Lin Evans

Hi Jean-Pierre, After carefully evauating your proposal, I believe this is a viable alternative for the PTE development team to consider. You have thoroughly and carefully explained how it would be possible to precisely calculate and display image and objects for any size screen. How this might fit into the PTE development process including the programming and planned features for future implementation only Igor and the development team can determine. Personally, I see no major obstacles or flaws and it would satisfy the requests for preserving the original mode and keep PTE consistent with Photoshop and other major programs. Thank you for what has obviously been a tremendous amount of work. I could not even imagine myself trying to make this explanation in a language foreign to me. You have done an exemplary job of explaining a very complex proposal and I sincerely hope forum members will take the time to carefully read it and understand the significance. Best regards, and thank you very much! Lin

Hi Michel, It's because I did the demo with original beta before changes to masking were done. I have just finished revising it using the latest Beta 4 and it's up on the link below. This one should work on all systems equally: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...demorevised.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, I think it's back now... Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, I have removed the mipmapping request from the executable and PTE files so they "should" work for you on the original links now. Let me know if you can run them... Best regards, Lin

Hi John, As Xaver replied, PTE isn't available as a MacIntosh native format program yet. The original question was: ... The answer to that question is yes, AVI, MPEG II and MP4 output from present versions of PTE can be played on a MacIntosh. There are a number of people who use PTE on their Intel based MacIntosh computers running Windows with Bootcamp or various emulators. Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, Yes, perhaps a bug discovered. We must wait for Igor to look at my new PTE files. Do you have the problem both with the executable and with the PTE file? Could you list the files you find inside the zip to be certain that all files are being included? Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, As Igor discovered, a corrupted PTE file which on some systems produced this problem but not on all. I have redone the demos and posted under same file names. Please try the new ones and let me know if they work normally for you. Best regards, Lin http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...nifyingdemo.zip http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...yingdemoexe.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Patrick, If I understand your question correctly, when you are in the Timeline you only need to double click on the image you want to add and it will be placed on the timeline at the end of the current slide. There is no need to go to Objects and Animations. The file manager should be visible in the upper left side of your screen and the currently selected folder's images should appear as thumbnails to the right of the file structure. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bob, Actually, there is magnification on theDom's version - perhaps you looked at the earlier version where the original images was blurred then became clear as the magnifying glass passed over? What happens is that with masking whatever image you have within the mask will be revealed whether it is "clear" or "focused" depends entirely on the image used within the mask and really has nothing of substance to do with the mask itself. The mask simply "reveals" what lies beneath. Though it might be "possible" to create a template, it probably wouldn't be as useful as with others because the "position" of the underlying photos (the one revealed) must be adjusted to suit the subject matter. In theDoms earlier version he intentionally blurred the original subject then in the area of the glass the original focused image was revealed. In the second demo with masking he preserves the blurred original but slightly magnifies the image revealed within the glass. In my demo, the image magnified "shouldn't" be less defined than the original in any way. If it appears that way on your monitor, something must not be right since the identical image was used for both - just reduced in size outside the masked area. Here's a couple downloads to see how this is done: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...yingdemoexe.zip (magnifying glass executable) http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...nifyingdemo.zip (zipped pte files) Best regards, Lin

Hi Umberto, This probably indicates a marginal video card or low resources - on seven different systems we run I have never seen an instance of this happening. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Changing Mask Container size values from 1 and 1 to even 100 and 75 (or 10,000 and 7500) work great for allowing precise size and position of objects within Mask Container, but the changes will not "stick" when you leave Objects and Animations screen. They get changed back to the "default" when you go to main screen or create an executable even when it's created from the O&A screen. Thanks, Lin

Hi Ron, It's first necessary to go to vimeo.com and sign up to get a password and user I.D. Once you have that information, creating a show is a simple as clicking on that choice, putting in your information (once Igor has all the bugs worked out) and PTE will create the slideshow, upload it to Vimeo and after they convert it to Flash (takes a while depending on the size of show, time of day, etc.) it will appear on Vimeo. Likewise for Youtube. You need to sign up on Youtube.com and get the necessary password and user I.D. to place into the blocks when you ask PTE to create a Youtube show. Vimeo let's you upload one high resolution video a week now unless you pay about $60 a year. Not worth it for me but others may want to do so. You should go to Vimeo and read up on all their different programs, etc. You can make your shows private or public, decide if you want to allow others to download the original mp4 or not, etc. Once Igor has all the details ironed out I may make a quick tutorial, but it's really so easy to do that it may not be necessary but you do need to sign up with them before trying to upload a show through PTE. Best regards, Lin

