Lin Evans

Hi Guy, As theDom says, the Youtube quality is not because of PTE but simply that low quality is de jure on the Youtube video output. On the other hand, the Vimeo image quality in the high definition mode is better than Photodex quality for streaming especially if you are doing with your images what I see in your samples. However, if you try to animate with pans, zooms, etc., the Vimeo quality falls short of what Photodex does with their Active X approach. Pans, zooms and certain types of animations just do not do well with Vimeo even though the PTE output sent to them is superb. PTE can output HD quality AVI which is virtually indistinguishable for all practical purposes from the incredible executables but when Vimeo converts them to FLV Flash the animations suffer from "jerky" movements. On the other hand, Photodex products (Proshow Gold and Proshow Producer) also frequently produce jerky movement even in executables. But for what you are doing with fades and straight forward shows without zooms and pans Vimeo is superior to the Photodex quality of streaming. best regards, Lin

Hi Guy, TheDom is right on with this suggestion. PTE 5.6 beta 1 will be released very shortly and it will have some great features which bear directly on this such as upload to Youtube and Vimeo which will make it very easy to accomplish. Look for 5.6 beta 1 to be released as soon as Igor returns which should be the end of this month! Best regards, Lin

Hi Mary, Actually that applies to "any" object whether text or image, etc. As documented, you can click on the small square between the X and Y axis to change either from symmetrical change with equal X and Y axis to independent control over X and Y axis but you can do likewise by holding down the shift key then visually dragging to change. The only caveat is that you release the mouse key before the shift key to make the changes "stick". Best regards, Lin

Hello Shito, I don't have a template but explain how the distortion is done in the Tutorials and Articles section under the pinned PTE Made Easy (PTE for Smarties) section. See the "Uber Rotation AVI" where I explain how to distort a helicopter main rotor blade via the parent/child relationship using nested rectangles and the rotor blade as a child of the second rectangle. By manipulating the rotation axis and distorting the X axis while leaving the Y axis in it's original shape, the "child" (rotor blade) is manipulated and held into a horizontal position. When rotated the horizontal position is maintained via it's relationship with the parent and grandparent. The rectangles are then made invisible by setting their opacities to zero and the illusion is complete. Watch the AVI and I think you will learn how to use the same principles to manipulate any image in a similar manner. This method of nested relationships can be used along with distortion of the X or Y axis independently to make interesting 3D effects of a flat object (image or object). If you wished you could chose a name such as image1 for your object or picture then simply substitute different images naming them "image1," etc., and have a "template" for identical manipulation of different images or object. Here's the link to the tutorials section. Look at the "Uberrotate AVI"..... http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901 Best regards, Lin

Hi Randi, Download and install the latest version (5.5). The upgrade is free for the basic PTE program as are all future upgrades. If you want the Video Builder to create DVD's, etc., then you just purchase the upgrade for $26 by clicking on the "Buy Now" button then from the last drop down menu choose UPGRADE. Install the 5.5 and in a couple weeks the 5.6 will be out and you can then download and install it. Once you have 5.5 installed you will be able to follow the tutorials and have the Objects and Animations screen. Best regards, Lin

Just log on to Wnsoft, go through the purchase (buy now) option and one of the choices on the final drop down menu is the upgrade which is $26 USD. Download and install the latest version if you haven't already done so and another unlock code with be emailed to you which will unlock Video Builder. Best regards, Lin

LOL - Looks like you've got the bubble thing mastered! What did you put in your bubble mix to prevent bursting your own bubble? HA! Lin

Hi John, Looks like Ralph has properly addressed the rename issue - everyone seems to be up and at it earlier than I am this morning - LOL... Actually, the way you are doing is probably the best because if you set a batch up to crop images of different aspect ratios, you will by probability not get the crop where you want it. Irfanview's crop lets you set the coordinates for opposite diagonal corners which are to be cropped so the issue is that if you apply this to images of differing aspect ratios you may be disappointed in the results. Personally I much prefer to do cropping on individual images rather than try to do batch cropping. Batch resizing works well. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Could you be specific - give an example. Irfanview can rename about any way you choose but I'm not certain what you want to do exactly. Just give the old filename and what you want to rename to and I'll help you figure it out. Lin

