Lin Evans

Hi Eric, Wind, Solar and Sea power are all potential candidates for furnishing electrical power for all nations and especially Sea power could be used in the U.K. Many years ago when I was 18 years old, I designed plans for power generation using tidal and wave power from coastal regions which could furnish sufficient power to run huge cities like Los Angeles, California. My ideas are only now being considered by "experts" in power generation. The sad thing is that systems exist today which could furnish "free" energy to the world, but I fear they will never see the light of day. Physicists agree that if "all" the energy in one cubic centimeter of "void" (space) could be converted to matter, the quantity of that matter would be greater than the total of all matter in the known universe! Ponder this - it's not an overstatement. Zero point energy systems exist today. I've seen some of them myself and they work! The issue is that for coal, oil, etc., to be replaced with free energy, millions of people around the world who make their livings in one or another way from these energy sources would be instantly unemployed. The fact is, however, that a "huge" amount of our income is spent on energy in one way or another. Subtract the cost of transportation fuel, heating, cooling, processing, etc., from our food supply and food would be dirt cheap. If the farmer didn't have to pay for fuel to run his equipment, the truck (lorry) driver didn't have to pay for fuel, we didn't have to pay for gasoline (petrol) to run our vehicles, we didn't have to pay for heating, cooling for our homes or the added cost of energy for production of goods, we could all live very cheaply. To make the transition to a free energy system, however, would be very difficult and trillions in currency would be at stake so it will not happen until we have run out of alternatives. It's interesting to me to see the dumb way automobile manufacturers are scrambling to make even dumber "hybrid" vehicles which use less fuel but cost more. Sure you get more miles per gallon of fuel, but there are large prices for charging the batteries and huge costs when they die. Then there is the issue of getting rid of all the lithium batteries. Why are they even considering a hybrid vehicle when it's very easy to run vehicles on straight water? We have had vehicles running on water for years now but that information is rarely allowed to "leak" to the public. The Japanese finally actually demonstrated an auto running entirely on water but the news was very quickly dropped and "buried" because if we converted rapidly to a non-polluting water driven engine, then oil companies would be quickly in big trouble and again, hundreds of thousands of people would be unemployed. I'm afraid it's a catch 22.... we simply can't get there from here.... Nice show by the way! Best regards, Lin

Hi José, It's a feature of the new version 6. Go to Objects and Animations Click on the image name in the Objects List to select it Click on the Adjust Image and Border button A new window with two tabs will appear Select the Border tab and click beside Enable Border and a checkmark will appear Set the width and color of the border you want then click O.K. Best regards, Lin

Hi David, Just a quick question? Why a 2 foot 8 inch diagonal tv monitor?? A "large screen" TV in my part of the world would be at least a 56" or possibly a 60" "diagonal" screen. What you describe (a 32 inch diagonal) is definitely too small to have any impact. That would be a large "monitor" display, not a large screen TV wouldn't it? Most of my business customers have 60" wide screen TV's set up in their larger conference rooms which will comfortably seat 100 people who are not complaining - LOL> Best regards, Lin

Hi Geoff, There may be, depending on exactly how you want to use this. If you could explain in a bit more detail perhaps I could make a suggestion. You can use version 6 beta and create a rectangular mask of a specific dimension with a specific radius on the corner. Then add a rectangle to the mask and add text to the rectangle. Or you could go to Photoshop, etc., and create a rectangle of a specific size and color, paste it on a transparency and use the rectangular marquee with a pre-set feather of a few pixels then erase only the corners which would leave you with a rounded corner rectangle which you could control the transparency of by using the eraser at less than 100%.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, Yes, PTE is the product of Wnsoft, a Russian company headed by Igor Kokarev. I've never had the pleasure of visiting Russia, but would love to visit some day! A great weekend to you as well! Best regards, Lin

