Lin Evans

Hi Ken, Download these two screen shots of this entire thread. One made with IE 6 and the other with Mozilla 3.5.2. Notice at the bottom that the word (Fast Reply) and the black bar it resides in are missing from the IE 6 version. I suspect that's what's happening with yours. http://www.lin-evans.net/temp/ie6.jpg http://www.lin-evans.net/temp/firefox3.5.2.jpg Open these in Irfanview and expand to full size and scroll to the bottom where I've marked with red arrows, etc. Lin

I have IE 6 on both as well - I'll try it now: Lin O.K., editing on IE 6 now and testing word wrap below: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time..... Word wrap working normally at 1024x768 with I.E. 6 and XP Home Edition.

Hi Dave, I have two systems up and running right now. Word wrapping works fine on both. The first is set to 1024x768 and the second is set to 1280x1024. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Actually, though IE is by a considerable margin the most popular browser, there are no other "biggies like IE etc., etc." IE is the only "biggie." Firefox is the world's second most popular browser with about a 22.47% market share compared to the 67.68% of IE. The remaining share is divided among variously Safari, Google, Opera and others. So by definition, Firefox is not a minority browser and is only dwarfed by IE because IE is shipped with all Windows operating systems. If statistics were done on swaps, I suspect the gain by Firefox on IE would be absolutely amazing. Source: http://en.wikipedia....of_web_browsers Best regards, Lin

Hi John, You might have a look at this one: http://www.softsea.c...cate-Files.html Best regards, Lin

Hi Ed, Not to belabor a point, but depending on the length of the clip it's not difficult to do with my template. You just need to decompile into individual frames and rename them according to my instructions and the rest takes care of itself. There are a number of inexpensive and even free decompilers which will decompile an AVI into individual jpgs or png files. The template takes care of the animation to return the frames to movie or video. Obviously, this is more work than inserting an AVI but it's really not all that difficult. On the other hand, if you want to run an AVI you can use Boxig's utility which runs video from PTE. There is much less control than doing it with the template, but it works fine. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, Excellent examples! Thanks... Lin

Hi Eric, Slicing is not for panorama construction, but rather for panorama simulation with individual images which have been made by "slicing" a panorama into multiple images which fit perfectly together. By using the "push" transition, it's possible to create panorama pan simulations which will work smoothly on very low resource computers which are not able to pan a large panorama smoothly. There are numerous reasons why people want to slice images for animation purposes or as webmasters often do to prevent theft of images. The slices are joined on the web and appear to be a single image, but when a thief right clicks and saves to clipboard they only get a small segment of the whole. Animations of puzzle types use multiple "slices" to join together in the animation. Not everyone is interested in slicing an image, but there are many who are. Best regards, Lin

Sometimes, for special effects or for convenience we need to split or "slice" an image into a number of pieces. For doing special "puzzle" type effects, for slicing up large panoramas so they can be used as multiple images with "push" transition to accommodate low resource computers and simulate panning a large panorama, etc. Of course we can do this with Photoshop and Image Ready, but it isn't straight forward and does require a good bit of understanding of Photoshop. I've found that many people either don't have Photoshop or just give up trying to get jpg output instead of gif slices. Truth be known, the real intent of Adobe was probably doing the slices for web purposes and not for the purpose that we slideshow enthusiasts intend to use it for. Then there is always the expense of Photoshop and the fact that not everyone has it. So how do those who either don't have extensive knowledge or Photoshop or the finances to purchase Photoshop manage? One way is a very nice little free program (donations accepted) called PhotoScape (link below): http://www.photoscap...in/download.php It's extremely easy with PhotoScape to precisely slice up an image into equal sized pieces. PhotoScape does much more as you will see, but I find it a very good tool even if one uses it only for the slice feature. Best regards, Lin

Hi Sari, The multiple files and subdirectories will appear on the MacIntosh as a single file which when the Mac user clicks on, will play the slideshow. The "easiest" way to distribute this is to use the "Create in Zip" feature which is one of the choices offered when you select the "Executable File for Mac" from the "Create" menu choice. Just send your friend the zip file and everything will take care of itself when they unzip. Best regards, Lin

