Lin Evans

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

Don't even try this unless you have a very strong video card. This one is just too much because of the masking, for any except a top-end card. It was too much for an MP4 as well. It runs smoothly on my nVidia 8800 GT, but crashes on my wife's overclocked 8600 GT and all the rest of my video cards. It's really on the ragged edge for even the 8800 GT. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/xmas/xmastreepc.zip (Windows) http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/xmas/xmastreemac.zip (Mac) About 35 meg... Lin

Hi Mike, I'm assuming that Vimeo and Youtube request mp4 uploads for their conversions (they are both converted to Flash) because they get better quality that way. In general, the mp4 better supports the faster frame speeds and this is primarily why they give smoother action on some animations. Flash does take some toll on animation smoothness and doesn't, at least in my experience, give as good fade transitions as mp4, but AVI is generally not as smooth for pans and zooms as MP4 or the MP4 to Flash conversion. I think the best way is to try some of the tools such as the one on my link and see how they compare to AVI conversions before making a purchasing decision. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, It was discussed some time ago, but nothing lately. There really isn't a more direct way to convert your slideshow to Flash, but perhaps a "better" way would be to convert from MP4 h.264 to Flash. Here's one conversion tool which does this: http://www.video-to-flash.com/mp4_to_flash/ Best regards, Lin

Hi Bernard, Beautiful shots and great composition! 3D a plus too!! Best regards, Lin

Hi Brian, Do you mean the frame around the photo inside the globe? If so, you can't really remove the frame from the photo unless you want to just use the eraser in Photoshop. To do that, the easiest way that I know is to copy the entire snowglobe image, paste it on a transparency of the same size and then you can erase whichever portions of the image you want and add whatever you want. Since Panos constructs the globe in layers, you can just turn off the layer for the photo using Photoshop's Layers window and this will remove the photo itself. You can then switch off the shadow for the photo and that will leave you without the image automatically created by the snowglobe action. Likewise for the ice crystals, snow flakes, etc. If you just experiment with switching the various layers on and off you will see how the globe is constructed. For these simulations, I only use the globe itself without any content inside, then I create the images I want inside the globe, add my own snow, etc. If you go to the PanosFX site you can download my tutorial there which might help you better understand the process. The PTE basic template which I created for the animated snowglobe leaves the design pretty much as Panos built it, but removes the static snow and replaces it with my PNG snow effect. For these specialized effects I only use the basic globe construct then add a wide variety of effects and content. Best regards, Lin

O.K., I promise this is the last one on this theme - LOL http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/xmas/springsnowspc.zip (Windows) http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/xmas/springsnowsmac.zip (MacIntosh) About 29 meg Lin

Hi Ed, I read that thread and had "hoped" that perhaps they had corrected the issue, but after going to the Symantic site and looking around, I saw enough to convince me that they have issues with the Sonar module because they have an "exclude" feature which prevents Sonar from diddling with files you ask it not to. They also have a "patch" fix for that feature misbehaving. This is one way of a sort of "crippled fix" for the problem when the executable or other file is an application, but when the file is the construct of an application, such as our slideshows, this is not even remotely a solution. One would have to "exclude" every single executable created for it to work. They have elected to err on the side of caution, but apparently rather than fix their own software's faulty detection algorithm, they have created a work-around with this: http://www.symantec.com/norton/support/kb/web_view.jsp?wv_type=public_web&docurl=20090903182949EN&pvid=nav_2010&selected_nav=6 It's not a solution for us so they need to come up with a better way. Best regards, Lin

He is, isn't he - LOL. You have to watch carefully or you will miss him poking his head around that tree when the flute music peaks his interest! Lin

Hi Igor, It was the latest PTE version - one of my zipped executables. I had him try several and it deleted them. It didn't delete the zip file, but removed the exe when it was unzipped. I also tried VirusTotal and no problems with any, but as you say, they have an older version of NAV. My friend has never had problems before, but this latest version of NAV 2010 with SONAR seems to be problematic. Best regards, Lin

I notified Igor by email a few minutes ago..... Norton Antivirus issue with false positive.... Version 17-1.0.19 - latest download update returning false positive with PTE files tonight. I have a friend in California (US Government employee) just installed and downloaded latest NAV update from Symantic site. SONAR returns false positive. Says "File Insight" "A Program is behaving suspiciously on your computer" then identifies the PTE file and prevents running the exe file. I thought the problem was corrected after reading the latest post in the thread, but it's not corrected...... More on this: I just looked at the Symantic site and discovered that they must be having problems with the SONAR module. They have an "exclude" "hotfix" which tells me that there are probably many other files which SONAR finds false positives with otherwise they would not have this - see link below: http://www.symantec.com/norton/support/kb/web_view.jsp?wv_type=public_web&docurl=20090903182949EN&pvid=nav_2010&selected_nav=6 Lin

LOL - probably better stick with the little coyote I just added.... Lin

Hi Ken, I'm thinking of a more dramatic use of the technique along with some other effects but haven't worked out the details yet. Best regards, Lin

LOL - it varies from zero to nine at the highest intensity. I'm considering putting one of my little coyotes in it, but I haven't found the one I'm looking for yet which I photographed about six years ago. Best regards, Lin

http://www.learntoma...s/conceptpc.zip (Windows) http://www.learntoma.../conceptmac.zip (MacIntosh) Youtube: About 32 meg Lin