Lin Evans

Hi Mike, On "Project Options" "Main Tab" put a check beside "Wait for a Key Press or Mouse Click to show next slide." This will make your show a "manual" advance, retreat, pause, etc.,show. Lin

Let me address a couple of your questions. First, you can use the very good freeware audio editor Audacity to do just about anything you need to do in the way of audio mix, etc. Download it here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ Yes you would need to customize each slide or the audio to match with your voice over. You won't be able to use Navigation buttons on an MP4 show because you are working essentially with a "dumb" device in contrast to your computer which is a relatively "smart" device. With an executable file, you have the ability to pause, go forward, go backward, etc., because the code allows "on the fly" creation of your show beginning wherever your programming via menus and navigation allow. With a video file you have very limited abilities to do anything not allowed via the play device. The reason it takes much more time to create a video (mp4, avi, mpeg II, etc.) is because "each" and every frame must be created and "stored" for the differences in animation, etc. So if you have, for example, a zoom into an image followed by a zoom out, at least 30 frames consisting of separate images must be created and saved for each one second of display time. When an executable file is created, it only contains the first frame and "instructions" to the computer to create successive frames "on the fly" and it creates double and more the frames in "most" videos. For example the "typical" PTE executable with animation will have 60 plus frames per second. You "can" create video with up to 60 frames per second as well, but the normal is "29.97 fps" for USA and 25 fps for PAL countries. These frames created on the fly by the computer are not saved or stored, only played as they are created. The above is also the reason that "most" MP4 creations are much larger in terms of storage than an executable file which produces the same or much better quality. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, No, it's not.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, Both are perfectly smooth on my systems. The "only" difference which I can see is that the 5.7b2 version has for me the same issue with the last slide. On the 5.6.4 version all slides display properly. On the 5.7b2 version the last slide just quickly "flashes" after extended black. It actually flashes so quickly that it's impossible to read the text - just a flash orange color, etc. However, if I press the space bar "anywhere" during the show to stop the show on a slide, the last slide displays normally. Something is not quite right about the beta yet. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Sorry for not being clear. What I wanted to get across (I assumed you would be buying an LCD monitor) is that not "all" LCD monitors are created equal in that "some" are much more amenable to correct gamma range and calibration. Others can't be calibrated at all. Also, some will "probably" give you ghosting while others will not. Price is another can of worms. You don't necessarily have to pay an arm and leg, but you do need to "not buy" the run-of-the-mill LCD monitor if you want to be able to "accurately" edit your images for color intensity, hue, etc., and if you want accurate representation of what most other will see on your slideshows. We really "can't" edit animated "images" as such in the relevant sense. We edit still images and with PTE can then animate these edited images as necessary or desired. Ask Dave what his monitor cost because that model is, I believe, the same one theDom uses and it is a very good one for both editing and for playing back stills as well as animations. Bottom line is you won't get a decent LCD monitor for less than about $400 USD and probably it will cost more. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, There are two considerations which at first blush may seem to be of equal importance, but in reality are not. In terms of "practical" application, I find that I can edit my highest resolution images with precision and absolute accuracy on a crt monitor at 1024 x 768 resolution. I don't believe having higher resolution (larger pixel matrix) settings are really all that necessary or useful in terms of editing. However, for folks our age, having higher resolution screen settings can adversely affect our ability to read text, etc. So for display purposes of slideshows, higher resolution monitors are very nice but for edits and such are not necessary. The issue with LCD monitors is that there exists a wide disparity in their abilities to accurately display nuances of color and therefore accurate calibration. Further, the refresh rates are highly variable and this means potential ghosting of objects should you have rapid movement of objects of contrasting color with the background. Recently I submitted a little test slidshow which may be of value to you when purchasing a new display. Various forum members tried this brief show on a variety of different equipment and the results were interesting. For example, many if not most of those who were using LCD displays saw ghosting as the disc rotated against the dark backdrop. Those using crt monitors saw little, if any. On the other hand on the LCD monitor theDom was using (not generally found in the US, but probably available in the UK) there was no ghosting and the disc was sharply defined at all times. So what you might want to consider is not only the usability for editing but also the probability of ghosting or not on a specific LCD display. Here's a link if you care to put this little show on a USB media stick and take it with you to test a display before purchase. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/3Dsimulation.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Guys (Jeff, Barry), I think something else must be going on. The show runs butter smooth on the two systems I've tried it on which are configured as follows: 1. Gateway with Pentium 4 running at 3.0 GHz with 2 gig of RAM, Direct x 9.06 and an nVidia 8600 GT (over-clocked) with 512 Meg video RAM. The display is 1280x1024 32 bit. 2. Dell Inspiron with Core 2 Duo running at 2.33 GHz with 4 gig of RAM, Direct x 9.06 and an nVidia 8800GT with 512 Meg RAM. The display is 1024x768 32 bit. The second system I would expect to be able to run about anything smoothly, but the first one has less resources than your computer Barry and about the same video card except being overclocked which really shouldn't make that much difference. I'm wondering about available system resources or possibly something running in the background? We have had these kind of problems in the past where seemingly there are sufficient resources yet something runs fine on one system but not on another. I will try this at 1600x1200 and see how it works and get back. Both systems using Windows XP Home Edition. Which operating systems are you using where you have the stutter or "jitter"? Lin Just tested it on the 8800GT at 1600 x 1200 and was still butter smooth. I can't run the LCD monitor on the gateway at any higher resolution than the 1280 x1024 because it's maxed out there. I'm guessing the issue may be related to how the OS uses resources rather than resources themselves. It would be interesting to get others to respond and see if we could find some "pattern" to the issue. There is one strange thing though. If I let the slideshow run without touching the spacebar to pause it, the last slide which says "animation by theDom" just flashes on screen for a picosecond. If I press the spacebar any time within the slideshow, then the last slide stays on screen for the normal duration. I'm assuming Dom is using 5.7 beta 2 and I noticed a bug with it which I emailed Igor about. In my quickie slideshow where I duplicated the images and text from the Denver Post Blog about D-Day, the first slide takes forever (maybe 10 seconds) to show in the executable, yet pops right up in the Preview. AFAIK, the Preview creates a temp exe file so something is different. Also, when the exe file is created, it is twice the size of the exe reported before creation. I'm suspicious that the issue with the "jitter" could somehow be associated with this beta rather than a true problem with either the resources or show.