Hi Xaver, I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. The point I was trying to make concerns cultural differences in what might be considered "off-topic." You seem to have a more narrow definition of what might be considered "off-topic" in comparison with how most other forum members define off-topic. On multiple occasions over the years you have interjected comments and done what is commonly called "hijack a thread" to further your apparent desire to have an off-topic category implemented. The better way to accomplish your goal, in my opinion, would be to email or PM Igor and ask for a new category to be implemented on the forum for off-topic conversations. Doing it this way would be much less disruptive to the forum and there would be fewer opportunities for "name calling," insults, or perceived insults. I'm not certain what precipitated (caused) the "Lèche-bottes" (translates in English as "boot licker") incident you refer to. In any event, such behavior should not be tolerated on the forums and such a comment should be removed. Had I seen such a comment myself, I would have removed it but I was not aware of it. But you also have been guilty of at least implied insults. In one thread you responded to Ken with the comment below: The above is an unfair assertion which, though perhaps based on your perceptions, is not accurate. There is no bias toward those who are not native English speakers by Ken or anyone else here. In fact, the vast majority of us who are native English speakers have the utmost admiration for those who go above and beyond to carry on conversations in a foreign language. Speaking for myself, I would find it most difficult to converse in German, Russian, Hungarian or Chinese as examples even though we have forum members who contribute here in English when these other languages are their native tongue. Though I do speak and write Spanish, and can comfortably read French, Italian and Portuguese, it would be extremely difficult for me to carry on forum conversations in other languages. So please don't confuse Ken's sometimes short (perhaps impatient) comments with intolerance for non native English speakers; that is certainly not the case. So in answer to your question. I do not regard such name calling as only being "French." Rude behavior is rude behavior regardless of one's nationality, culture, historical connotations or culture clash based on past events. Again, my point was that until we have an off-topic forum category, we should all be much more tolerant and less disruptive. I have myself been guilty of posting off-topic on a number of occasions. Sometimes by accident and sometimes because I believed that the information was important and that there wasn't a category into which it conveniently fit. That's just the nature of forums. When a poster plainly identifies the post as "off-topic," then please don't hijack the thread to point out the obvious. That behavior is more disruptive than an off-topic post. Best regards, Lin