Yes, PicturesToExe outputs MP4, AVI and MPEG II files all of which can be played on a MacIntosh. You can produce 1080p output which will play perfectly on a Mac. Best regards, Lin

You download the product from the website. Perhaps if you explain in detail the nature of your problem someone can help you. Lin

Hi Peter, The primary advantage of creating MP4 files is that they are cross-platform functional as are AVI and MPEG II. The secondary advantage is that they can be made into 1080p to share with others via BluRay, etc., and still maintain high resolution (high by television standards) output. The third advantage is that they can be embedded on a web site and provide much higher resolution than typical Flash conversions. All this may or may not be important depending on one's requirements. The competition has a dedicated web portal where their users can display their work in reasonable resolution, but not nearly as high as PTE using Vimeo or other high resolution web based file sharing protocols. Also for professionals there is no advertisement or "splash" for the slideshow company which is an advantage in many situations. Many times professionals do not want to tell their clients how they make videos or slideshows and loose business to the "we can do this for ourselves and save money" mentality. Obviously, if it were that easy then everyone would be doing it but as with a precision machinist, you can give a customer a Bridgeport mill, Atlas lathe, digital micrometer, calipers and metal stock and they still can't machine precision parts, but if they could purchase these precision tools as cheaply as presentation slideshow software many would "try"..... Best regards, Lin

Go to Project Options, Music Tab and take out the checkmark beside "Repeat Music After Playing" Best regards, Lin

Hi Steve, Some media players do not recognize mp4 as a file extension - even some Windows Media Players even though they will play the mp4 format. Search for *.mp4 on your c: drive and it probably will be there. best regards, Lin

From Vimeo..... For those of you who are sticking with the free account, here's the deal: you're going to have some new limitations. First of all, you'll only be able to upload one HD video per week. You will also be limited to creating 1 Group, 1 Channel and 3 Albums. It really does pain us to impose these limits, because we want you all to be happy, productive Vimeans, but we feel that if you're going to be a power user, you should help us keep Vimeo working by purchasing a Plus account. We appreciate your support more than you'll ever know. The good news is that you keep all of your existing Groups, Channels and Albums, even if you remain a free account user. It looks like they are selling one year plans to allow only 1000 views of an HD video for about $60 per year. Restrictions on the free use as seen above. I'm not convinced with the present quality that it's really worth it for me. I can convert to Flash which actually plays smoother than the Vimeo HD with PTE output and store on my own site. Hard to say whether it's more or less economical to pay for conversion software and web storage space or use the @$60 per year subscription or just stay with the now limited to one HD video per week free version of Vimeo. Best regards, Lin

Hi Robert, It's the 3ms, 5ms, etc., the term for time between excitations of pixels on a CRT. For example, crt's have phosphor dots or "stripes" depending on the type of individual CRT. There are "triads" of red blue and green phosphor dots or in the case of Sony Triniton technology "stripes" which have a "decay" rate when they are excited by electrons. The more frequently they are energized (excited) by an electron, the less "flicker" from the horizontal sweep frequency is apparent to the eye which greatly eases eye strain. However, this very feature which reduces "flicker" and eyestrain also reveals very quick changes in the states of brightness or contrast such as aliasing produced by rapid changes in size or position of closely positioned detail features such as adjacent horizontal or vertical lines, etc. In LCD displays the technology is quite different but the end result is that with a slow refresh rate you simply don't see all the "glitter" or "pulsing" because much of it happens faster than the monitor can respond. Typically, LCD monitors are exceedingly sharp and produce stellar images but many (most actually) can't reproduce certain fast movements which can be seen on CRT's. So even though some aliasing flicker is seen with very sharp images, much of it simply lost in between refresh cycles. The end result is that the annoying "glitter" or "flicker" seen on high resolution, fast refresh CRT's just isn't noticed on slower refresh LCD's. It's this same issue which allows you to see a "trace" when you move a cursor very quickly with the mouse. On CRT's you don't see the trace but on LCD's, often you do. The effective "decay" rate is so slow that where the mouse cursor "was" the image or "ghost" remains for a time after the actual image has moved on. Perhaps "refresh rate" is less accurate than "decay" time, but the effect nonetheless is that the videos look better on most LCD monitors than on a CRT with fast refresh and quick decay or "persistence" phosphors. Best regards, Lin "As for your Southwest Art post in HD on Vimeo - I guess my LCD monitor qualifies as slow because your Vimeo version really looks quite fine - until I expand it to full-screen view. At full screen, all the motion-triggered trouble appears. On my setup it really deteriorates when full screen. When you speak of monitor refresh rate does that mean the 60 - 75 mhz, etc. or is it the response time listed as 3 ms, or 5ms, etc.?"