Hi Henri, I'll try to answer your questions. 1. No camera club - there are some, but I'm not a member of one though I am a professional photographer. My clients are both businessmen and artists. Many are owners of galleries. Some are fortune 50 clients (IBM, Hewlett-Packard, etc.). 2. I have used PTE with projectors including high resolution projectors, but I prefer the big screen display. The advantage of the big screen display is that it "can" be used either in darkness or in a lighted room. The same can't be said of the projector. The projector works fine; it's just not my preference nor the preference of most of my clients. 3. The size and weight varies among my customers. Typically, a 56 inch screen (142 cm) screen weight is about 87 pounds (39.46 kg) on the heavy side, to about 60 pounds on the light side. Different technologies (Plasma - heavier - LCD medium - LED light) have different weights. They are always wide screen - never 4:3 or 3:2 - and yes, I prefer 4:2 or 3:2 but unfortunately wide screens are wide screens with wide aspect ratios. 4. Sometimes a laptop and many times the client has their own system (desktop) already connected for display. 5. Yes, the sound output is very much equal to or better than from a projector. There is no question that a small projector and laptop combination is lighter than a big screen and easier for some to transport, especially where large SUV's, pickup trucks and vans are not common as in the U.K. and Europe. For my purpose it's a non issue. I can transport a big screen tv as easily as transporting a cup of tea. Most of those with whom I work have no problems at all transporting big screen tv's. I know how difficult it is for a private citizen to transport large, heavy items in many places in Europe and the UK. I have had the experience of having to transport 300 pound (136 kg) computer tape libraries to demo to clients in Germany, Italy, France, the U.K. and in Asia. We had much difficulty renting a van suitable for this purpose. Here, almost every household in my vicinity could do this easily with their private vehicles. It's not a question of which is better, it's a question of preference for me. I'm surprised that there are so many debates about it. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, It's difficult to say, but generally if you have the Deluxe version and you don't get a message telling you that you need to upgrade when you use the features of version 6 beta, that's probably not the reason. We do have a number of users who are using their MacIntosh with Bootcamp to run PTE right now, so it's not necessary to really worry about having to wait to buy a Mac. On the other hand, let's give the developer a chance to look at the situation and see if there isn't a solution to make your system work correctly with PTE right now. Igor is very busy right now with upgrading the forum, but he will look at the situation very soon and perhaps we will find a colution. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, As much as this may seem like a "bad thing" (not being able to create a Mac native output file), it may really be a good thing for solving both your issues. Actually, many of us have made native Mac output slideshows and posted links which have been seen by many MacIntosh users. The fact that the program works perfectly for nearly everyone means that the issue causing the AVI failure and failure to create the Mac native executable code are quite probably related and somehow are unique to your system. This may help the Wnsoft developer find an answer for you. I will inform Igor of this and I'm certain that we will find a solution. I'm also reasonably certain that these seemingly unrelated issues are related and probably caused by the same gremlin. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, I'm ashamed to tell you about the jury-rigged setup I have for recording, but here goes my story.... I was searching for a way to improve the sound quality and get a decent recording. The sound on my earlier tutorials was quite inconsistent so I went out and purchased an expensive directional microphone and discovered that to use it with my computer I had to have a preamp. I bought a preamp but never could get decent sound. It was either hum or squawk or a combination so after trying a few combination's I ended up with a $4.00 Radio Shack computer microphone. It's just a little condenser type mike with a push button for on and off. I taped it to an old headset my wife used for hands-free telephone work. The headset has a "stalk" with its own microphone, but I didn't have an adapter jack to try to convert it for the computer so I just used Scotch tape to affix the little Radio Shack mike to the stalk. It's adjustable so I can position it in such a way that I turn it "backward" so that I'm speaking to the back of the mike to avoid "plosive" sounds. I use an inexpensive little piece of software called Screen Recorder Gold which you can purchase here: http://www.capture-screen.com/ I use a DivX Mpeg 4 fast motion codec and it seems to work out pretty well for most of my tutorials now. I'm absolutely certain there is a "much" better and more professional way to do it, but I just gave up trying to find an ideal solution. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, If all you want to do is batch resize, Ken told me about a nifty little program which works like a charm. I think he will link you to it in a few minutes... Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Irfanview can batch resize just as it does batch rename and batch file conversions. Just click on the "Batch Conversion" button, choose an output format then use the Advanced features to resize, crop, etc. There is absolutely no software more versatile at batch resizing than Irfanview, you just need to learn how to use it. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Thanks much for the detailed feedback! They are a delight to watch and film. They seem to have little fear of people, probably because of the constant exposure at their young age to a stream of visitors to the summit. Because there is a paved road running all the way to 14,130 feet elevation, it's possible for people who would not normally be able to handle the extreme elevation to visit and even walk up a relatively easy and short trail to the 14,268 foot peak. Fortunately, I live at a reasonably high elevation (around 6,000 feet) and spend a good deal of time in elevations of the 12,000 - 13,000 foot range so am acclimated enough to make five or ten mile hikes and still carry my equipment without undue stress. I was able to get within about 100 feet of these little guys and their watchful mommy. I try not to get too close because the ewes are quite protective and one doesn't want to be on the receiving end of a lesson from those sharp horns and powerful bodies. As long as I'm still and as unobtrusive as possible, I'm usually able to shoot at will. F16 and a stabilized 80-400 lens helps a lot with the DOF and sharpness as does the 1.7x crop on my Sigma dSLR's which I used for these shots. What amazes me almost as much as the tenacity of these creatures in extreme adverse weather is the fact that every summer there are beautiful wildflowers and succulents at this extreme altitude. The ones on the peak which I photographed don't last long before the extreme cold and frequent snows even in the summer months take their toll. I love watching the Pica which almost never seem to stop for more than a couple seconds, usually to vocalize. They spend all their waking hours gathering vegetation for the long winter. In their burrows one sometimes finds a huge hay bale sized cache of stored vegetation. This is an amazing feat for such a tiny little rodent. The Marmots seem to spend more time sunning themselves on rocks, but apparently find sufficient food stores to last them through the long winter months as well. I can fully understand exposing your entire supply of film on these cute little kids. I've finally learned to carry several multi-gigabyte CF cards in my shirt pocket because I've done the same thing with my digital media. When a good photo opportunity presents itself, it's hard to stop shooting isn't it? Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, The easiest way to do this is to take a solid color rectangle (whichever color you want as a border) and create a simple mask by copy paste onto a transparency in Photoshop, etc., Then select a rectangle of the aspect ratio of your images in portrait mode (such as 3:2, 4:3) and hit the delete key. This will leave you with a black border with the center portion cut out. You then use this image on the layer above your slides as a "frame" which will prevent anything beyond what is seen through the cut-out from displaying regardless of whether you pan or zoom the image. Here is a link to a black one I created for you. Just place it under the slide in the Objects List. http://www.learntoma...angle32mask.png Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks! LOL - Goad - that's what my pit dogs do to me every morning when I don't get their puppy chow quick enough! Yep, and the constant icy, strong winds on the peak will chill you to the bone even in the middle of summer on most days. These little characters seem to thrive in it while the poor photographer can hardly hold the camera still enough to get a frame.... Lin

