Lin Evans

Hi Jose, Download, install and run Beta 20 of 5.6. Open the PTE file with 5.6 beta 20. Beta 20 is essentially 5.6 - there will be no "major" changes and 5.6 beta 20 will not affect your ability to use your present version in any way. You "really" need to download and use the beta so you can learn the new features - there is absolutely no penalty for doing so - the two version co-exist without interference. In case you decide not to try the beta, here is the executable so you can see how it will work: You could do this in countless ways by using different masks. It would be easy to make one letter at a time disappear or appear, etc., depending on the type mask you devise. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/textgoodbye.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, I'm a bit confused. Do you purchase royalty free/copyright free music from Amazon? I haven't been able to find any at Amazon - could you possibly point me in that direction with a link. I did find one copyright free album but they were out of stock. As far as a license to use the music on your slideshows, what type of license do they offer? Is this something reserved for certain geographic areas? I wasn't aware that this was available in the US at least. I've found Barry's selections on CD to be very good and I have used a number of them in my own shows but would like to have some available with more vocal selections. Unfortunately, most of them that I've found are instrumentals and most are not of "popular" songs but rather creations designed for royalty free distribution and generally classified by "mood". Best regards, Lin

I posted this here rather than on the DVD-Video AVI, Video Builder section because it may be of interest to all PTE users. A short time ago there was a discussion about whether or not it would be possible to spool high resolution MP4's from one's own website rather than posting them on Vimeo or Youtube. As those of you who have used Vimeo and Youtube may be aware, your uploaded MP4 high resolution files are converted to Flash. Even though Flash does an admirable job of displaying still images in high resolution, transitions and animations are less than stellar. In any event, the quality on Vimeo as well as on Youtube is very, very good in terms of the still image but the MP4 rendition is "much" better in terms of many of the transitions as well as simple fades. Another consideration is that many want their presentations to be available only to those whom they decide to send links rather than widely available as they are on these hosts. Yes, you "can" have private links on Vimeo and perhaps Youtube and you do have the options of preventing download of the original files but there are numerous utilities which allow any viewer who has access to your shows the ability to download them whether you like it or not. Obviously this is also true of shows hosted on your own site, but you have greater control over who sees them if you control the server. A thorough search of present technology turned up a new and exciting player developed and marketed by Josh Anderson. This player has some amazing capabilities including the ability to spool MP4's which are encoded with the h.264 codec. After some email conversations with Josh, it was determined that his player could spool our MP4 and can support the HD resolutions we want. This means that by using his "Transparent Player" we can host our MP4's in whatever resolution we choose on our own websites! I invited Josh to visit our forum and see what we were up to and perhaps tell us more about his player. The Transparent Player actually does much, much more than just spool MP4's and I would suggest to anyone who is interested in perhaps pursuing this to visit Josh's website to learn all the details. Though his primary market is businesses who want to present small, concise messaging using such techniques as Chroma Key alpha channel videos where the subject with a transparent background appears to "float" above any text or images, I believe our AV enthusiasts may offer a niche market which will certainly grow in the future. Josh's solution is relatively inexpensive as business solutions go, and if you license his player now, it is available as a lifetime license and within the budget of anyone who is "serious" about hosting their own shows. I personally intend to purchase his player and host my own shows on my own site just as soon as I can scrape up the funds to proceed. Here's a link to Josh's site. I would suggest going there and reading up on this exciting new technology! Be sure to turn up your sound. Just place your cursor over the active video and you will see the controls. http://transparentplayer.com/ Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, As Xavier said, you can do this with masking in the Beta versions of 5.6. Remember, you can create a gradient mask so that the text dissolves gradually as it moves into the mask, so it's quite possible to make the text dissappear inside the parameters of the image itself. Here's a sample you can use to modify the mask as you need. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...xtdisappear.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, After you have stitched the originals, just set the vertical size via Photoshop or whichever interpolation software you use to the maximum size you need to support any zooms into the image. Then place the image slide into PTE and size it to fill the vertical aspect of the display you are using or the vertical size for your intended audience. Then you can pan and zoom at will. The important thing is to remember not to exceed a 1:1 on your zoom. That is don't zoom too much deeper than what you would have with a 1:1 view of the original in Photoshop to avoid loosing image quality. Here's a sample: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demos/cliffpalace.zip In this one, the entire slideshow consists of a single stitched pano which was made with eight stitched frames. Best regards, Lin

