Lin Evans

Just to add to what's already been said and to clarify: You can't "add" the executable but you can copy and paste the slides complete with the PTE coding for animations, etc., by the method explained. This will not, however, copy any associated music or audio. You will have to do that manually. PTE "can" call any external executable codes, run them, then return seamlessly to the calling slideshow, but what you want to do is much more straight-forward and can best be accomplished as described by Xaver and Dave as originally explained by Hawk. Lin

Hi Laszlo, Well, it's "almost" still today! I missed it by 42 minutes, but the template and demo are finished. You will find the links here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....showtopic=10095 Best regards, Lin

Moved to Lin's Templates:

Hi Laszlo, Yes, the sword's look fine now and the show runs great on my system. Of course, you may show the 3D slideshow. If you want to quickly step to the rotating Earth with orbiting moon, just use the right arrow key to advance through the various slides quickly. I'm working now on a rotation template which I will post along with a short demo show to show how it could be used. The difficulty, for anyone embarking on such a project, is to create the multiple images (I used about 640 for the template) needed for the smooth rotation. Typically, a video of a rotating subject would be decompiled into individual jpg's or png files (I will use PNG's for the template). These then would need to be each pasted on transparent backgrounds and have the appropriate portions of the image erased to make transparent background "floating" pngs. This is a formidable task in and of itself. Right now I'm doing copy and paste individually on 640 png files then I will create a Photoshop action to select, inverse then delete (erase) the backgrounds so I will have 640 "floating" png objects for the template. These are, in this case, pictures of Earth each with a slightly different rotation. The user of the template may use these images or replace them with their own each named "image001.png, image002.png... etc.," so that whatever object files they create will rotate. The advantage of doing it by object rather than by individual sequenced slides is very obvious when you think about it. As individual slides, we have essentially duplicated a video but we have almost no control over things. To dynamically change size or position, etc., during the show, we would need to manipulate each and every slide independently. This would be almost an imposible task. By using the independent slides as objects, however, we can assign them all as "children" of a frame or rectangle, then manipulate them collectively. This allows some very unique and impressive results which simply can't be done by inserting a video unless that "particular" video had exactly the effects we want to produce. I think this will become apparent in my demo. Of course creating the template takes hours and hours of work - even days of work. Because with this many objects, memory becomes a major concern. Just getting the objects into the proper order takes many hours of work because only about 20 objects can be manipulated before running out of RAM. This means move 20 objects into proper order, save, exit PTE, reopen and repeat the process until all 640 objects have been properly ordered. Then there is the three keyframes per object (1920 keyframes) which also can only be placed about 20 in one open session of PTE. So place 20 keyframes, save, quit, re-open PTE and continue. This is why having the template is quite valuable for someone who wants to do such a process. Perhaps only a few people are really interested in doing such a thing, but the challenge is interesting for me so others may choose to use my template or not - it will be freely offered for anyone wanting to experiment with this process. Hopefully, by the end of the day I will have it and a demo available. If not, then tomorrow. Best regards, Lin

Hi Daniel, Beautiful reflections of an historic place indeed. Saint Malo has quite a history. For those unfamiliar, I copied a bit of history from Wikipedia here: =========== History Saint-Malo during the Middle Ages was a fortified island at the mouth of the Rance River, controlling not only the estuary but the open sea beyond. The promontory fort of Aleth, south of the modern centre in what is now the Saint-Servan district, commanded approaches to the Rance even before the Romans, but modern Saint-Malo traces its origins to a monastic settlement founded by Saint Aaron and Saint Brendan early in the 6th century. Its name is derived from a man said to have been a follower of Brendan, Saint Malo. Saint-Malo had a tradition of asserting its autonomy in dealings with the French authorities and even with the local Breton authorities. From 1490–1493, Saint-Malo declared itself to be an independent republic, taking the motto "not French, not Breton, but Malouins".[4] Saint-Malo became notorious as the home of the corsairs, French privateers and sometimes pirates. (In the nineteenth century the city's "piratical" notoriety was portrayed in Jean Richepin's play Le flibustier and in César Cui's like-named opera derived therefrom.) The corsairs of Saint-Malo not only forced English ships passing up the Channel to pay tribute, but also brought wealth from further afield. Jacques Cartier, who sailed the Saint Lawrence River and visited the sites of Quebec City and Montreal — and is thus credited as the discoverer of Canada, lived in and sailed from Saint-Malo, as did the first colonists to settle the Falklands – hence the islands' French name Îles Malouines, which gave rise to the Spanish name Islas Malvinas. The commune of Saint-Servan was merged, together with Paramé, and became the commune of Saint-Malo in 1967. Saint Malo was the site of an Anglo-French summit in 1998 which lead to a significant agreement regarding European defence policy. ==================== Thank you for this reflection on the resting place for so many....... Best regards, Lin

