Lin Evans

Hi Bruce, Thanks! Yes, the non HD (SD) seems to play smoother than the HD creations for whatever reason. It's the same on Youtube and Vimeo. There is less jerkiness in standard quality than in high quality and not just from PTE but from all... Best regards, Lin

Ken, Ralph, I edited out your comments by mistake! Got to watch which buttons I push! If you put your comments back in I will be more careful!! Lin

Snow has varied importance to different cultural groups. In Europe, Asia, the Arctic, parts of North and South America and even Australia, people who live in areas where snow is prevalent have greater interest in this phenomena than in desert or equatorial areas where snow is occasional but soon forgotten. Perhaps the area where snow is most important is in the frozen north where Eskimo tribes (there are five language groups of them) deal with it on a regular basis. Anthropologist Franz Boas identified four distinct Eskimo words for snow, where in English, for example, we often tend to group different types and consistency into the single word, "snow". Later studies by anthropologists have found that in the Central Alaskan Yupik, a major group consisting of over 13,000 people there are at least fifteen lexemes for snow (a lexeme can be thought of much like a "dictionary" entry). The Yupik, like other Eskimo dialects, is inflectionally complicated. So really there may be many additional "words" for snow. Suffice it to say that being able to convey rather precise information about the type and consistency of snow is quite important to a people who deal with it on a regular basis. With this in mind, I tend to attempt to create a variety of snowfall animation types to use with PicturesToExe. A few days ago early in the morning I glanced at the thermometer on my front porch and found the temperature to be minus 24 degrees F. That's pretty cold for this time of year in our area of Colorado so it got me to thinking once again about - you guessed it - snow - LOL. With Christmas coming, I decided to "borrow" some fair use web images (definitely not my own photos) of really nice snow scenes and make a little slideshow which attempts to demonstrate several different approaches to animated snowfall. Also it demonstrates a couple other techniques to enhance realism. Look for a slight snowflake build up over time on the green roof edge and green pine trees in one scene, on the backs of the horses and on the coats, noses and tongues of the Siberian Husky sled dogs. In the last scene, notice the animated windmill. Add to this a very nice "snow text" effect courtesy of Panos FX Photoshop action and a 1953 rendition of White Christmas by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters (the same one used by the animation artist Joshua Held on the neat Christmas video linked by Ken) and an old chestnut, Let it Snow, by Dean Martin and we have "Let it Snow" - fun to make with PTE in the Christmas spirit.... http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/letitsnow.zip Merry Christmas to all..... Lin

Hi Igor, I've tried 60 fps as well as normal and though 60 is very clean, there is a slight "stutter" on the beginning of rotations and on the beginnings of some fast zooms. I see this especially in horse with the three disc pictures when it rotates. Also noticeable is more "shimmer" on the chipmonk's ear on the rotate within the bezel. I see this on my analog high resolution monitor at 1024x768 resolution but less at 1600x1200. Note that I'm being hypercritical, it's not "bad" it's just not as good as the executable on my systems. There is a slight "shutter or stutter" on the start and near the stop of some rotations and pans. This may not be visible on an LCD monitor with slower refresh but on my fast refresh analog Nokia 445Xi monitor it is quite visible. I'm going to try custom at 1024x768 with 60p and see what that yields. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, I'm not sure whether the problem I have with Flash 10 player is the player or Firefox. With Flash 10 it skips frames, a lot! Also I get error messages and Mozilla must either close or restart so difficult to tell exactly. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Yes, in Classic HomeCinema, Flash Player 10 (very bad in Flash Player 10), in VLC and Kantaris. No difference between Classic HomeCinema and VLC/Kantaris - jerky in both. I tried taking out the sound and re-generating, etc., no help. Just uploaded and installed HomeCinema version 1.2.908.0 and it's "better" than VLC or Kantaris, but still some jerky movement in rotates. Best regards, Lin

