Lin Evans

Hi Folks, I regret that I will have to take a break from my forum activities to attend to some serious family health issues. I don't know how long it will be before I will again be able to participate. It's been a real pleasure helping where I could and I will miss my time spent here but my first responsibility is to my wife who needs me now. My site - Learn to Make Slideshows - will also be down after this weekend until I have time again to devote to it. Thanks, Lin

Mask Container, Properties Tab, Additional Mask Gif image must be suitable for a mask - black & white...... Lin

Hopefully, this is what you are trying to achieve..... You really don't need five or six photos, only two. The first one should be blurred as you like for the start and the second one should be very sharp for contrast. Place the first slide into the slide list and set a very short display time such as two seconds with a one second fade-in, fade-out transition. Duplicate this slide as the second slide with a much longer display time such as seven seconds with perhaps a six second fade-in, fade-out. Place the second slide on the slide list (the sharp one) with the display time you wish and set the transition to fade-in, fade out. Here are two zipped files. The first is a zipped executable to demo the process, the second is the PTE and image zipped so you can see this in PTE and get a feel for the set-up. You can adjust the timings to suit but the essence is that you are fading out the blurred file while fading in the sharp one. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/blur.zip http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/blurdemo.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Brian, Thanks much for the updated information. It seems as if the industry is at odds with itself. As you correctly assert, Youtube and Vimeo are primarily video sites, and video is definitely the direction of the future. The problem for we photographers and presentation slideshow fans is that most current video development runs counter to our interests in terms of both pixel shape (rectangular versus square) and aspect ratio. With the literally billions of photographs in the world which are either large, medium or small format (35mm), the photographer essentially needs either a "square" (large and many medium formats) or a 3:2 (35mm film and most dSLR) or 4:3 (most digicams) aspect ratio. Without such a format readily available on these video sites, it forces the photographer to either choose among the minority of his existing frames which are amenable to cropping to 16:9 and ignore the majority of existing negative or captures or change his entire style of shooting and shoot everything very wide to make all new photos amenable to cropping to this 16:9 aspect ratio. Neither is a really satisfactory solution. Fortunately, Youtube does convert a 4:3 properly in HD at 1600x1200 but then the difficulty of playing back this relatively huge file over the web poses its own set of unique problems for the hardware used by the masses. On the bright side, in a few years this will all be water under the bridge because newer systems are being built to run the resource hog OS, "Vista". If it has done nothing else, it has forced manufacturers to build systems with higher hardware and video card standards which will ultimately be able to play back these large video files smoothly. For that I'm thankful because eventually we will want to have full 3D and video capabilities in our presentation slideshow software and that will tax the system even more. Meanwhile, we will probably continue to struggle with compromise. MP4 seems to offer hope in that the image quality possible is superior if only we can solve the issues of smooth pans at higher resolutions. This may have to wait for even more hardware resources because even the middle top video cards like my nVidia 8800 GT are stressed to render smooth horizontal pans with a large MP4 playback locally. Had I the means, I would test the very top-end video cards and system hardware and perhaps learn whether the issues are resource specific or whether the problems lie in the MP4 code itself, but I'm having problems avoiding foreclosure on my home right now and have no funds to devote to experiments so will have to continue to plod along by trial and error and hopefully discover a way to achieve a compromise between image size/quality and smooth performance over the web. Best regards, Lin

Hi Joe, I think I answered your question on another post. If the file on the CD is a true video file such as an AVI or MPEG II, you can burn this to a DVD using any third party software which supports creating a DVD from a video file. If the file is an executable file, you can't do this because a computer is needed to run an executable file so a commercial DVD player connected to a TV will not work. If you want to create a new slideshow, you can screen capture the images on a computer and use the images to create another show but to create a show exactly like the one on the CD you would need the original PTE files. This means a file with the extension .pte and the PicturesToExe sofware to create a video from this PTE file. The .pte file is a code file telling the PicturesToExe program how to proceed with making either an executable, DVD, MPEG II, AVI or MP4 file. It tells the program how long to display each image, whether to zoom, pan, rotate, which music file to embed, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tony, I just tested it, you're right. Actually, it works for "everything" except a button in 5.1. It works for a rectangle, a frame, an image or text. I'm sure this is an oversight in 5.6. I understand why they don't use it for a button since the button can have attributes assigned for mouseover in terms of color change, etc., Of course it's possible to use a rectangle, an object or frame or even text made invisible by opacity settings so "if" one wanted a hidden "hot spot" then it would be possible to see where it was by mouse-over. I suspect that's the way they intended for it to work. I'll inform Igor.... Best regards, Lin