Yes, but not animated GIF images. Lin

Hi Laszlo, What you wish to do requires many more than 25 images. To turn the object (flower in this case) smoothly in a slow motion would require about 60 images per second of turn. So if you wanted to turn the object through 360 degrees in say 10 seconds, you would need about 600 images sequenced via the timeline at about .016 per image. This can be done with PTE by placing the about 600 images as separate objects each on its own layer then setting keyframes with a fade in and fade out via opacity for each. The first object would begin with 100% opacity then at a keyframe about halfway from 0 to .016 (about 8 in the keyframe block) it would require another keyframe set also to 100% with zero opacity at .016. (16 in the keyframe). The next layer's object would begin at zero on the timeline with zero opacity then at a point halfway between zero (about 8 on keyframe) and .016 it would require a second keyframe set to zero then at .016 the opacity would be 100% then returned to zero at .024 (about 24 on the keyframe block). These numbers are a bit easier to deal with and will result in a frame rate of about 62.5 frames per second resulting in smooth movement. It's then very easy to get your numbers for PTE's keyframes by using Excel or other spreadsheet with a formula of incrementing one column by 16 and the adjacent by 8 for each subsequent cell. Then you can print off the sheet and use it to fill in the keyframe values for each layer. You would then continue this complex sequence of killing the opacity on the previous slide and making the present slide 100% throughout each increment for the various slides of each layer for the 10 second period and once completed, you could copy and paste the slide multiple times to continue for additional 10 second rotation periods. Of course you could also just set the slide to "repeat". This is a very time consuming job with PTE but the results can be very, very good. It's not something you will do without lots of four letter words and you will have to save frequently, quit PTE and reopen to avoid running out of memory. If you have problems, let me know and I'll create a template for you so you can rename your PNG slides accordingly, copy over my slides and have it rotate 360 degrees. To get your PNG files transparent for the background, the best way I've found is to shoot on a solid color background (black usually works) which is not a color found in your subject then create a Photoshop action to select by color and delete the background. Do this for each of the 611 images (600 to 611 works well) and you will end up with separate png objects with transparent backgrounds. To create your slides you will need either to take about 611 frames each at .6 degree increments on a turntable or, better yet, use a 60 frame per second video camera or digital camera to shoot an object rotating. Let me know the speed of rotation you need such as one rotation every 10 seconds, etc., so the template will be correct. You might wonder, why not just put each frame in a separate slide and sequence each slide for a time of .016? The reason is that PTE can only reliably sequence individual frames of subsequent slides at a speed of about 75 to 150 ms without dropping frames. The reasons are technical, and the old 4.x version of PTE "can" sequence slides as fast as 10ms reliably, but when you add the ability to create 60 slides + per second using the GPU (graphical processing unit - video card) for PZR effects, then you have a totally different issue where the per slide display time can't be faster than about 150ms reliably without dropping frames. Because of this, the way I've described is the "only" way I've been able to get smooth motion on this type of sequenced frame rotation. PTE "can" do it as objects on layers but not as individual slides because of the PZR issues. The "easiest" way to get the 600 images would be to use a good digital camera or high end video to create a "video" then use a decompiler to separate frames and output to PNG format, etc. If photograph it on a black background then you can use Photoshop to delete the background from each image and save as a transparent PNG. You can then manipulate the background via slide set to display for the duration of the show. Using a solid color background you won't need to worry about the perceptual differences in background appearance. I realize this is a complex process and probably not worth the effort. I have done it on several occasions to make the "earth" spin in some of my demos. If you want to see what it looks like, go to my site (linked below) and download my 3D.zip show. Near the end of the show I have the Earth spinning through 360 degrees with the moon orbiting the Earth. This is the way it was achieved. The show is about a 35 meg zipped executable. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demos/3d.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Thanks for this excellent report. Here's my take.... 1 Voice Over for HMS Trincomalee using Zoom USB mike. Clear, but a tad "booming" on the bass register. Perhaps because of the Zoom USB mike? 2 Voice over for Ripon Cathedral using the Olympus LS-10, as are all the following. I prefer the sound on this one - was this using the built-in condenser mike on the Olympus? In either case, the sound was clean, crisp and of excellent audio quality 3 OB in local Chemists shop. As would be expected - lots of background noise but still quite possible to discern individual voices. 4 OB in Mini Supermarket. Again - as you explain, lots of background but still clear. 5 OB in local hardware shop. Less objectionable background but nice audio quality 6 & 7 OB Ladies choir in village hall. Able to clearly discriminate voices and music. Not bad at all for a very portable digital recorder. Can you tell me if this unit is configured so that you could plug it in to your computer and it would act as the microphone for a "live" AVI recording session of on-screen activity such as speaking when demonstrating PTE or other software? I've had a dickens of a time trying to find something which works consistently for me for this purpose... Best regards, Lin