Could you tell me exactly what parameters you used to create the HD? I have one system with almost the same setup (GeForce 8800 GT 512MB Video Ram, Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4 GH) with 4 GB system RAM running on Windows XP Home Edition and will use it to try to duplicate. No matter how I have created the videos I get jerky movement of horizontal and rotation as well as a good deal of "sparkle" as if the mipmapping is not working. Executable's are perfect. Worst case I can zip up the MP4 and post it so someone else with broadband can download and try it to see if the issue is with my playback or with the video creation. Thanks, Lin

Hi Bert, Whoever owned the link took it down, probably because of overload - LOL. Actually, the author of the animation, Joshua Held, also posted it on youtube so here's the alternate link: http://www.youtube.com/user/thenosesdotcom Lin

Hi Tom, I don't have a really "short" one, but I'll post the last show which really brings out the weakness. Give me a few minutes to make a link then I'll modify this post and put the link here... http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/fs.zip Link Above - about 16 meg.

Hi Igor, Yes, that's what I've concluded as well. It's primarily frame rate which at 29.97 fps (30) can't render the motion without either blurring or stuttering, especially when rotation is combined with mid-speed pans. I did try 1280x720 with 60 fps and it's very good but still has jerky movement on my rotates and pan rotate combinations. The movement I have programmed is a worst case scenario so just too much for the video to handle I think. It's been a learning experience to try to equal the executable, but so far not possible with this show. Best regards, Lin

I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with. I think you misunderstand me. It's not a PTE issue, it's a video issue. The HD video simply can't handle the rotate and pan smoothly regardless of the software used. I have about a dozen pieces of software which create HD video and "none" of them can make it look remotely like the executable. As for "professional" tools, I'm talking about tools used by the movie industry which cost many thousands of dollars not tools readily available to the consumer. Best regards, Lin

After tinkering with every imaginable way of creating high definition video I've decided that it simply doesn't compare with a good executable played by a system with a superior video card. Quick horizontal and rotational movement just doesn't render smoothly with video, at least with the video modes available to the consumer. I've tried custom with double pass encoding, 1080p high quality, varied the frame rates in every imaginable way and essentially getting smooth fast rotation and smooth horizontal movement when an object is rotating is not possible in my experience. One of the recent experiments with rotation and spinning of objects has convinced me that HD video, for the consumer at least, is best left to simple slideshows with transitions and minimal animation for superior results. Professional video (movies, etc.) have mastered getting smooth movement in every way, but apparently the tools they have are not available to the masses..... Lin

