Lin Evans

Hi Noel, Download the appropriate tutorials from the PTE Made Easy - PTE For Smarties section in the Tutorials and Articles section. It's on top. These AVI's will help you get a handle on Pan, Zoom and Rotate. Best regards, Lin

Hi Noel, Project Options, Effects Tab. If you want to use the same effect for all slides, at the top left of the screen put a check beside "Enable transition effects" then go to the far right side and click on the right of the two icons (the one without checkmarks in the two squares) which will remove all checkmarks from all effects. Note that the icon to the left (the one with checkmarks) puts all checkmarks back. So the two icons which look like little offset squares act as toggle switches to switch on and off all effects simultaneously. Scroll down to the effect you wish to use for all slides and put a check mark beside it. Set the time at the bottom for the duration and this effectively sets the chosen transition effect for all slides. You can then go to customize slide and change the effect only for the currently selected slide as desired. Best regards, Lin

Hi, You can only copy images and objects along with all keypoints, animations, etc., but you can't copy music from one PTE show to another. You must enter the music manually. Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, I think you will find as many opinions about this as you will find users. What is monotonous to one may be exciting to another and neutral to a third. My point is that you can use PTE to do this if you want to. Because you "can" doesn't mean you "must" or even you "should" unless it's something which appeals to you or to your viewers. Many people who take holidays in scenic places like to remember what it looks like from a particular vantage point. They like to see the ocean on one side and the beaches and inland. They may like to see the mountains and the plains and remember exactly what they could see when they look around. 360 degree panos are very popular among many groups of people, and every slideshow produced by a user is not designed to be an AV exposition or be included in AV competition. Just like animations beyond pan, zoom and rotate may be of little or no interest to some, they are quite interesting and important to others. In the U.S., almost every realty company selling property uses 360 degree panorama images so that their potential buyers can put themselves in front of a piece of property and see what it might be like to look out their window to the front, sides and back. Also they like to see the interiors of a home all around without actually driving to each piece of property available. When they see something which looks quite interesting, then they visit in person, but the 360 panorama serves a very useful purpose. So it is with resorts who like potential clients to get a "feel" for what it would be like to visit without actually making the trip first. The bottom line is that what appeals to some is of little interest to others, so PTE offers something for everyone. Take it or leave it, we all have the option of choice. Remember, if you want to stop the rotation and spend a few minutes or seconds on a particular area, all you have to do is press the spacebar or pause key on your keyboard. If the user wants to include zooms in to a particular area, stop for a while, zoom back out and continue the rotate it's an individual choice..... Best regards, Lin

Hi Gérard, Very nice! Actually, you have HD quality even if you don't pay for Vimeo's "better" quality, it's just that you are limited to one HD file per week. So you can wait a week then upload another HD even in higher resolution free. If you upload more than one per week, they won't save in HD quality. Very good quality and great information! Best regards, Lin

Hi Steve, Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac right now but someone told me about crossover and suggested that it might be an economical solution. If other Mac users could also give the trial a try and it doesn't work then we can rule it out as a possibility for a temporary solution. Best regards, Lin

Try a trial copy of this and let us know how it works for you: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/ Lin

Steve, Why don't you download a trial copy of this and see how it handles PTE and executable output? http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/ Lin

It won't happen quickly. It takes considerable time to code everything for the Mac OS. As I recall, this may occur in stages. The first stage "may" happen in 5.7 when there will be output in native Mac OS generated on the PC version. Later, when the developers have sufficient time to code and debug it, a Mac Version of PTE may be scheduled. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, Yep, can't get away from the animals out here - LOL. Thanks! Yes this one was taken with the SD14 and Sigma 15-30mm. Unfortunately, 360 degree panos in the winter are tough. Obviously, the best lighting for a 360 degree pano is when the sun is right overhead. In the Summer and Spring it works out really well but in the winter, of course, you don't get overhead sun at all so that leaves a few minutes before sunup or a few minutes after sundown to avoid lens flare and overexposure. If you expose properly for shooting into the sun then stitching becomes a real issue because of the great difference between sky color, etc., between the few frames into the sun and the rest. It makes it really difficult to color match, etc., so I just try to shoot about 5 minutes before the sun comes up but then I have to deal with really low light and all that entails. The Sigma works about as well as anything else I have for this but I need a sharper lens than the 15/30mm - or at least a better copy than the one I have. Next summer I should be able to get some really good 360 degree panoramas but won't have the great snow capped peaks - sigh.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, I don't know who owns these two places, but the herds browse all around this part of the country. It takes lots of trees, shrubs and grass to support our large herds, especially in winter. They stay up high in the summer, spring and fall - frequently see them above 13,000 feet, but in winter they come down to the lower elevations. It's about 8,000 feet here. There are about 3,000 head in this area and in Rocky Mountain National Park. In town they usually settle down on the golf course and golfers have to work around them - LOL. Lin