This may seem elementary, but did you check in the Project Options of Video Builder and make sure there is a check mark beside "Burn DVD Disc" and that your DVD burner appears selected in the list beside "device"? Best regards, Lin

Hi Daniel, I removed the video from Vimeo since it's really not a good representation of what PTE can do there and was only an experiment. I think we can assume that if we don't want to use 16:9 aspect ratio, Vimeo is not a good place for our slideshows. Youtube offers much more in the way of quality for 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio shows. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ian, Understood now - works for all objects "other" than buttons in 5.1. I emailed Igor about this: Lin Hi Ian, Do I understand correctly that you see a mouse-over "hand-icon" with 5.1?? I can't make that work on my 5.1 or any of the 5x series up to and including 5.6. I see it in 4.9 but not in 5.0 and above so I'm wondering what is happening? Do you by chance have a "hand-icon" defaulted as your mouse position indicator? I'm wondering if there is something going on which is different depending on how one's mouse software is set up rather than a PTE issue? Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Thanks so much - don't spend a lot of time on this because you are absolutely right. I converted the sound track to a wav and it works perfectly and repeatedly. Something is not right with the original MP3. I will write Hilary and explain. Best regards, Lin

There is no good reason to create an MPEG II if you want quality output on the computer. To do that, use the "custom" output and create an MP4 with a decent resolution (at least 1024x768). For viewing on a television connected to a commercial DVD player, then you should skip the MPEG II creation and just create the DVD using the parameter you describe. This "should" produce a very good DVD. The presence of moire depends much more on the subject matter than on the creation process. Moire will almost always be caused by adjacent line patterns in the subject matter and/or the lens to subject distance which creating the photograph. I would suggest turning on the Anti-shimmering (mipmapping) feature in Objects and Animations Property tab to minimize sparkle especially during zooms. This will also help with moire but some may be unavoidable due to the low resolution of the PAL/SECAM playback depending on subject matter. It's difficult to comment without seeing the actual video - perhaps you could post the problematic video with a link so it would be easier to evaluate. Best regards, Lin

Whether you can do this depends on which type of output is on the CD. If the output is in executable format (high probability) you won't be able to convert it. On the other hand if by chance the CD contains an AVI or MPEG II file, then that could be transferred to DVD format with appropriate third party software. DVD's can be created from AVI or from MPEG II output and these will play on commercial DVD players connected to television receivers. Executable code consists of an instruction set which requires a computer to translate into images. So executable code will not play on DVD media unless that media is used in a computer which can decode the executable file and turn it into sound and images. If you can find the person who originally put the show on a CD and they still have the PTE file, then perhaps they can create a DVD of the show for you. Best regards, Lin

Note to readers: Video is now removed from Vimeo so link below to Vimeo slideshow is moot.... Lin

Hi Bob, There are no pre-programmed "transitions" for objects within a slide other than the slide transition itself, but it is entirely possible to do "wipe" type transitions via the masking. Any object may be placed within a mask and that mask can then be used to make all or part of any object visible or invisible at any time. For example if you look at the sample link below you will see a text object which disappears within the frame of the picture during display. The same technique (gradient mask) in this case can be used on any object. Of course you can also fade out or fade in any object via the opacity and keyframing capability, but the masking allows a virtually unlimited number of possibilities for customizing the effect. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/textgoodbye.zip And the PTE file to see how it's done: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...xtdisappear.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Daniel, I have uploaded my "jimmie bond" file to Vimeo at 1440x1080 to test it but it will be at least an hour or more before they have it converted. Best regards. Lin