Fantastic animation and great stuff in general - Thank's Ken!!! Lin

Hi Dave, Though we agree that in general it's not a good idea to open, re-edit and save a jpg or mp3 file repeatedly because of file degradation, it becomes an issue of expediency and whether the degree of damage is important or not for the intended purpose, or whether the user elects to open an alternative version. Though some photographers work only with RAW files many of us save our work in low jpg compression (Photoshop 12 or equivalent) and archive that way on our main use hard disk for conservation of storage. With some of my cameras I shoot in RAW and keep the originals for subsequent manipulations and with others I shoot in JPG because there is little difference between the RAW and jpg. Not so with all cameras for certain. But what is the essential difference between keeping Audition open while using PTE and allowing an external program such as PTE to open it for you? The only relevant difference is that a file could be loaded by PTE but even that could be an option. It's certainly possible to have PTE open an external audio editor and make the tree structured folder path containing relevant files available (by reading the PTE path to the sound file) without loading a specific file. Then the user can choose whether to open an mp3, wave or other format. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, What I meant is that the "solution" was resolved in our discussions by saving under an alternate file name. The issue with doing that was having multiple PTE files which could be more of a problem than overwriting unintentionally so that solution was never implemented, at least as far as I know. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Is it really any different in substance than clicking on an Icon and viewing a JPG in Photoshop or Irfanview, etc.? When we open a jpg in any image editor we have the option of viewing it, editing it and re-saving or closing and opening a different file. Is it really any different with opening an audio file? The use can opt to close an mp3 and open a wav if it's available. In many cases the user will not have a wav but only have the mp3 and still need or want to edit it or modify it in some way. In my own case I probably have a thousand mp3's and only a small percentage of these are duplicated as wav or other non-compressed audio formats. If I couldn't edit and re-save my mp3's for slideshows I probably wouldn't have any audio files in most of my slideshows. I almost never save the edited mp3 under the original file name so the originals are not affected by the manipulations which I think is good practice, but I do frequently modify mp3's, join several into a single file, add silence or other manipulations and resave the mp3's. Does it adversely affect the audio quality? Measurably, yes but not in a way that the listener could likely detect without sensitive instruments. Is it a common practice to alter an mp3 for a slideshow? I suspect it is and that most PTE users do this on a regular basis. So I suppose that one must weigh convenience versus "good or bad" practice in audio or image manipulations when deciding whether or not to implement a feature. In my own case I would find being able to open an mp3 in my choice of audio editor without leaving pte a convenience, however one still must close and re-open PTE before any changes would be evident. As a former programmer and commercial software developer, I often had to make decisions about whether a planned "feature" encouraged users to follow bad practices or not and it was not always an easy decision. I think making a feature "optional" with full disclosure of potential consequences is probably the best way to proceed. In some ways it reminds me of the "auto save" feature I lobbied for years ago with PTE. Auto save is a two edged sword. Many times I alter a slideshow for a limited special use and then save it under another name leaving the original unaltered. With auto-save there was the possibility that my original PTE file would be overwritten by an autosave before I had the chance to save under an new name. That issue was resolved by the autosave using an alternate file name and by the "choice" of implementing it or not by check-box. In the case of PTE automatically opening a choice of audio editor with the selected audo file open would that be useful? For me it would be, but I would want it optional and with full disclosure of potential file degradation issues. Best regards, Lin

http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArt...ArticleID=12157 Lin

Hi Dave, Absolutely correct. Once a file is degraded there is no recovery. On the other hand, having an automatic pointer to open an audio editor doesn't mean that one must alter an existing mp3, etc., it's only a convenience. Once the audio editor is open the user can choose the file to be edited, close any open files without saving, etc. It's somewhat like Windows setting file associations with various image editors for specific types of files so that when one click on an icon the file is opened with their choice of Photoshop, Irfanview, Fastone, PSP, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Actually, jpg's are decompressed every time they are displayed. It's not the act of re-compressing which causes degradation, the degradation is caused the first time they are compressed. Only when a "change" is made to the jpg and the file is again compressed is the image degraded. As long as there are no alterations, the act of decompressing and recompressing are harmless. Years ago, when computers had only small amounts of RAM, we used to play tricks on new programmers by compressing huge jpgs to reasonable sized files then watching the unsuspecting programmers squirm and scratch their heads when their systems locked up as the files expanded in memory to their full uncompressed sizes when the unsuspecting user tried to display them. Best regards, Lin

Hi Linda, It's not a PTE limitation - shows as large as 20 gigabytes have been created in MP4 so must possibly be VMWare issue. I am confused, however, about why you are approaching it this way. Why not just make a high definition MP4 directly from video builder which will play on your Mac directly? You don't need to make an uncompressed AVI at all, just make an MP4 and you can do it for a 4.5 minute slideshow in just a few minutes and the quality should be superb? Best regards, Lin

Hi Oscar, You're correct, it's limited to executable code and because disabling the program requires a change in the code by either reading the computer clock or altering a counting algorithm in the program it will only work on writable media so won't work on a read only drive and on rewritable media only when being played in a drive which permits writing to the media. Best regards, Lin

Hi Patrick, Beautiful images - makes me thirsty for fine French wine! Your settings are fine as you have them - show looks perfect on all our monitors at different resolutions. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, It's fun to mimic the weather here in Colorado. Recently we have had lots of white stuff followed by crystal clear nights, etc. Great time of year! Best regards, Lin