Not as clear as yesterday - this just before sunrise this morning. I almost ran over a cougar getting here (about 35 miles from home). Dang cat jumped over the hood of my truck and I missed getting her in the windshield by about two feet! About 200 head of elk milling around on the road and had to wait until they crossed before setting up. Just a quick 360 degree pano - light wasn't great so.... http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/sigmapano.zip (about 5.6 meg) Lin

Hi Tony, Because masks are so specific to what you wish to accomplish, the user must create their own. Fortunately, the concept of a mask is incredibly straight-forward. You have black and you have white. White is opaque to the main image and transparent to the layer underneath. Black is opaque to the layer underneath and transparent to the main image. Since the properties of white and black are very specific, various shades of grey will have limited opacity and limited transparency for their respective counterparts. For example, if you create a gradient running from black on the top to white on the bottom, then you place something inside the mask container between the container and the mask, this object will be variously opaque to transparent depending on its position. Let me give you a concrete example. Load an image into PTE. Create a gradient mask as described above in Photoshop or make one in PTE as a background and screen copy and save it as a jpg or png file. Next create some text an put this text inside a mask container with the gradient mask having the text on top of the mask. That is, mask on the bottom, text sandwiched between the Mask Container and mask. Main image goes beneath on the Objects list. If you created your gradient with black on top and white on the bottom, it will work as follows. If you reversed it, just rotate the gradient mask so that black is up with white down. Place the text string under the image and over time scroll it upward. The text will be visable in the white area of the mask, become translucent in the grey area and dissapear as it crosses into the black. By adjusting the "position" of the mask vertically, you can control where the text disappears, etc. The position of the mask can be altered not only by "moving" the mask but by changing the vertical perspective. That is you can hold down the shift key and with the mouse "squeeze" or "stretch" the mask to make it longer or shorter, etc. Once you fully understand this relationship, the sky is the limit for mask creation. you can use Photoshop, Elements, PixBuilder, etc., to create hundreds of custom masks to use as you need. You can also download hundreds if not thousands of masks via the web and use them in innovative ways. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mary, The Transparent Player plays the MP4 h.264 directly - you need no other software. The beauty of this player is that it not only streams Flash FLV, it streams MP4 h.264 and .mov file formats. You don't want to convert the MP4 to Flash, that would downgrade it appreciably, just create the MP4 HD h.264 with PTE, put it and the Transparent Player on your website as instructed by the company and your visitors will be able to see streamed MP4 which they click on your link or embedded image, etc. Best regards, Lin

JPD's (Jean Pierre's) really innovative 360 panorama using masks reminded me that back in the days prior to 5.0 there was lots of interest in panorama presentations with attempts to create them with "push" transitions and multiple photos, etc. JPD's presentation just prompted me to remind users that it's quite easy to make an excellent 360 degree panorama with zero distortion - unlike the type created with 360 pano software and presented in QTVR (QuickTime) or Flash or Java script. With these, you have true "spherical" capabilities, but it takes a "LOT" of work to capture your originals and carefully stitch them and manually insert the Zenith and Nadir to get the top and bottom so that users can manually scroll them up, down, in every direction. Most of us just like to get a really great "circular" panorama without the inherent distortions in spherical panos and PTE is just the ticket. Below is a link to a very quick - low resolution (640x480 captures) stitch presented with PTE and it only takes 2.6 megabytes. These were grab shots today when the lighting was poor so tomorrow I will try to get some decent higher resolution frames and create a decent one. This one only to remind users that this is quite easy to do. All you need is decent stitching software and about a 20/30 percent overlap with you camera on a tripod and absolutely level. Here's the link: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/pano2.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Ralph, You may want to read my reply to Mary above. I have not found anything else which streams h.264 MP4's so the bottom line is that if you want MP4 quality to be available for your viewers, the only alternative is the Transparent Player. The conversions from MP4 to Flash on Youtube and Vimeo degrade transitions and induce "pulsing" into the which are in some type of animation. For still images only, the Youtube and Vimeo Flash conversions of HD quality, especially 1080p and 1600x1200 (almost identical in resolution but different in aspect ratio) are great. Once you introduce animations and especially horizontal pans, you can't go above 1024x768 on Youtube and you simply can't get smooth animations and pans on Vimeo at all in HD. Youtube quality is not nearliy as good at 1024x768 HD as it is at 1600x1200 so you are left with either compromise in image quality or you must avoid animations. With MP4 h.264 at 60fps you get excellent horizontal pans at 640x480 and excellent image quality as well. You get "almost" perfectly smooth horizontal pans at 1024x768 with MP4 h.264. So for the absolute "best" posible, having the Transparent Player on your own site offers presently the highest quality possible via the web in my opinion. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mary, I really don't think the player has any effect on the load times, etc. Josh gets the extremely fast load times and smoothness via small Flash code. If you were to play an MP4 via the Transparent Player it will not run any smoother or load any faster than it does without the player. The only significant difference would be that it has preload and streaming so it's not necessary to wait until the entire file has downloaded before playback begins. The samples on Josh's site are all Flash as far as I know. They are quite small in terms of load size and with this comes the speed and smoothness. As MP4 files get larger, the amount jerkiness increases. You may want to play the samples on Youtube which I have posted links to in order to get an idea of the possible in MP4 conversions to Flash. MP4 h.264 is "cleaner" than Flash as Flash is implemented on Youtube and Vimeo, but there is no appreciable difference in the smoothness of pans. By "cleaner" I mean image quality for motion is better and there is no "pulsing" such as you see with Flash on Youtube and Vimeo. I suspect much of the "pulsing" comes from the amount of compression used on these sites. They do this to greatly lower the file sizes. For example, I just made a 360 degree circular pano which in executable form takes 2.6 megabytes at full resolution of about 768 vertical by pano width. When converted to an MP4 at 640x480 the file size is 159 megabytes. The pano runs for 190 seconds. This means 11,400 images of 640x480 are stored to furnish the 3 minutes 10 seconds at 60fps for the MP4. Only the one file is stored in the executable and the rest are created on the fly by PTE via the GPU. My point is that MP4 at h.264 can support this while Flash reduces the fps to ~30fps (29.97fps to be exact). So somewhat more "jerky" movement for certain types of animation are unavoidable and when you really compress the Flash files you get much worse quality with fades and other transitions as well. Low resolution, small size videos can look great with these constraints, but when the file and image size increases things don't do as well with either Flash or MP4. I believe that MP4 at 1024x768 is still very smooth. Image quality is superb. It's "MUCH" better than 1024x768 in Flash conversion on Youtube. It's absolutely "excellent" in terms of smoothness at 640x480 and image quality is very good. Much better than Flash in my opinion when you consider transitions, animation "and" simple image quality. So the advantage of having Josh's Transparent Player as I see it, is to be able to stream MP4's of medium size when you have animations and to stream HD at up to 1600x1200 in amazing image quality when you have no animations but just want to display a slideshow of stills with incredible image quality and very good transitions from your own website. Best regards, Lin