I suspect that much of the resentment against Vista and Microsoft as well as pro Vista and Microsoft stems from a very basic difference in user's attitudes about what an "operating system" is and should be. Those of us who grew up with Unix, CPM, etc., and know the true history of how Microsoft and Windows came to prominence have a different attitude than that of the younger set who have simply grown up with and accepted that Microsoft operating systems are the cat's meow and that "advances" and new and different is generally better. This is just a little micro-history lesson on the non-Apple PC side for those who don't know about how things used to be back in the stone age of micro-computers when folks like Adam Osborne (Osborne Computers), Gary Kildall (Digital Research Inc./CPM), Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc), Wayne Ratliff (dBase II), Rob Barbany (WordStar), etc., were about. In those days the competition to Apple's fledgling micro-computers was based on the operating system written by Gary Kildall called CPM. CPM was an innovative operating system which fit easily on a 5.25" floppy disk drive and took up a tiny bit of space yet allowed micro-computers such as the Kaypro, Osborne, etc., to work very well indeed with software such as WordStar (word processing), VisiCalc (electronic spreadsheet), dBase II (data management), and other useful programs. The operating system written by Gary was an 8 bit masterpiece which had tiny, tight code and very few bugs. When IBM decided to branch into the micro-computer world they would introduce a more powerful system requiring a 16 bit operating system. Gary had licensed CPM for a clone of the Altair 8800 and by 1981 his CPM operating system was in use on over 3000 different computer models. IBM approached Gary about licensing his soon to be released CPM/86 (a 16 bit version) but negotiations fell through and IBM ended up licensing a CPM "clone" from SCP (Seattle Computer Products) which had infringed on Gary's code. After a threat to IBM, the company settled for a release of liability and an agreement to offer CPM/86 as an "option". In those days the operating system was a "neccesary" but non-bundled option and IBM sold their purloined PC DOS version (via SCP) for $40 and offered CPM/86 for $240 so you can guess which version the public purchased. Bill Gates and his fledgling company Microsoft were already working in a consulting role for IBM and eventually took over development of the operating system and for a time both PC-DOS and MS-DOS were available. Eventually MS-DOS won out and the rest is well known history. Gary sold DRI to Novell in 1991 and in July of 1994 he fell or was "assaulted" (history is not clear on this) at a restaurant in Monterey, California and died three days later in the Community Hospital in Monterey. Gary always said Bill Gates ripped him off and stole his code. I for one firmly believe this. One then might say (assuming this to be the case - and there is good evidence that it is) that Microsoft was founded on "theft" and they have a well-established" pattern of unfair dealings and trashing the rights and destroying smaller companies which try to stand up to them. So early operating systems were small, well coded and could be housed on a tiny part of a 360K byte disc. Today, Vista takes huge chunks of storage space and hogs resources. It could be said that a major portion of your computer's resources are dedicated to simply running the "operating system". This is in stark contrast to what many of us believe an operating system should be. Many believe an operating system "should" be designed to facilitate running "application software" rather than making developers bend to the will of the developers of that operating system. I ran a successful software development company of my own for many years in the early days prior to Windows. As Windows gradually took over the world, I was forced to either comply and give more and more of my control to the "operating system" or get out of the business. I chose the latter. So for me, bigger overhead, less user control and a "nanny" attitude by an "operating system" doesn't set well. Change for the sake of change with added confusion, nanny - "let me do it for you" control and so on are counter-productive. Choice is good. Hopefully, in the future the monopoly Microsoft has on PC computer operating systems will be broken and we will be able to perhaps once again have small, concise code which allows the user to make choices rather than forcing them to work within the confines of some MS indoctrinated "software engineer's" idea of how things should be done. Lin