Hi Eric, Excellent job! It brings back lots of memories. I will have to chase down a couple of these at our local video rental store and see them again. Recently, I saw Casa Blanca, but haven't seen African Queen or the Maltese Falcon since the 50's. Best regards, Lin

Images from Mount Evans, Colorado of the Rocky Mountain Goat which spends the summer atop the 14,268 foot peak along with the Yellow Bellied Marmot, the Pika, and a few high-altitude birds. Each year in late June at a lower altitude lake area (10,600 feet) Mountain Goat ewes give birth to one or two kids (baby goats). The kids grow quickly and are taken to the summit by their mothers where they play on the steep rocky slopes, snack on wild flowers and succulents and provide great photographic moments for the dedicated wild life photographer. By September the early snows begin, the wild flowers wither and the goats retreat to the lower elevations where they can find food for the harsh winters. The Pika and Marmot burrow in and hibernate for the winter. Snows over 20 feet deep cover the mountain peaks until the spring thaw comes to begin the cycle again. The show consists of high resolution images and is about 82 meg of executable zip. Both MacIntosh and PC version linked below: http://www.learntoma...ntainkidspc.zip (PC) http://www.learntoma...tainkidsmac.zip (MacIntosh) Best regards, Lin

La plupart excellent travail, Jean! Bravo! Cordialement, Lin Most excellent job, Jean! Bravo! Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, I don't think your point needed "proving." I don't think anyone is arguing the fact that there are lots of poorly used animations as well as poor animations out there in slideshows. What you said originally, and I quote was: Now you know. You have "now" seen numerous slideshows which are using animation effects. My point was, and still is, that users of presentation slideshows both use and ask for animations and effects. For a presentation slideshow software to be competitive it must provide a way to make these and they must be demonstrated so that potential user realize the the software can be used to create them. Fortunately for PTE, the ability is there to both create and use a variety of special effects and animations should the slideshow author so desire. Not only can PTE be used to create and display special effects and animations but as you yourself mentioned, it can do them better than the competition. When and "whether" to use them is quite another issue. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Believe me, it's different because nearly every other household in the U.S. area where I live has either a pickup truck or van which I see "very few" of in the U.K. I've traveled extensively in the U.K. and Europe and you just don't have these larger vehicles which are commonplace here. Transporting a large flat screen here is simple. Not a problem in any way. I've hauled dozens of them for friends with absolutely zero problems or difficulty. In my part of the U.S., hauling a wide screen TV back and forth to a club meeting is as simple as hauling a sack of groceries in the trunk of a typical auto in the U.K. I typically load and carry 500 pound lawn tractors, snow blowers, bails of hay, motorcycles, ATV's and so on every month. I'm "typical" for my area. Drive down my road and you will find perhaps three passenger cars, a dozen large SUV's (suburban utility vehicles) half a dozen vans and a dozen 3/4 to 1 ton pickup trucks and about half of them have camper shells. I do understand, I just don't care to use a projector when a wide screen TV is available. I have used them to display PTE shows, but I much prefer using a much brighter high resolution (1080p) large screen which doesn't require dimming the lights or setting up the projector on a table and finding either a convenient wall or using a screen. The majority of my clients have stopped using projectors and have gone instead to big screen LCD or Plasma displays. The ones who haven't yet done so are waiting for the much improved (over LCD and Plasma) LED displays which are fantastic. My complaint is not about one's preference between a large screen display or projector, thats a personal choice and preference; nothing more. It's about the fact that as a photographer I dislike having to crop my images to fit a non-standard size. It's non-standard because neither dSLR's nor digicams which constitute the vast majority of the formats I use (I also shoot medium format film) are configured for 16:9/16:10. I'm forced to either compose wider than I like or crop away portions of an image I don't wish to loose. If I shoot wide, I'm wasting pixels and I "need" all the pixels I can get because the vast majority of my work is telephoto. If I don't shoot wide then I must totally rethink a shooting style I've developed over more than 50 years of photography and train my brain to see differently. I have nothing against projectors; I simply prefer the large screen display instead. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I did, and concerning the opening and first parts agree completely. The first part of the show was just demonstrating the bells and whistles of 3D transform and of course nothing that would normally be used in a real slideshow. The middle portions were just demonstrating various possible animations which shouldn't actually either help or hurt a slideshow (certainly shouldn't make anyone "nauseated" LOL) while the last portion was demonstrating a way which 3D transforms could be used in a real show. Whether one likes them or not is of course another issue entirely. Actually, I've received mostly positive comments on it from non PTE users. The other side of this is that even though I posted it on Vimeo where the actual performance in Flash is mediocre, I asked anyone who really wanted to see it in the best light to email me for a link to either a Mac or PC version where things are much smoother and much cleaner. I think some people just don't care for spinning, whirling, twisting and turning effects. One either likes them or hates them - there are apparently not too many people in the middle. The primary reason I put it together was the stress the video and resources so users could determine whether or not they had sufficient resources to permit some of the animations which might really be used in a traditional slideshow. For example, the very nice "Creation" and "Color" shows by Jean-Charles Pizolatto used some animation for both steam or fog rising and a 3D simulation of a camera pan and zoom which both used PNG overlays moving simultaneously while the main image was also zoomed and panned. Though it played perfectly smoothly for me, I think I remember Dom saying that there was one point with his very good system where he had some "jerky" movement. My stress test may be helpful for people to use to determine which certain types of animation are more likely to cause issues. The other thing which we need to keep in mind is the actual size of the display. While Jean-Charles Pizolatto's file ran perfectly smoothly on my system with the display set to 1024x768 I suspect that Dom's system was playing the same show at a much higher display resolution. This greatly increases the stress. So the bottom line is that this demo both shows the possibilities for playing with animation with the new PTE and the potential for using some of the features in a real slideshow. I think there are a sufficient number of straight slideshows demonstrating the great smoothness and images quality of PTE that anyone who is really serious about purchasing the product would certainly not be overly influenced by just my demo but would likely see a number of slideshows before making a decision. Actually, I have both technical demos and real slideshows on my site for download complete with descriptive text so people can tell the difference. I agree that we should be careful to explain to people that a "demo" such as the one I posted on Vimeo is not designed to represent a "quality" slideshow, but designed to demonstrate possible uses of the product beyond the simple zoom, pan and fade. In fact, I am not inclined to post any shows on Vimeo or Youtube which have any "Pans" in them because they simply won't be smooth regardless of the resolution or simplicity. I'm just not satisfied that either Vimeo or Youtube or mp4 h.264 is up to the task of doing smooth pans. Zooms are not too bad, but pans just don't look all that great. That's why we really need to find a way to vastly improve web output. I still would like to see PTE output Flash directly rather than having to convert AVI, MPEG or MP4 to Flash. I think it's possible to produce smooth pans with Flash directly from an Executable. It's definitely something we need for PTE. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jean-Charles, Excellent! Both of your slideshows. The only suggestion I would have for some improvement would be to turn on mipmapping on those few slides where the extreme sharpness causes some "sparkle" during the zooms. Beautiful photography and beautiful presentation. Salut Jean-Charles, Excellent! Vos deux diaporamas. La seule suggestion que je pourrais donner une certaine amélioration serait de se tourner sur mipmapping sur ces quelques diapositives où la netteté extrême entraîne une certaine étincelle "au cours du zooms. Belle photographie et de belle présentation. Cordialement, Lin