Hi Davy, I think for serious audio work, there is no question that Audition 3 is far superior to any free product - no question in my mind. The only real issue is "cost." When a product is well over $300 (perhaps closer to $400 U.S.D.) it seems to be reserved for only those who really need the bells and whistles. For simple editing, Audacity seems to be quite sufficient for most. I would love to have Audition myself, but since I don't do a lot of demanding audio work, I use Audacity for most of my editing. For clubs where perhaps users can combine their funds to purchase a software for a commonly owned system, as long as it's not in violation of the software license agreement, I think Audition would be a wonderful addition. For individuals like myself who are teetering on the "poverty" level with a fixed income, it's a bit over the present limit. Costs are one reason why I've not upgraded from Photoshop CS. It is "sufficient" for my purposes and within my budget right now. For those who have sufficient discretionary income, Audition would be a wonderful aid, no doubt! Best regards, Lin

Hi Henri, Igor can tell you about his specific nVidia 8600 GT card which doesn't use a cooling fan but instead has cooling "pipes" which act as a heat sink - (most cards do have cooling fans) but having a cooling fan doesn't necessarily mean noise. As an example, my nVidia 8800 GT card runs ghostly quiet "almost" all the time. To use the 8800 GT card, which is a middle of the road medium-high performance card, you must have a power supply which furnishes at least 450 watts of power as well as power connections to furnish dual power to the card. My default power supply with my Dell inspiron 530 was not up to the task and I swapped it out for a 750w model which was up to the task. Immediately on startup, there is a brief period of a couple seconds when the fans all come on then silence. The "only" way I've been able to get my 8800 GT's cooling fan to make any perceptible noise is to run one of my screen saver aquarium programs which allows the user to set the frame rates and I set the frames to 380 frame per second. Then the card is severely worked and the cooling fan comes on. No PTE file that I have ever created, even those which tax the video system, will make the 8800 GT fan audible at all. I think if you will build your new system with at least a 600w power supply, buy any of the latest nVidia cards you will not find them to be noisy at all even though most do have cooling fans. There is new technology, however, which uses liquid cooling and also one which has different designs and is also used on some of the newer nVidia cards and possibly on other cards. Read about it here: http://www.mvktech.net/content/view/4125/39/1/1/ Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I'm not certain I understand your question. One place where you change the order of slides is here: Or you can click on "View" "File List Sort Order" from any of the various screen views....