Hi Tom, It looks like you've got the bits down! The thing I would caution is rotation. If you rotate a bubble in reality, the light source doesn't normally change so the reflections do not rotate with the bubble. If you want to rotate the bubble then the light reflection either needs to be in the center and diffused circle in shape or the reflection(s) needs to be a separate PNG which has rotation equal to and opposite the bubble's rotation. You might want to carve a bit of the white off the outside diameter. I think it's a tad overdone by default and this gives a non-natural look. I've found that varying the amount of saturation on the iridescence (cranking it up a bit) then using the eraser at about 20% to make the bubble more translucent (in fact do it in the opposite order - make the bubble more translucent then up the saturation) results in a nice look Take a look at the link below (I've made new bubbles using Ray's on a grey backdrop). Delete most of the grey, add iridescence, make more transparent then go back and paint white over the reflection and diffuse with selective gaussian blur. This way you get a nicely translucent bubble with good iridescence and realistic reflection I think..... here's the link: http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sampl...mmerbubble3.zip Don't pay any attention to the sound - I didn't change it and it clips at the end.... just the bubbles... Lin

I think the bottom line for me is "if it's not broke, don't fix it." The purpose of the change to SP2 is ostensibly to improve security protection but it appears to have another purpose as well. The other purpose "appears" to be to make the program more like Vista which would "ease" the transition for those who eventually purchase a new system which comes pre-loaded with Vista and is not backwardly compatible with XP because it contains components which will never have drivers for XP. How one reacts or whether they accept the above analysis depends on their state of mind. My experience with Microsoft goes well beyond PC operating systems. When I was a network consultant and sold and installed major Unix systems networks I was hounded on a regular basis by Microsoft sales people who were dedicated toward changing my mind about NT and Microsoft. They were rude and arrogant and worse they were uninformed. Essentially I told them that when a Microsoft network could be upgraded without taking down the network (normal procedure with Unix) then I would consider what they had to offer. Until then, it was foolish to even consider for major clients who absolutely could not be down for the duration of time required to do updates. I was told, and I quote, "you will use Microsoft now or you will use it in the future," resistance is futile, you will be assimilated - LOL. To me, Vista is not intuitive and appears to written by programmers with a strange sense of how people think. It's as if their Focus Groups are composed of Microsoft Programmers. It's not only Vista but other new Microsoft software (Word 2007 comes to mind) where they have made changes where no changes were necessary. These changes cause mass confusion for people who have, after years, learned to deal with Microsoft's idiosyncrasies. A change toward Vista, which is inherent in SP3 internals, is for me and for some others not a welcome change. Obviously, what is intuitive for some is not intuitive for others. I certainly do not believe that everyone thinks as I do and see no reason for those comfortable with making the SP3 upgrade to not do so. On the other hand for those who are quite content as I am with the function and usability of SP2, change for change sake seems counter intuitive. Best regards, Lin

Hi, You apparently didn't load the new originals. You must leave PTE (close it out) and re-open to load the new images. If you already have them in a separate folder or you resized them in the original folder just quite PTE and re-open so they are not in the memory or cache and when you remake the exe file it will be MUCH smaller. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor! Very nice! It just gets better with each new version!! Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Email me - I have something you may like.... My email link Lin

Hi Tom, I made them from "scratch" in Photoshop. There are numerous ways but the easiest is to just drop a circle with some iridescent colors on top of a transparency, paint a white reflection then apply gaussian blur to the white reflection area, choose a brush large enough to cover the entire circle and use the eraser tool at about 20% transparency to make the "bubble" translucent. Adjust the levels and saturation to suit by experimentation. Depending on the particulars you may want to feather the edge of the bubble a bit or not. Make a few different ones and if you want "rotation" of the bubble put the "reflection" more or less in the center and keep it in a diffused circular shape or else create the reflection as a separate PNG object as a child of the bubble with equal and opposite rotation. If you really want to get "fancy" you can vary the XY axis independently to "squash" and "elongate" the bubble as it rises, etc... Best regards, Lin