Hi Paul, Thanks! Yes, they were all taken within a few miles of home here in northern Colorado except the last one with the water which was taken from Maroon Lake looking at the reflection of the Maroon Bells in south western Colorado. Best regards, Lin

LOL - I've been bad but problem solved anyway - Lin

Anyone have a copy of Boxig's (Granot) RestorePte program? It was a utility which did sequential screen captures manually....?? Lin

Hey Steve, LOL - and a good time was had by all - including the frozen toes? Great fun it seemed - who got to sit on the cool slab rock seat at the first camp?? Nice job, Lin

Hi Jose, Slides on the timeline are marked as "used" by their identity on the list changing to "bold". The fonts are often rasterized to PNG (your choice) and they are not embedded. Size can be made uniform by observing the "zoom" numbers for the text object. For technical reasons it's difficult to use a fixed size font. One of the problems is that different computers have different installed fonts, thus the reason for having PNG rasterizing which makes the actual font a "picture" of a font and thus not amenable to precise sizes except via the zoom factor. It is less convenient in some ways than having a numeric association or font "size," but infinitely more flexible. Objects can be "linked" as children to slides thus adopting their attributes of zoom and position or they can be independent objects thus not affected by position or size (zoom) of the slide itself. Just be certain that when you add text that the main slide or other objects in the Object's List are not selected (blue) and the text will be under your complete control independent from the slide itself. This way you can zoom, pan or rotate the image and text independently. Best regards, Lin

Just testing an effect and some slides to relax with while listening to words we could all learn from in today's troubled world..... http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/thatrainbow.zip (about 33 meg) Youtube link: Give it plenty of time for preload if you watch in HD. Quality almost identical to executable for image quality, not as good for animation of course: Just hit "Pause" and let preload gas-gage go about half-way across screen before beginning play unless you have a really fast download..... By the way I just tested it at 1600x1200 and it looks great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzmfXwJCFnE Lin

Hi Paul, I found it very enjoyable - dreamy-like = upbeat tone and very nice use of Photoshop effects. About the only thing I would suggest to possibly improve it would be to go to Project Options, Advanced Tab and hide the mouse cursor during show. Best regards, Lin

Hi Brian, Thanks much for the link! I have sent the song file to a friend who may be able to help with translation. If I had the written lyrics I think I could translate, but my ear isn't accustomed to the language so I wouldn't even know where to start with spelling, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi, If it was written down, I could translate it myself, but it's a song so no luck in that department. Thanks, Lin

Just wondering if anyone here from the UK, Ireland, Scotland or the surrounding area speaks Gaelic or any of the Celtic derivatives? I have a song I would like translated into English... Best regards, Lin

Unfortunately there is no way to choose where music starts in your case without modifying the music itself. Because of the scrolling of text over multiple slides, the slides were placed as objects of the first slide. In a normal slideshow where slides are separately placed in the slide list you can insert sound three different ways and limit the sound or background music to beginning with a certain slide, but since the additional slides are inserted as objects to accommodate the scrolling of text over multiple slides, the only way I know to do what you want is to take your music into a sound editor such as Audacity and add silence to the beginning of the mp3 equal to the amount of time from the beginning of the show until you want the sound to start. This is not difficult to do, but it does require modifying at least the first part of the background mp3. As an alternative, you could create a silent MP3 playing for the duration of time you wish at the beginning of the show. This could then be your first music selection. Place the regular music as the second MP3 and it would then begin after the silent MP3 had played. However, for more precise timing it would be better to do it in the first suggested way. Best regards, Lin

Beautiful, Gerard! Very well done and presented indeed!! Best regards, Lin

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/newyearcard.zip (about 4.5 meg zipped executable) Lin