Hi Guys/Gals, Actually, the post was clearly marked "Off-Topic" and since we don't have an "off-topic" category, I don't find it inappropriate. Xaver - I believe nobody would complain if you were to put in a "plug" (colloquial English for "endorsement") for a photo club or event in Germany, nor would anyone be offended should Patrick or JPD or one of our other French contributors or any contributor from any country for that matter do likewise. We all realize that there are cultural differences in the way our forum contributors feel about off-topic use of a forum. For example, on many French forums which I have audited, it's very common to go off-topic and and it is accepted as normal discourse. On Italian forums, likewise. On some German forums I've audited I find that participants are less tolerant in general of off-topic conversation. Of course there are plenty of exceptions to any "rule" of behavior with cultural differences. What we do need is to understand that there are wide disparities in "humor" among different cultural groups and we all need to be a bit more tolerant of these differences. What we English speaking participants find rude in terms of behavior may not be so to one from a different heritage. Without intending to stereotype, I find it in the nature of many French forum participants on French speaking forums to argue about nearly everything. And this is perfectly normal behavior and doesn't mean they are unfriendly, only being "French." I frequently find that Germans try to be "precise" and "logical," sometimes to the point of being boring to some other cultures who enjoy "poking fun" (colloquial English for "teasing") at each other. The point is that we need to foster a sense of brotherhood here on the forums because we all share the common bond of our love for PTE and our admiration for the developers. So in the sense of this brotherhood and sisterhood, let's continue to be civil and courteous, and perhaps we will all enjoy our time spent here much more. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, There will be a tutorial on how to "use" it, and perhaps samples of several ways it could be used in slideshows. To maximize the use is not something which can really be told and is very dependent on what the user decides to create. Igor has already shown at least two ways it can be used. One is to depict your image in some perspective other than "head-on," and the other showing a "reflection" of the main image in perspective. If you are familiar with the 3D transform features of Photo shop you can see that images can be "flipped" horizontally, vertically or anything in between. I would assume that the 3D shadow already in the beta would follow any between keyframe motion by the object in 3D transform so that lighting would look natural as the object changes dynamically in perspective. Possible scenarios for using this feature include flipping book pages, flipping playing cards, displaying dynamic changes in photo perspective in a slideshow, doing OOB (out of bounds) photos by using the 3D transform and included shadows and borders and duplication of a portion of the original image as a PNG object to extend beyond the borders of the photo, reflections, etc. In short - all the things we can now do with a perspective change in Photoshop plus dynamic changes between keyframes from one perspective to another. It's a very nice concept.... Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Unfortunately, it's easier to tell you how to prevent this in the future than how to fix it now. The program creates a PTE file which contains pointers to the folders and individual files used to create your show. When you move the files, the pointers inside the PTE file are then incorrect and the program has no way of knowing where they have been relocated. How to proceed with a "fix" depends upon how you have created your show. If there are no Objects in layers, it's straightforward. Open PTE and on the Main screen click on your first slide to select it. At the top of the screen next to the left of the "sound" icon is a box which says "Change Image File." Click on this and navigate to where that individual slide is now located and choose it. Repeat this for each slide. If you have slides in the Objects list in layers then also do the following: Open PTE then go to the Objects and Animations screen, click on one of your image names in the Objects to select it and then click on the Properties tab and you will see at the far right a little folder icon. Click on this icon and navigate to the new location of the file and click on it to reset the pointer. Once you have completed the above for all images and have assured that everything is working correctly, then save your pte file. In the future, the very easy way to avoid this is to create a zip file of each of your shows. You do this by clicking on "File" then "Create Backup in Zip." Doing the above gathers all images, sound files, etc., into a single zip archive which can then be moved to any drive or folder and unzipped and "everything" will be located there so PTE will be able to immediately find and run your shows. Unfortunately, there is no "easy" way to undo what you have done unless you want to use the "restore" facility on Windows to go back before you reorganized and make zip archives. Best regards, Lin

Hi Xaver, It's not a "new" method - it was used long ago with early versions (3.xx I believe) before we had PZR to view panos. At that time there was a brief period of interest and a few examples worked pretty well. There is an advantage for systems which can't easily handle pans with extremely large panoramas because of very "jerky" motion. By slicing the original into individual files which each then fit into a single frame without the necessity of panning, the jerky motion is resolved and the "push" transition replaces the need for creating multiple frames (between keypoints) thereby elimination the "video" aspect. In the sample I presented I didn't downsample the files because it was only a test of the principles. For a GPU challenged computer I would have downsampled each of the 10 frames to 1024 by 708 pixels. This would drop the file size considerably and the older PTE "engine" would suffice without PZR being enabled. This would indeed allow a "performance" advantage for such a system as the one Patrick has been using in the past (perhaps still). Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Thanks! That's apparently some trash pixels left over from the original crop of the pano - on the far right side of the last slide only. It's not related to the existing problem of the vertical lines. I could crop it out or mask it off but I don't want to risk loosing a line of pixels on the top or bottom with the crop tool. I don't think for now there is a solution to the thin vertical line on some of the displays and screen resolutions. The fact that Lennart had thin vertical lines between frames at "some" screen resolutions, but not all tends to indicate that it is quite probably an issue of aspect ratio and whatever slight pixel push or pull this may exert on the images. We will let Igor look at it after he has finished with the release and rested up. As I said earlier, it's really not a normal use of the "push" transition, but rather a possible solution for challenged video cards to be able to simulate scrolling a complete panorama, so really not all that important to attend to at this time. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I haven't a clue. Each frame is identical in dimensions except for frame five which has one additional column of pixels so who really knows what's going on... Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, As I said in my earlier post: Of course you should have the black background of the display showing at top and bottom - the images were not designed to fill the aspect ratio of even 4:3 but to allow for better display quality on higher resolution displays. I haven't looked at the edge pixels. I assume that the Photoshop slice tool did as indicated and made each slice equal except for the one pixel difference in width on slice 5 which Photoshop selected as the default to add a single horizontal pixel to. To my knowledge, there is no reason why Photoshop would "feather" any of the images on a slice. The latest link was set to display at 1024x768 so naturally it would display inside that parameter on the horizontal. Any additional horizontal resolution on your monitor should be divided equally left and right, so I would expect to see black completely around the scrolling image on any monitor having greater than 1024 pixels in the horizontal aspect with greater than 768 pixels on the vertical. I can post a windowed version if you would like to test it. Here's a link: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/panoslicedemowindowmode.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, It looks like this will only work with monitors set up to the same aspect ratio as the original which was created at 4:3. Different cards, different displays, etc., and the common thread for proper join appears to be aspect ratio. I tried creating an MP4 to test and the join lines were visible there so the usefulness is limited to executable output and apparently to a display aspect ratio identical to that used for the creation. Good information! Perhaps when Igor has finished with the latest release, has had a good holiday and some well deserved rest he can look into the reasons why and whether there is an easy "solution." It's really just an experimental use of the "push" transition which wasn't designed to do what I'm asking of it so not truly important as far as the utility of the transition is concerned. Thanks to all for testing and for the feedback! Best regards, Lin