I created an MP4 export to Vimeo to test the quality of the Flash conversion. The original MP4 used the extremely good mipmapping to absolutely minimize "glitter" or "sparkle" on sharp detail objects. The MP4 which was created by 5.6 was excellent. There was a little jerky movement in pans, zooms, etc., but all-in-all it was excellent. Vimeo's Flash conversion, however, is a totally different and unsatisfactory solution for a PTE show which has pans, zooms or motion and even remotely sharp images. I purposely used a show with very sharp images to test this so your mileage may vary. Apparently most videos submitted to Vimeo are "very" soft because they apparently use extreme sharpening. What was a very smooth original ended up with excessive glitter, sparkle and edge artifacts such as stairstep aliasing. How bad this will appear depends a great deal on the type monitor you use. If you use an LCD display with a slow refresh rate (fast mouse movement leaves a "trail") then it won't look so bad. On the other hand if you use a high resolution CRT with a fast refresh rate it just won't look right. My suggestion for those who submit their MP4's to Vimeo is not to use fast motion at all or use gaussian blur, blur AND mipmapping on every image which is remotely sharp. Look for yourself - link below. The original MP4 has almost zero aliasing but the Vimeo conversion is terrible for some monitors. I've looked at it on both very sharp LCD monitors but with a slow refresh rate as well as with my high resolution CRT with a very fast refresh. If the refresh rate is fast it simply will not look good. If the refresh rate is quite slow, the "sparkle" will be much more bearable. Here's the link: http://vimeo.com/1979714 Best regards, Lin

Later - I did the same show over and the second time it completed and uploaded to Vimeo. The sound seems less than optimal, but the video was created. Some "jitter" in pans and zooms but not bad. I did find the mp4 image after the completion of the slideshow this time so perhaps the first time (see below) was simply an error of some sort. I did notice, however, that the sound seems to be an issue on one of my systems. It's very strange because the sound on the executable and on the preview is perfect on all my systems. The sound on one of my systems is very poor on the MP4 and on the Vimeo conversion, but on two other systems it's fine. It's as if something can be detected by one of my systems which the other two can't reproduce. This "could" be my sound system on the one which appears to have issues. I may change my sound card to try to chase this issues which "may" be unique to one of my own computers. Hi Igor, I created an HD video with 5.6 beta 1 to be output to Vimeo. The entire process for this took nearly an hour which is normal for the size video. It was completed successfully according to the check mark at the end of the process but it was never uploaded. When it got to the "Uploading" it just didn't go any further. Could it be a time-out at Vimeo? Does the program attempt to hold Vimeo open after log on until after the competition of the encoding? If so, it would be much better to close the loop at Vimeo then re-open after completion of encoding because encoding could take a long time depending on the size of the slideshow. The suggestion is to have the video saved to the hard disk just as one you create with "custom". I found a reference to it in the Windows trash can (filename.mp4) but was not able to extract it so it's lost. It definitely was created but the upload to Vimeo never actually happened. If the video were saved on the hard disk instead of being trashed it could then be uploaded manually. Apparently something happened on the first try because on the subsequent video creation everything worked normally so this report "may" be simply the result of some internal issue on my own system and may have nothing to do with PTE 5.6 beta 1. Best regards, Lin

This is a first rough tutorial on masking with PTE 5.6. It will be re-done when I understand all the ramifications of masking and all the different approaches - but this will get you started. It's in the Tutorials section as the last entry on PTE Made Easy - PTE for Smarties: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....st=0#entry49109 Best regards, Lin

Hi Mary, See my demo here: download the PTE file to see how to set it up: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8906 Best regards, Lin

See the block below which says (size/position in pixels). You can put original size in at this point. Best regards, Lin

O.K., here's a demo of some of the things you can do with masks. I'll have a limited PDF Tutorial ready later today. First link is to original made with early beta before multiple masks available in single container. Some had issues with certain laptops. The second link should play on "any" Windows system. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/maskdemo.zip http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...demorevised.zip Best regards, Lin