Hi Gerard, I can't see any real differences between the two for your show. With Vimeo, HD is enabled with full screen but with Youtube you need to also click on full screen as well as on "See in HD" to get the higher quality. It could be that what you see is the effect of some "sharpening" applied by Vimeo to their Flash FLV conversions. This works well for stills, but really messes up zooms and pans expecially if the originals are already quite sharp and there is no way to turn it off. The differences though are quite apparent between Vimeo's HD and Youtube when you upload a 1600x1200 file. Vimeo only supports 720P while Youtube supports 1080p as well as 1600x1200. The differences in image quality between 720p and 1080p are quite apparent. The thing I don't like about Vimeo is their inability to allow 3:2 or 4:3 HD format. Right now I'm testing by uploading a 1440x1080 to Vimeo as suggested by Daniel (above). We'll see how it looks. In order to really get the quality with a 1600x12oo or a 1920x1080 you need some fairly serious video processing power in the video card. Unless you have at least a top of middle range video card such as the nVidia 8800 GT or the nVidia 8600 GT you probably won't appreciate the differences. In fact, without the video card power the higher resolution probably won't be as good. But when you do have the right video card and sufficient resources, the 1600x1200 images are virtually indistinguishable from the original executables except for horizontal pans. Best regards, Lin

The god's smiled on him that day! That's about as close as one can come to loosing it. Back in the early 60's I had to pancake one of my old airplanes onto a 45 degree slope at 13,000 feet in the Sierras because of engine failure. Fortunately it was devoid of large rocks and I walked away without a scratch. The aircraft sustained only minor damage but retrieval was impossible and except for the engine, the winds took it away the following winter. Some areas in our High Sierras are littered with skeletons of craft which didn't get off a short Forest Service air strip on a hot day at 8500 feet elevation. Mountain flying is very tricky, even for the most experienced pilots of light aircraft and gliders. Best regards, Lin

Hi Patrick, It appears from the picture that he is very lucky to have not landed a hundred meters or so beyond where it may have been fatal! Hopefully, he will make a full recovery and have a chance to again enjoy the freedom of soaring... Best regards, Lin

I agree that PTE would be greatly enhanced with the type of sound capabilities which Wings has. From a technical perspective, I'm not certain how feasible this might be to implement. I only bring up the differences between the two approaches (video based tool versus executable tool) because users need to understand that their respective approaches to creating an executable file are apparently quite different. PTE creates an executable file in a quite different way than Wings. I don't know this for a fact because I don't have access to the internals of each program, and I'm not about to reverse engineer either, but I strongly suspect that Wings incorporates a runtime engine which essentially runs its video engine as a "packaged" executable file by wrapping all the code necessary to run the video within the executable file. PTE, on the other hand, creates a pure executable devoid of any "runtime" code. How this may or may not be related to the ease of dealing with audio isn't clear, but it may be a factor. Regardless, right now there does appear to be a bug in the audio code of PTE which I'm sure the developers are looking into. This bug appears to make it difficult to get proper synchronization of sound via the timeline without excessive iterative trial and error. Once that is corrected, then further improvments might be made in handling sound but to do this would require some significant engineering and the development of a "sound engine." Perhaps this is on the horizon for future versions. Note on the above: The apparent "bug" turns out to be a defective MP3 file. Something with the "rewind" is not working properly in the particular MP3. By converting this MP3 to a WAV the problem is resolved so what at first appeared to me to be a bug turns out to be an issue with the file itself. PTE is working properly.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Daniel, I pulled (deleted) the Vimeo version because it wouldn't recognize it at all as an HD file even though the original MP4 was 1600x1200. It appears that Vimeo will not recognize HD unless in the 16:9 aspect ratio which for me is quite awkward because I don't generally create video files but convert stills made at 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio. For this reason I've about given up on Vimeo and much prefer Youtube. Of course the issue with jerky movement in zooms is primarily hardware based on Youtube. That is, if your hardware, and primarily your video card, has sufficient resources and you give the file time to completely buffer, the playback even at 1600x1200 will be quite smooth. The issue with horizontal pans and jerkiness seems to be more complex. At HD resolutions, even when played back locally on any of my systems an MP4 simply isn't as smooth on horizontal pans as the executable. This makes it difficult to know with certainty just how much of an issue is Flash conversion and how much is MP4 creation. I'm unsure why Youtube 1024x768 HD conversions are significantly worse in quality than 1600x1200 because on the original MP4 there appears to be very little difference between them. Something in the conversion to Flash takes its toll on the image quality so I prefer to stick with 1600x1200. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Indeed Wings is light-years ahead of PTE in audio, but it is unequivocally "not" as good in "all" other areas. Wings is a video based tool, and a very good one - perhaps overall the best or at least one of the best. As such it is limited by the constraints of video itself. Some animations which can be done smoothly with PTE in executable output can not be duplicated with video by any video software presently available. This is not to take anything away from Wings Platinum. I have used Wings for many years as well as some very good and very expensive Sony software. I very much dislike having to have a "dongle" attached to my USB port and for that reason prefer my Sony suite to Wings for many purposes. There is no question that Wings is a very, very good and very superior video presentation tool, but video still can not equal executable mode in the vast majority of the most sophisticated animations and there is little control available in a video presentation for user interactivity as there is in an executables, so there is a place indeed for both these tools. Best regards, Lin