Hi guys, Thanks for the reports! It appears to be a problem generated, as Dave suspected, by aspect ratio differences. The black at top and bottom of screen would be normal and vary a bit among different monitors of differing aspect ratios because the individual images didn't fill the screen on the original done at 4:3 aspect ratio. The original pano had a size of 24161x1671 pixels. The slices (individual images) are each 2416x1671 pixels with the exception of slice 5 which is 2417x1671. This means that theoretically there "should" be a perfect match between segments on the horizontal. I just regenerated the code using "Fixed Size of Slide" and reposted. If you have a chance, could you test it and see if it also has visible lines? Here's the link: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/panoslicedemooriginal.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, It could be related. I remember somewhere back in the recesses of my neurons that Igor mentioned the "Low Quality of Resize" as a correction for this and I "could" see them before checking the box for each slide. I'll have to test at various other resolutions and see if I can duplicate the problem. I have one monitor set to 1024x768 right now but just tested at 1600x1200 and no trace of lines. It's a mystery. Perhaps more people will test it and we can see if it's isolated to something common to Mike's system components. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, Nothing jumps out at me which would cause the lines to show. Are they really "fine" vertical lines, or broad lines? I can see them on the mini-viewer when I play the show, but not on any of my displays or other computers. Obviously, there is something which makes them appear on your system, but it isn't readily apparent what it might be. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks for testing! I'm not sure why it would be any different - all images are identical in size and such, but who knows? Do you see any vertical lines between frames like Mike does? I could experiment with "Thickness of Smoothing Line" but I'm not certain whether or not it even applies to the "Push" transition. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike,That's interesting - I can't see it, but could see it when not using "Low Quality of Resizing." What type display are you using? Is it a CRT or LCD? That "could" make a difference I suppose. Also what resolution is your screen set for? One other thing - which video card are you using? I just checked it on my wife's LCD screen with a different video card and can't see any vertical lines there either so it would be nice to find out what is different about your individual system. Thanks,Lin