Hi John, Yes, there should be areas of water movement which do not blend with other water movement especially where the stream makes a 90 degree bend. Unfortunately, there is no good way yet that I know of to create a smooth curve with smooth motion using a PNG transparency. I guess if I were to spend some time using radial blurs I could simulate a decent curve via spinning a circular cut-out and mask. That's something I will work on for future demos. The slight blackness around the top edge of the Earth is the result of some vestiges of pixels which were not completely erased by the Photoshop action I created to cut out the individual Earth frames. There are a bit over 600 individual Earth PNG files which are used in the rotation animations. The actual pixel display resolution is pretty low for your system, being only about 1024x768 so when the image is displayed at your higher screen resolution they can become visible, especially with the back lighting by the bright orange sun. I didn't spend a great deal of time on the PNG images because the purpose was to tax the system resources. For a more perfect animation I probably should clean up the edges of the Earth, but it's hard to see it on smaller CRT's, etc. No, the link I posted is just to demonstrate that people are beginning to use lots of animation in shows made with other products such as Proshow Producer, MemoriesOnTV, etc. If you can describe somewhat the "content" of the show, perhaps some of us can help locate it. There are a number of demo slideshows on theDom's site, on my site and on some of the French sites. I'm not certain what Ken posted but if you go to my site here: http://learntomakeslideshows.net/ Then go to the "Links" page, there are links to theDom's page, to Barry Beckham's page, to Diapositif (Jean Pierre's French site), etc., where there are demo shows. Also if you click on my Demo Slideshows Link there are about 15 demo shows you can download. Best regards, Lin

Barry, I have a hard time believing that you are really this "thick." I posted the other thread for you to continue your personal quest for convincing everyone that animation and effects do not belong in slideshows, yet you continue to post in this thread where it is totally off-topic. I created this thread specifically for people who want to test their video and system resources using a slideshow designed for that purpose. You have elected to make it a platform for your own personal bias seemingly to convince the reader that the animations and effects I used have no place in a "slideshow." As far as the links are concerned: First, they are not "all ProShow Gold links". In fact, none of them to my knowledge are ProShow Gold links; some are Proshow Producer and others are MemoriesOnTV. Some are links to Google shows and some to Vimeo. No one said that they would "stand-out or that they were in any way anything other than examples where slideshow authors used animation and effects." You are trying very hard to change this thread to something totally off-topic and I'm simply not going to play whatever game it is that you are playing. If you want to continue this, please either do it on the other thread or start a new one yourself with a topic which is appropriate to your intent. Please do not continue to post in this thread about either the suitability of animations and effects for slideshows or about the perceived quality of the slideshows I posted links to. Lin

Hi Howard, It's normal for the slide to be larger than the viewing area at 100% because whatever your native resolution for display happens to be, 100% would represent that size for the image and there is less than 100% of the screen available for viewing. What you need to do is to click in the little block to the left of "close" on the small down arrow in the little blue square and change 100% to something less. If you choose "Auto" it will size the image to fit the available screen space. The purpose of having multiple choices is to allow the user to see not only the image itself, but also objects which may have been placed outside of the viewing area for "fly-in" or other animation effects. Sometimes when creating special animations, I have to manually type in a number as small as 2 percent to be able to see the ends of some PNG objects resting outside of the viewable area of the screen. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Do you have a suggestion about how it should be presented? Best regards, Lin