Hi Robert, This image was done with the little "Gigapan" robotic panorama tool which holds a digicam and is easily programmed specify the upper left and lower right quadrant for a stitched panorama. The robotic device has been available for some time now and presently only accepts digicams (not one for dSLR's yet). You can use their software or your own such as Autopano Pro to do the stitching. The battery driven, tripod mounted robotic device moves the camera a specified distance then presses the shutter release with a little plunger attached to a mechanical arm. This processs is repeated over and again until all overlapping captures necessary to stitch the image have been acquired. Once you have completed the stitch, then you can view on your own system or upload (takes a long time) to their site (free) and link to your website. Their Gigapan software allows zooming to the maximum focal length used in the capture and seamlessly switches the views in and out as you zoom. Almost any digicam can be used and of course the ones with greatest zoom produce the most impressive results. The actual "optical" resolution of any single frame is equal to the optical resolution of the camera used but of course the overall resolution in pixel count is equal to the cumulative frames minus the percentage for stitches. In practical terms, this is limited to around 200 frames per stitched pano with about 100 franmes being suggested as a practical limit. The authors of Autopano Pro have actually created multi-gigabyte stitches far in excess in terms of resolution and scope beyond the Gigapan process, but for home use the little robotic unit is quite amazing and costs under $400 U.S.D. As of today, a 13 gigapixel stitch of Harlem has already been done and the 20 gigapixel stitch of Paris is planned for this summer: http://www.paris-20-gigapixels.com/en/ Here's a link to their site if anyone wants to read more about the technology: http://gigapansystems.com/home.html And here is a link to some of the pretty impressive Gigapan stitches - on this one too much chromatic aberration at max zoom but very impressive. I suspect the photographer used digital zoom to get the extreme closeups: http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=5322...indow_width=984 The above stitches are about a gigapixel in total image size. The project now being developed will shortly render a 20 gigapixel image of Paris..... here: http://www.paris-20-gigapixels.com/en/ and here: http://www.autopano.net/blog/2008/12/15/ne...-20-gigapixels/ Best regards, Lin

Hi, Could you provide some more details? How did you proceed with creating the MPG file - the parameters you used such as the settings on Project Options in Video Builder (assuming you were using Video Builder). You can open any PTE file with 5.6 but if you have created a PTE file with 5.6 which has masking and you open it with an earlier version such as 5.0 - 5.5 the masking will not work. You can't open a 5x file with a 4x, 3x, 2x, or 1x version of PTE. Best regards. Lin

Hi Peter, LOL - Understood. I have emailed Igor and provided him with an explanation and link to Hilary's zipped PTE file so hopefully when he gets a chance he can look into this. No need to get involved in a third issue right now. Best regards, Lin