Hi Dom, Exceptional! I love it! Lin

Just for the record. There is no problem with PTE's Video Builder - there are thousands of people using it very successfully. If your file size is 2/3 smaller with Roxio, then the quality will also be considerably less. High compression means less video quality. The data doesn't magically shrink when using a different product. This may also be a clue as to the area of the problem you were experiencing with Video Builder. You said you were unable to burn a DVD with PTE then said that using Roxio took half the time. If you couldn't make a DVD with PTE then you really don't have a legitimate comparison. I don't know exactly what the problem may have been, but Video Builder is incredibly fast at creating DVD's compared to my other burning software including my Roxio Creator Ultimate 2009. As Stu mentioned, Video Builder uses hardware acceleration and hardware rendering so if your video card isn't up to the task this may be part of the issue and requires turning off hardware acceleration. It's difficult to say what the problem may have been, but since there are multitudes who are not having problems, it's safe to say that it was something unique to your set-up or settings. The best way to approach this is to use rewritable DVD's until the problem is found. Best regards, Lin

What you want to do is something which has been suggested by theDom in the past and that involves "selecting" multiple keyframes and "moving" them in unison. What the Scale Keyframes feature does is increase the time for the slide and all objects by your chosen time (one second - in this case) but spread that one second evenly among the keyframes so that the relative relationship between keyframes is maintained but increased proportionally to its specific "share" of the one second increase. If there were a way to select and "lock" the keyframes, then insert a specific amount of time "before" or perhaps after the locked keyframes so they move together and maintain their current absolute time relationships then it would do as you wish. As it is, you would have to move multiple keyframes. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, You can't add time universally (on all slides simultaneously) between any particular keyframes at a particular point without sliding the keyframes individually, but as endevil says, you can use the "scale keyframes in objects on timechange" feature to equally distribute the time and maintain the "relative" relationship between keyframes. This does, however, have to be done on an individual slide by slide basis. You reach this feature by the "customize slide" function. So in effect, what you are doing in terms of your request is, as an example, adding a second to the display time of the slide and spreading this second equally among the various keyframes. Setting this feature on one object does affect all objectes associated with this slide. That is, if you click on the "scale keyframes" on object four, it will be set for the main slide and all other objects as well. Best regards, Lin