Hi Daniel, I don't understand - is there a question? PTE, Pinnacle, Vegas, Magix, and other software support AVCHD but these are not and do not contain web "players". You can't use these above programs to stream video from your website. Transparent Player streams Flash and MP4 h.264 among other formats. Transparent Player doesn't allow you to "create" content. These are different processes. Lin

Hi Jean Pierre, Brilliant! Best regards, Lin

Perhaps an associated problem. Igor, I just tried this with the latest release. I created a simple menu by deleting the single slide in the objects list and adding text which calls another slideshow saved with the same latest version of PTE. I used "Run Slideshow with Return." When I tried it in the Preview, I received this error message after the called slideshow had finished running or when I pressed "ESC" to exit the called slideshow: I went ahead and created the executable menu and it did not give me the error message when the called slideshow had finished or when I pressed "ESC" but returned to the calling menu slide. Only in the "Preview" do I see this message. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Thank you very much! This will make photographers "extremely" happy not to be forced to crop their slideshows to wide angle for display in HD on Youtube. It's too bad Vimeo doesn't support HD yet at other than 16:9. This is a big plus I think for Youtube to support other aspect ratios in HD. Best regards, Lin

Abdol, Release "Candidate" is not the same as "Release." Lin

Link fixed, going back to bed - LOL... Lin

Hi Ken, I just gave up for a couple hours to get some sleep and didn't read your reply until now. There's good news and bad. The good news is that 1024x768 is pretty smooth on the horizontal pans. The bad news is that the conversion to Flash by Vimeo takes its toll on high frequency details over the MP4 at the same resolution. This slide was carefully chosen for the test because it has lots of small detail. The MP4 created at 1024x768 is almost identical in detail to the executable. But converting to Flash softens it noticeably. Flash also introduces the "pulsing" effect which is evident on the Youtube playback. For those interested - here are links to the executable (about 6 meg) and to the 1024x768 Youtube version. Link to executable http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JylVumcoBM0 and a link to 1600x1200 version at Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7O65lUSRw8 The bottom line is that at full screen, the difference between 1600x1200 and 1024x768 is quite obvious. To see this, look at the sample of the chipmunk I posted on Youtube. 1600x1200 is virtually identical to the executable for detail even with the softening effects of the Flash conversion. On the other hand, you simply can't pan horizontally without jerky movement at over 1024x768 in the MP4 or in the Flash conversion. The playback at HD quality "without" going to full screen on Youtube at 1024x768 is quite decent. This leads me to suggest that if you want to see your images at incredible resolution on Youtube, make your shows with Video Builder and output at 1600x1200 and the Youtube Flash conversion will be superb. Just don't pan horizontally and all will be extremely good. If you want to pan horizontally, output at 1024x768 and tell your viewers that for best results view at HD without going to full screen on Youtube. My recommendations based on this trial: To get the ultimate quality at 1024x768 you need to upload your MP4 to your own website because there is essentially no serious differences between it and the executable for normal horizontal pans. This apparently means purchasing a player like the Transparent Player to get cross-platform compatibility. Other wise just output your shows for Youtube in HD at 1600x1200 for best results and forget horizontal panning. Best regards, Lin