your 1600x1200 construct to Youtube. Look at these two samples I have uploaded to youtube: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=grPvnD2nubM Both these will play at 1600x1200 when you choose HD. You must start the play then pause when the sound begins and wait for the file to fully buffer (wait for the red line to go all the way to the right) then click on the "Play" button to play the HD version uninterrupted. To create your snowglobe at 1600x1200 you need to click on the "Create" button in PTE then click on "HD Video for PC and Mac" and set it up like the above: Then upload to Youtube and you will have a 1600x1200 animated snowglobe in as high a quality as possible via the web. The only way to have higher quality is to send your Christmas card as a zipped executable rather than as a video. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim Robert Service wrote several poems either directly or indirectly about the Yukon such as "The Spell of The Yukon" - "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" - "The Cremation of Sam McGee," "The Men That Don't Fit In," etc. Maybe you could search your system by the word "Yukon" or ask Bill to do it on Beechbook? Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, I'm learning some interesting tidbits with this one. There seems to be more variables at work than just the video card. Apparently, a powerful video card can compensate for other system inadequacies, but a marginal card can have a quite different result depending on other system resources. My wife's overclocked 8600 GT has problems running this show smoothly while Cor's regular 8600 GT card performs much better. I'm betting that he has a more powerful CPU and better system resources than she has. Her system has a Pentium 4 running at 3 GHz but only 1 meg (oops, 1 Gigabyte) of system RAM. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, That's absolutely amazing! The 8400GS is really quite a slow card with very marginal, even low speed rating of 138 in benchmarks. This tells me that perhaps the loading is being shared somehow with the CPU contributing more than I'm expecting to the performance. If you get a chance, run the FRAPS test and let me know what kind of fps values you are seeing. I had the zoom faster because it actually works better with marginal cards than a slow zoom, but I have since slowed it down for a better aesthetic appearance. The "juddering" could be caused by the transition to another slide using identical settings and a cross-fade. This is very smooth on my 8800GT, but it's running 957 benchmark speed to 138 for the 8400GS card. Best regards, Lin

Hi Cor, There could indeed be other variables (CPU power, available RAM, etc.) which, in borderline situations, could make a marginal card perform better or worse. When I say it "crashed," I meant that the motion was way too jerky for a realistic animation. I have made a few changes since the original which might have ameliorated some of the problems. Originally, I had eight "ornaments" running simultaneously with snow animation inside the globes plus the snow animation on the main image. I changed the format to have more slides rather than so much going on in multiple object on fewer slides. In doing this, I only have masking animation happening in two of the eight globes simultaneously on each slide. This greatly reduces the GPU stress. Still, this one will not (at least yet) make a smooth mp4 h.264 so the "jury" is still out on whether it exceeds boundaries of propriety for "most" video cards. When I purchased my nVidia 8800GT card it was top-of-the-line. Now it's only a medium powerful card. I suspect on a really good video card there would be no problem even in the original configuration. Best regards, Lin

On the nVidia 8800 GT it's almost all 60 fps with a couple quick 62 fps and for an instant a 42 fps. The nVidia 9500 GT has a speed rating of 368 making it a bit more than 1/3 as powerful as the 8800 GT. It would be marginal for these heavy video graphics and a little under the 8600 GT which works well for many graphics intensive files but can't handle this one at all. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, I just checked and the file is FUBAR - LOL. I am uploading it again now and this one is definitely O.K. Try again in 10 minutes and it should be uploaded. I had made a small change and rezipped and the archive only contained about 4 meg of the 37 meg file. It's up and ready now - looks like it all there..... Best regards, Lin

Hey Tom, The HD 4670 has a 784 speed rating compared to the 8800 GT's 957 so I would say to really play everything smoothly with zero hesitation, probably a rating of around 1000 or anything better would be ideal. I originally had snowfall in each of the Christmas Tree Ornaments simultaneously, but it was way too much for the 8800GT so I removed the animation from all but two at a time for the pans and that made it just tolerable to the 8800 GT. I would love to see what the limits were on a really top end card but don't have the means to get one yet. Each Christmas Tree ornament has a mask so that really occupies the video card and doesn't leave a lot for the animation. I was trying to push the limits with this one to see where they were for my card. I think I've reached it - LOL. Best regards, Lin