Hi Didier, Igor will have output from version 5.7 which will create native MacIntosh slideshow files output by a Windows computer, but right now the only way to run the PTE software on a MacIntosh is by using Bootcamp or other software which will allow the Mac to run PC software. The developers are working on a MacIntosh version but it will take considerable time to come to release - perhaps in one year. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Very nice! One minor thing I noticed - when a URL is entered in the "Help" screen, no matter what the URL, the browser only goes to Winsoft! LOL Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, Just for fun, I incorporated your system into the "sun" for pseudo-rotation. I didn't add a halo, just used it for the shadow, rotate look, etc. I like it! Here's a link if you want to see it: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/template/earthtodom.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, The compression level shouldn't matter. JPGS expand in memory to their full uncompressed size regardless of compression (quality). Best regards, Lin

Hi Fried, It ran perfectly smoothly for me at 1600x1200 (almost same resolution as 1920x1080) on my Nokia 445Xi monitor. I'm using an nVidia 8800GT video chipset card (512 meg RAM) on a Dell Inspiron 530 (duo core) with 4 gig RAM. OS is Win XP Home Edition. You wouldn't, by chance, be running some anti-virus software simultaneously would you? Sometimes it helps to temporarily stop AV software because some of it really hogs system resources (not video resources). Do a Ctrl Alt Del while the PTE file is running to pull up the Windows Task Manager and see what your PTE memory load is. Also check the overall RAM loading for other programs. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, I suspect he means Work In Process. Lin

Post a link to the zipped executable and I'll recover them for you. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, LOL - we both did that a couple years ago! Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, Very good simulation! The masks and shadows definitely can be used to simulate the rotation well. If you had a really realistic earth map with clouds, atmosphere and such it would be very, very good except for the necessity for the shadows on the wrong side, but in the great scope I can see how it might be very effective to especially simulate rotation of planets such as Mars where no one really knows exactly (well, few know, anyway) what "should" be at a particular point at a particular time. I think it would mix well with a frame by frame rotation such as my template for adding other planets such as Mars & Venus, etc., especially since it has such a tiny RAM footprint. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, That's a thought... also I would also like to see the same quality video created for Youtube as with the Create for PC and Mac option. I've noticed that the same show which is 35 meg when converted to MP4 for the Create for PC & Mac is only 11 meg when created for Youtube with the same 1600x1200 file size. Perhaps there is some reason for not sending a large, quality file to Youtube but I don't remember it being this way on previous Video Builder iterations. Best regards, Lin

Hi Moriz, That should work fine. You don't need to disable hardware acceleration, but it helps if you disable it on the menu exe only. It is best not to have animation on the menu. You don't really need to have a button on the individual PTE shows to return to the menu. You can set Project Option, More Tab, Run Application/Slideshow on Exit to run your menu. Set this on each slideshow then when they exit, they will automatically run the menu again or whatever show you ask. Though you can do the above, normally, when a show is called from a PTE menu, the control will automatically return to the calling exe, which in this case is the Menu.exe program so you "shouldn't" need to do anything to get the menu back. I would test this with a single show before making the entire menu. By the way, your written English is excellent, no problem understanding. Best regards, Lin

Hi, Am I missing something? Can't you just choose "HD Video for PC & Mac" and get exactly the same results??? Best regards, Lin

Hi Moritz. You "can" do it with 4.x but it's not necessary. You can make your menu with 5.6 just as easily and with many more features. If you can explain exactly what you want this menu to do, I will try to explain how to proceed. Best regards, Lin