Hi Daniel, Perhaps the reason your can't see it on Firefox is that you haven't downloaded and installed the Adobe Flash player 9 and Windows doesn't know what to do with the file? Players like VLC apparently don't need the Flash player to be installed to read the file but maybe Firefox doesn't call the VLC player by default? I haven't installed the Haali Media Splitter, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi Daniel, I believe the problem you are having in opening the file is a Firefox bug or perhaps a Windows issue. I have Firefox 3.0.5 and IE 6.0 and it will download, open and run with either. Firefox has some known bugs depending on your version and how you have your system set up in terms of association defaults for playing mp4 files. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about VLM or a way to make MP4 files stream. This may be possible but I have no experience with doing it. I was able to find this information: Windows Support Unlike the more common AVI and MPEG (or MPG) containers, Windows doesn't include built-in support for reading MP4 files. In order to read video and audio from MP4 files you'll need to install a special program called a media splitter. Haali Media Splitter adds support for both MP4 and MKV files to Windows (DirectShow), and is free. More on this here: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/ho...y_mp4_files.cfm You may also want to read this: http://owlet.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!...1!297.entry You might want to do some web searches and perhaps you can discover a way to successfully stream mp4 directly from your web site. The only way I know to get it to work is as I have presented it. This player claims to be able to stream mp4's but you would need to purchase this player ($119) to make it work so perhaps not a "solution" for everyone.... It would be worth looking into however..... http://transparentplayer.com/ What I have discovered, at least as I interpret it, is that there seems to be no "unified" way of getting mp4's to stream across various operating systems and individual configurations, which is why I suggest either Flash or using Vimeo/Youtube embedding. I believe that there simply is not enough information to make an informed commitment to doing this at this time. Later: After emailing the developer of this player I received the following reply: ================= Hi Lin, At this time transparent player uses progressive download streaming which requires no extra server side software. Yes, our software supports mp4 streaming and our code allows you to set the buffer time but only if it is encoded with h.264 codec as only h.264 encoded mp4 is supported by Adobe Flashplayer. ================= So it appears that if you purchase this player, you can embed MP4 on your web site and have it streamed to the visitor when they click on the link or image you have provided. It "appears" to be a nice solution for those who wish to embed MP4's which are encoded with h.264 codec which I believe the PTE output is. The only downside is the $119 purchase price, but that's still a small price to pay for this rather unique player which has myriad advanced features not found in other players. Best regards, Lin

Hi Daniel, It's easy enough to do, but there is no streaming so the user would have to wait until the entire file downloaded before play began. Just create a link from wherever you have the file stored on your server and an icon or image hyperlinked to that file. Then when the visitor to your site clicks on the link they will see the hour glass until playback begins assuming they have a player installed on their computer which will play MP4's. This can be done with AVI, MPEG II or MP4 files. The advantage of using Flash conversion is twofold; first the code is much smaller so the load time is less for the visitor and second, if you use Flash FVL you can have a preload with an indicator which lets the visitor know that the file is loading. Of course you could always put a message to the effect that it will take some time to download the MP4 before play begins but this is still rather "crude" compared to the automated Flash FLV message. If you want to see how this might work I will see if I can build a web page with a hyperlinked image to play an MP4 - let me know.... O.K. - here's a sample - it's not elegant and it may crash if you don't have a player capable of playing an MP4 http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/mp4test/index.html Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, I do remember! That was about when beta 5 of version 5.0 was available and I was letting folks on other forums I frequent know about the great new PTE features. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have and be sure to visit the Tutorials section of the forums where there are PTE Made Easy tutorials available for download which might help answer some questions as well. Best regards, Lin

Hi Abdol, I'm truly sorry about that situation. I was not aware of the restrictions. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, This is possible, but depending on your hardware may be limited by memory. The way you can approach this is to place one slide in the slide list and the others as "objects" of the first slide in Objects and Animations. Set the display time for the slide to the length of your music. Turn your slides on and off via the timeline with opacity control. This will limit you to fades between slides but you will be able to do this if your hardware can handle the size of the slides as objects so better to keep the pixel dimensions to a minimum. This is, of course, not an "elegant" solution, but it will work if you have sufficient memory in your video card so be sure you keep the image dimensions down to about 1024x768 or less to conserve memory. You may be pushing the envelope if you use 30 slides. Here's a quick sample using a few slides: About 35 meg zipped PTE sample.... http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...crollsample.zip Best regards, Lin

Try this one: http://www.pctools.com/file-recover/ Best regards, Lin