Hi John, Left click the mouse on the word "Name" at the top of the slide list in the "Classic View" then choose: Name Extension Date Size Unsorted Reverse Order Best regards, Lin

A couple years ago there was some interest in adding an animated watch to slideshows using the really nice Panos FX Photoshop/Elements action which I animated and produced both an AVI tutorial and PDF tutorial on. I was reminded about this this morning by a member who wanted to animate a watch. Both theDom and I did a number of these a while back but I had forgotten to add this to the PTE Made Easy Tutorials posted on the Tutorials and Articles section of the forum. This morning I added these files. There are three links. They include an AVI tutorial, a detailed multi-page PDF tutorial and the PTE template including, this time, the mp3 file for the one second "click" sound. Those interested can find these files at the bottom of my PTE Made Easy - PTE for Smarties link in the Tutorials and Articles section of the forum linked here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901 Best regards, Lin

Hi Rick, Are you still patrolling those Idaho highways and "not eating donuts"? LOL It's been a while! Your original PTE key should still be available and it's good for the main program. If you need Video Builder to create DVD's that's an integrated, but additional program which you have to purchase separately. You can still create AVI's with PTE and burn to DVD with third party software but Video Builder is "much" easier to use so highly recommended. It has a two year upgrade policy while the original PTE has lifetime upgrades. If you PM Igor I'm sure he can find you in the database and get your email address at the time you purchased your original PTE to retrieve your key for you. Nice to see you back, Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, I believe Video Builder has a separate key, so removing the main PTE key from the registry will not help AFAIK. It sound like he either doesn't have the key for Video Builder or he isn't installing it correctly. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, There are essentially two types of "sharpening" (with a number of variables) for images. Which to use and when depends on "why" the image is not sharp and how we want it to appear. If the image simply needs a bit of "unsharp mask" whether selectively or uniformly across the image, I just use photoshop's "unsharp mask." Unsharp mask actually is an edge contrast enhancement tool which differentially raises contrast at edge boundaries between dark and light pixels. This is somewhat akin to using an ink pen to "outline" some text to "set it off" and draw the eyes to these boundaries. This makes the image appear "sharper" but really is not true sharpening. We must use care in how many pixels we darken or lighten at edge boundaries or we have issues of "halos" around our images. If you see a white "ghost" near dark boundaries or a dark "ghost" surrounding light boundaries it's usually a sure indication of over zealous use of unsharp masking. Photoshops regular "sharpen" (as opposed to Unsharp Mask) doesn't discriminate at edge boundaries but simply enhances adjacent pixel contrast. This can lead to a very "oversharpened" look which most do not like. There are a host of sharpening algorithms available which actually go beyond what Photoshop does. Some are better at some types of images than others and experimentation is often the only way to determine which is best for a particular image. To understand how true sharpening is accomplished we need to understand a bit about how digital image detail boundaries are created. To imagine this, consider that we could create a featureless disc which was pure white (255, 255, 255 RGB values) and place it on a pure black backdrop which is also essentially featureless and smooth with a value of (00, 00, 00 RGB). At the boundary edge of the white disc, we will find a number of pixels (perhaps four or even five) which range from pure black to increasingly lighter shades of grey to white. True sharpening is done by algorithms collectively know as "deconvolution." What deconvolution does is find detail boundaries and actually change the number of these edge boundary pixels which effectively "sharpens" the edge by reducing the number of gradations in these edge pixels. Because of the ability to actually shift, add and delete pixels selectively, deconvolution algorithms can also correct for motion blur to as many as 20 pixels or so. So these algorithms are used by forensic science to do things like read license plates which are motion blurred, etc. Obviously, it's not possible to do miracles with deconvolution, but it is possible to save otherwise useless photos which either suffer from out of focus or motion blur and truly "sharpen" detail edge boundaries. One software I use for this purpose is called "Focus Magic." Focus Magic combines a little Unsharp Mask with deconvolution and does a very nice job in many cases. You can see Focus Magic here: http://www.focusmagic.com/ This software works both as a stand-alone product and as a Photoshop Plug-In. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim, This usually means that the image which the PTE file is requesting has been moved or deleted. If you use Notepad and look at one of your files with the PTE extension, you will notice that it gives the location to include drive designator, folder, etc., where the images used in your slideshow are located. If for any reason you delete or move one or more of these images, or if you are using an external USB or Firewire drive and the drive designator has changed for whatever reason, you will get such a message. PTE simply doesn't know where to find the picture to load. One way to eliminate this is to use the Zip feature in PTE which combines all necessary images along with the PTE file, etc., in one file. You can then move the entire content anywhere you wish and as long as you do not move any of the files outside the folder where you open the zip file, all file will be found by PTE and you won't get this error message. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, Actually, they only added the ability to "burn" your shows to a BluRay disk with Gold. You can create the same and actually "better" MP4's at 1920x1080 pixels with PTE then use other software such as Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Version 12: http://pcworld.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsit...io+Ultimate.htm which lets you burn BluRay output to standard DVD media blanks which are much less expensive than real BluRay media. Of course you still need a BluRay player to play these back to an HD TV but BluRay players are not all that expensive. BluRay "burners," on the other hand are still quite expensive. Of course the down side it that you can only get about 20 minutes of video on a standard DVD blank but that's enough for the majority of slideshows. Of course once you start adding video to the equation, you up the ante for storage space by a huge amount. Remember, when we create an executable slideshow without video to be played on a computer or by using a computer to play on a high definition TV, we are only encoding the actual images plus the "instructions" to the computer to create on the fly the intermediate images necessary for an animation. For example, we may have a zoom or pan or rotate which actually has hundred of intermediate images to effect that zoom, rotate or pan action. These images are not actually stored in the executable file, but are created on the fly by the video card at the rate of 60 frames per second and greater (that's what hardware rendering is all about). Only the first image must be stored and it is used to create all the intermediate images on the fly. Now when we insert a video clip, things are quite different. For a video clip every single image that is necessary to reveal the animation must be created ahead of time and "stored" on the media or within the executable file (in the case of software which actually embeds video). This means that for a 29.97 frame per second (let's round to 30 fps for the sake of simplicity) for every minute of video play we have 1800 separate images which must be stored on the media and within the file. If these images are reasonably large, such as 1024x768 then we have enormous storage issues. Let's just say that each image is a couple hundred "K" in size then we have about 360 megabytes of data to be stored for each minute of video. As you can see, when we begin talking about seriously large video files such as a resolution of 1920x1080 we are going to have HUGE files. Not something you could easily post on the web or even upload to your website for download by your friends. If you used very much video at 1920 x 1080 resolution it could take a long time to download and even a much longer time to upload. This is something which most users are not really consciously aware of. The fact that we would all like video included in our shows is one thing, but to have "quallity" with these videos we need larger file dimensions and less compression to maintain higher quality. These factors mean we will end up with some really big slideshows. Unfortunately there is no good trade-off yet. Either mediocre quality such as with Proshow Gold or huge file sizes and all that entails. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mary, Thanks for the reminder! Actually, this company also produces what I believe is the finest HDR software available. A trial can be downloaded here: http://www.mediachance.com/hdri/index.html Thanks again, Lin