Some may remember back several months ago when I demonstrated how to do a 360 by about 120 degree panorama with PTE. It involved careful creation of the original panorama by stitching multiple overlapping frames with the last frame being identical to the first and the entire stitch covering 360 degrees. This, of course, created a very wide panorams consisting of numerous stitched images and a quite large file. Those with sufficient resources in terms of video GPU power, could do this without any problem, but even seeing this on a resource challenged system was problematical. There is a way, however, for such a pano to be viewed on a less than optimal system. It requires that the user either have or have available a version of Photoshop which has the "slice" feature. I can't speak for earlier version than CS, but at least since Photoshop 8 (CS) the slice feature can automatically divide a huge panorama into equally wide divisions. I've found that slicing into 10 individual jpgs works very well. Once you have created the panorama and cropped it to a perfect rectangle, open Photoshop and choose the "slice" tool. On some versions you will find it behind the "crop" tool and available by using the "alt" key to click on the crop tool until an icon of a "knife" is seen. Load the panorama, left click on the "slice" icon then right click on the panorama. From the ensuing menu choose "divide slice" and set the "Vertical" to 10 slices evenly spaced. Next click on "File" (at the top left on the menu task bar) and then on "Save for Web." You will get a warning message stating that the image size exceeds the limits which save for web was designed for, etc... Go ahead and do it anyway because you will very likely not have any problems. Next, Image Ready will open and after a few seconds (see the gas gage) you will see a window offering four tabs at the top. Click on Original then change appropriate settings from the GIF default to JPG and save your 10 images to a folder of your choice. Exit Image Ready and Photoshop. Open PTE and load the 10 images. Next open Project Options and click on the "Main" tab. Set the "Time Interval on Slides" to 12 seconds and click on the "Set for Existing Slides" button. Next click on the "Effects" button and activate "only" the "Push Effect Right-Left" and be certain no other effects are active. Use the little icon at the far right top of the screen to turn off all effects then activate only this one. Set the "Effect Duration" to 12,000 ms (twelve seconds). This effectively keeps the image scrolling continually. So to this point you have created a pano, sliced it into 10 equal portions, saved as jpgs, loaded these into PTE, set the effects to "push right-left," set the time for each slide display to 12 seconds and the effect time also to 12 seconds (12,000 ms). The next step is very important: Go to the Objects and Animations screen and click on the Properties Tab. Place a check mark (click on) Low Quality of Resizing for each of your 10 images. Also, it's a good idea to check "Mipmapping" to help with potential flicker. If you don't check the Low Quality of Resizing, there will be a thin vertical line at the point where otherwise a perfect "join" of adjacent images will take place. Next load image 1 again at the very start of images and set this slide with individual fade-in, fade-out and about 5 seconds of display time. This will give you the first image displayed for about five seconds before scrolling begins. Next load image 10 again at the end of the show and set the display time to about 6 seconds and the effect to fade in/fade out for about 4 seconds. This will prevent the show from immediately ceasing as the last slide finishes scrolling across the screen. Add any image at the very end of the show. Add a black rectangle and set the time for about 5 seconds. Now DELETE the image you just added at the end leaving only the black rectangle. Set the effect to fade in/fade out for the rectangle and the duration to about 3 seconds. This will effectively fade out the last image after it pauses. Save your work the open it up and preview. You will get a very nice continuous pano scroll just as if you had the full single panorama loaded. There will be no apparent break at all between images, no thin vertical line and you will be able to play the pano on your resource challenged system. Even Patrick can play it on his system - LOL. The down side is you can't zoom or scroll up or down, etc., like you could with a full single file panorama, but you can use this method even for smaller panoramas which are too large to easily handle with limited resources. Here's a sample - less than 6 meg zipped exe: http://www.learntoma...osliceddemo.zip Suggestions: Don't oversharpen images for pano scrolling, don't be concerned that at the end the stop is a bit "abrupt" because you really can't control the smoothness like you can with a single frame image. Also don't be too critical of my example which was "quick and dirty" and not the best images in the world. These were taken before sunup in a hurry and some are too sharp causing "glitter" etc. When done with a really good pano, this can be an excellent way of displaying it. You may also place such a pano in the midst of other slides handled conventionally and while the pano is still scrolling near the end, go to the next slide to avoid a bit jerky end..... Best regards, Lin Addendum - It appears that this method will only work properly (without fine vertical join lines) on systems using the same aspect ratio (in this case 4:3) on which the show was developed for. So the utility is limited. The join lines will also be visible should one create an MP4, DVD, etc., so just consider it experimental for the time being.