First - hang in there for a short while. Version 5.6 beta will soon be released and it allows the creation of Youtube and Vimeo output with code to embed this in your website. Second - Youtube "is" Flash FLV. Your AVI or MPEG slideshows which are uploaded to Youtube are converted by Youtube to Flash format. Flash FLV is similar to "streaming" in that the playback begins very quickly and it's not necessary to wait until the entire show has downloaded to your computer. The difference in true server side "streaming" and Flash FLV is that with server side streaming the show is spooled out from the server at a rate which your interconnect (modem, cable, wireless, DSL, etc.) can support and which is fast enough to sustain continuous play of the video. With Flash FLV, the difference is that the show is actually downloaded from the host computer to the client computer and stored in a temporary hidden folder then spooled from there. There is a "preload" percentage spooled "before" the show begins and this percentage can be set by you. So, if your video (slideshow) resides on your website, the user clicks on your link or thumbnail and spooling begins. When the percentage of the file you have designated (usually 10% to 15%) has been downloaded to the client then the show begins. To do this, you need software which first converts your slideshow output (avi or mpeg) to Flash FLV then inserts the proper code to allow the preload and spooling. There are numerous companies which have software available to do this which range in price from about $39 (USD) to $250. The difference in price depends on several factors including the level of Flash produced (Flash 5, 7, 8, 9, etc.) and whether it produces one pass or two pass encoding. Companies such as On 2 Technology, Wildform and Sorenson produce top-level Flash encoders for FLV conversion. Unless you need the two pass encoding and many other professional features you probably don't need to pay more than about $50 for the software you need. My suggestion is to wait a few weeks until PTE version 5.6 beta is released then you can simply upload your files automatically to Youtube or Vimeo (higher resolution and very good quality), embed to code created in your website and you clients simply click on the link or thumbnail on your website and the show plays immediately from Youtube or Vimeo. This is far easier for you to do than to learn to output and embed the Flash FLV show on your own website. Best regards, Lin

Just thought you would like the last few seconds..... http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/hummerbubble.zip Lin

Hi Andy, Most excellent! Perfect use of images to complement the song and historical facts! Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Looks great. I think the ending on the last words of the song now works very well! Best regards, Lin

Hi Eleanor, No, not the same as all. It saves all the "raw material" for you. The PTE file, images, music, etc., are saved in a zip file. This zip file can then be moved from folder to folder, to another system, etc., and it contains all the code to immediately recreate the existing show. You can just unzip it and extract all the original images and codes which are ready to edit, add new slides, whatever. The PTE file holds all the code to create the slideshow so when you open it at a later date you will always have everything stored in one zipped file to allow you to simply re-create or continue on and make changes. Just what you want to do... Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Here's a quick "Collage" of some of your images. You could put this in as the last page and spend the remaining time for the song just zooming and panning on the individual images.... Best regards, Lin http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/sample/collage.jpg

Of course, Click on "File" then "Create backup in zip" and your entire PTE project is zipped into a file containing not only all the slides but all the instructions (PTE file), to recreate the transitions, animations, music, sound, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, That's not too unusual when a DVD slideshow is played on some computers. Try the same disc on a commercial DVD player attached to a TV and I'll bet it's fine. Best regards, Lin

Hi PF, Actually that particular transition doesn't exist with PTE but is easy to create. That's the nice thing about PTE - if you don't have something you can almost always create it. To give you specifics I need to know a bit more about just what you want to do. Essentially, if you have a solid color backdrop and want to make text disappear in a "wipe" you just need to create a solid jpg the same color as your background. You simply pass this solid color from left to right, top to bottom, diagonally, etc, across the text at the speed you choose. You can also create a PNG with a feathered leading edge to make it a "soft" wipe or use any type of PNG "mask" to make special effects. If you could post a quick PTE file of the screen you want to do this with, I will create a quick sample for you. Best regards, Lin