Hi Peter, Proshow Gold has had the ability to integrate small video clips into the slideshow for years. There are a number of products which allow integrating video and have for six years or more such as Media@Show, Vegas Video, ProShow Gold, Adobe Premiere, etc., etc., but none of these products have hardware rendering which produces the ultra high quality and ultra smooth transitions and animations we have with PTE. It is possible to display video clips with PTE now by using Boxig's ShowVideo PTE utility: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....p;hl=video+clip but it's not yet possible to incorporate video within PTE as and integral part of your slideshow as a background while running PTE slides on top as it is with some products which incorporate video. Using video in your shows presents a plethora of issues when you have to somehow mix the fast frame rates allowed by PTE's hardware rendering engine and the lower video frame rates and lower quality animation, etc., of current video implementation. The technical obstacles are many, and to date we must choose whether we want the highest quality output possible, or settle for what is in my opinon the mediocre image and animation quality found in the competition. Right now we can't have it both ways so users must decide which is more important until such time as the technology is available to give us both. There is no reason to choose one or the other. It's perfectly acceptable to use numerous presentation slideshow products to create presentations. Proshow Gold is a pretty stable product; Proshow Producer is decidedly not. There are "many" unhappy people who are becoming upset with Producer and the myriad problems, crashes, patches and issues which have plagued it. It has great features and some impressive potential but largely unrealized and troublesome according to many who use it daily. I can recommend Gold if you want to add video clips to your shows, but I could not recommend Producer at all. There is nothing wrong with using both PTE and Gold - I do myself though not as much as in the past. Only the PTE development team can comment with certainty about the probability of incorporating video with PTE so I won't attempt to second guess the plans. In the final analysis, PTE has far more to offer me than either Gold or Producer or any other current product for that matter. Unless you want to spend really big bucks, you can't really top PTE and even when you do for some things there is no comparable product in my opinion. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, I think the issue may be the bitrate. If you have the option, set the bitrate much higher than the default and see if this helps smooth out things. I had a similar issue when I was trying to capture the spinning Earth for one of my planets sequences where I decompiled the video and used individual sequenced frames. I think I was using Screen Recorder Gold (It's been a while) and I found that to get smooth capture I had to jack up the bitrate. Some codecs support this and others don't seem to have an accessible setting. Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, Great show as it is. In the future to remove unwanted subject from a frame, take multiple identical frames from the same position of any scene you want to remove people from with the camera in the same position and with the same settings. Then use software such as PhotoAccute Studio http://www.photoacute.com/studio/index.html which can remove any moving subjects... works great! Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I think Xaver was referring to a "rectangle" as created by PTE internally rather than a jpg image. Rectangles and Frames (solid color) called in O&A seem to have a different aliasing applied and when animated the edges look a bit strange where a jpg or png image holds its shape better. Best regards, Lin

The "size" of the image for the mask is relatively unimportant. What is important is the aspect ratio. You only need to find the aspect ratio of the monitor or display you are using and make the mask the same. Then "size" the mask in PTE in the Object's List and when you have determined the proper size just use the same zoom figure for each image. If you want, you can then permanently resize the mask in Photoshop, etc., and use is for all your image of the same aspect ratio. You can turn the mask 90 degrees and use it then for portrait mode as well. Displays are typically either 3:2 (rare), 4:5, 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio depending on the manufacturer. Digital camera images from most dSLR's are 3:2 (such as to exactly fit a frame of 8x12 inches, etc.) or from an Olympus or Panasonic dSLR it is 4:3. From consumer digicams typically the aspect ratio is also 4:3 which fits perfectly on an 8x10 frame. So first determine the aspect ratio of your images and display. If necessary, crop the images to the same aspect ratio of your display then make the frame the same aspect ratio as the display and your problems will be solved. Remember though, if the show is displayed on a different display having a different aspect ratio there will be unavoidable issues. You "may" only need to size the mask in PTE to fill the frame of your display. It would help if you would post one image from your camera and your present mask. Then we could look at it and give more specific help. Best regards, Lin

Hi Fergy, What you need is a very simple PNG file with the correct aspect ratio. This can be created in Photoshop, PixBuilder Studio or your choice of photo editors which supports PNG files. It "could" be a jpg file, but a PNG could be more versatile depending on your individual type of border desired. What I mean by this is that if you want an irregular border, PNG supports transparency where jpg's must have a rectangular appearance. Since PTE can have multiple layers the only thing necessary to show the border is to size this file so that it frames the smaller image in the foreground but doesn't obscure the background image. This is very easy to do. The framing image goes between the background and foreground images in the Object's List. If you will post three image and say which you want to be in the background, which you wish to use as the border for the smaller image and which you want to be the smaller image I will create a quick sample for you. Best regards, Lin