Lin Evans

Hi Ray, Are these 25 meg jpgs? What are the dimensions in pixels? The reason I ask is that if the size of the jpeg in storage is 25 meg and it's done with moderate compression the "actual" size of the file in memory could be as much as 100 meg per file. Since even the Canon 1DS Mark III at + 21 megapixels doesn't make native jpg images that large, i'm assuming you have interpolated these to get to a compressed file size this large. Remember, PicturesToExe hardware renders at full resolution for any pan, zooms or rotates. If we assume that the "compressed" jpg is 25 meg in size this could mean rendering as much as six gigabytes per second for a pan, zoom or rotate when the program creates sixty frames per second (100 meg true file size times 60 frames per second = 6,000 meg = ~ 6 gigabytes). That's an enormous load on any system. PTE 4.4x doesn't render it simply displays. So static images are displayed one at a time for the duration necessary for the desired display. This means only one file of the total dimensions and load size is processed for each slide rather than up to 60 per second. Programs which create AVI or mpeg files without hardware rendering downsample to the desired display size (in your case 1080p) and don't playback in real time until the files have rendered and been stored in the final file at which time they are much smaller. If you want deep zooms, it would be a much better approach to follow the method I explain in my "Superzoom" tutorial where you shoot a few frames with longer focal length lenses and match the 100% size of image one's zoom to the downsized (zoomed out) frame of the following image. This way you have no need for any single image larger in pixel dimensions than your final display device can play. In this case you would get just as good an image as from a huge unmanageable interpolated file of as much as 100 megabytes. What Colin is saying is that a 5 megabyte jpg (compressed size) compressed in Photoshop to the lowest compression settomg of 12 (highest quality) will have an actual file size of ~25 megabytes when the compressed file expands into memory. A good example of this is to look at my puzzle files where the appearance on screen is nearly identical but one will challenge even the best hardware and the other will play on even a 32 meg video card. They have practically identical visible pixel dimensions and almost identical compressed zip and executable sizes. The difference is that one expands in memory to over 128 meg per puzzle piece while the other is tiny. The difference is that one has a tiny PNG "footprint" per puzzle piece while the other has a huge 128+ meg footprint per puzzle piece. The "invisible" portions are the transparency sizes which compress greatly but expand back to their true size in memory. I suspect that what you what to achieve can be easily done with PTE 5.1 but not with files which have a true size of perhaps as much as 100 megabytes per image. Having file sizes this large will not make the end result any better than much smaller files taken with longer focal length lenses. Unless I totally miss what you are trying to achieve what you need is a different approach to achieve the same end. Keep in mind that none of the other programs you have attempted this with do hardware rendering but rather downsample to the pixel dimensions desired for display. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, If you want the moving magnifying glass as demonstrated on the PSP example your best bet is ProShow Producer. You can't get away from using tools such as Photoshop or similar with any presentation slideshow software if you really want to exploit special effects. There are things which Proshow Producer does that PTE can't do and things which PTE does which Proshow Producer can't do. The primary benefit of PTE is image quality and value for your money. Producer or Gold can't match the hardware rendered quality of images in your executable slideshows which you get with PicturesToExecute. Depending on your hardware, PTE can give you the absolute ultimate in image quality in your slideshows. Nothing else matches the smoothness of pans, zooms and rotates. You have features like parent/child relationship and off-center rotation with PTE which other presentation slideshow programs don't offer. You have hardware rendering of DVD's - something no other program has. With modern hardware this gives you the ability to create DVD's as much a 400% faster than the other programs including Nero, PSP, PSG, Media@Show, all Adobe products, m-objects, etc. None have hardware rendering. With PTE you can do unique things in presentation slideshow software such as alter the "Z" axis to give horizontal rotation of an object, rotate an object around the screen rather than on it's own axis and even keep objects upright while rotating, make elipitical orbits of objects, simulate bezier curves, etc. You can custom build your own menus, call and run external executable code from within your slideshow and do a number of things simply not possible with other presentation slideshow software. PTE does not use "Tiff" files nor at present does it use Photoshop native formats. Frankly you won't want to use Tiff formats in slideshows. They are far too large to run smoothly and it doesn't matter whose software you use. Also I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to use a DNG file in a slideshow. DNG files are simply a way around not having RAW conversion software and are not useful until converted to a standard format such as jpg, bmp or tiff. The primary advantage to PSP is the ability to include video clips in your slideshow along with still images. You can't do that with PTE. The other advantages are some audio editing capabilities some of which will be in the next version of PTE. PSP also has some ability to adjust image color, brightness, hue, saturation, etc. Most of us around here feel that these features are better done in a dedicated graphics program. Actually it would be better to ask Photodex about what they feel are the advantages to PSP, etc. If you would like, let me know and I will be glad to show you examples of what PTE can do which PSP can't and you can ask around on the PSP/PSG forums what it can do which PTE can't. PTE offers you free upgrades for life for the basic product. You get two years of free upgrades for the Video Builder which offers internal DVD authoring. Check with Photodex about PSP pricing and upgrade policies. Best regards, Lin

If you wish you can uncheck "Create Menu" and the show will start without a menu at all. If you want to change the background or the image displayed you have those choices as well. You can uncheck "animated menu" and you can click on the image displayed on the title page then on "select frame" and choose from any image in your show. You could even put a blank image in if you wished by adding one to the end of your show, etc. I think there are ways to achieve what you want but you need to experiment. My suggestion would be to create a tiny show of about three real images plus a blank image. Get some rewritable DVD's and experiment to get familiar with what you can do such as changing the background image, changing the size via properties, etc. For example you could set the opacity to zero in the "properties" and have no image on the title page - click on any word and delete it, etc. This way you could have a title page with your own background image and only a button to click to start the show. The reason you won't find all this in the User Guide is that there are too many combinations and permutations to cover. It's not possible to know the myriad ways someone might want to use the title page so the program, like the rest of PTE, offers tremendous flexibility but to understand it all you really need to experiment. As mentioned earlier, the easiest way is to use rewritable DVD's and a tiny example slideshow so you can get a feel for all the possibilities. Best regards, Lin

If you email Igor he will post a link to 5.0 for you and you can use that until the hardware issue is resolved. Best regards, Lin

Hi Judy, Generally I archive my RAW files for possible future processing. I convert from RAW to either JPG or Tiff depending on whether I see a need for extensive processing. I use a variety of RAW conversion software both from the manufacturer and from third party developers. I use Adobe Camera RAW for some conversions but also sometimes use others depending on which gives me the better conversion. I find for one of my Canon bodies that Digital Photo Professional does sometimes give me better conversions from my Canon 40D right now than ACR but Adobe is always "tweaking" ACR and in the future that may change. For my Nikon D2XS I use Capture One and for my wife's Olympus E3 we use both ACR and Olympus' own software. For Sony and for my older Canon dSLR's I generally use ACR. I used to use DNG but it adds an additional step. However it does allow some flexibility for those not inclined to keep paying the bills for Adobe by upgrading every few months. Workflow is always problematic. The one thing which is dirt cheap today is storage. If you have lots of photos then invest in a couple external hard disks. They are generally much more reliable than storing on DVD media which is prone to inexplicable failure. I also use Ultrium 2 tape as backup but don't suggest it for other than professional use because the drives are prohibitively expensive (around $5K). Perhaps the best investment one could make when there are lots of photos involved is a good catalog program. Actually, Picassa is quite good if you don't have too many photos. When you get into the hundreds of thousands then it becomes problematic unless you religiously keep up with your indexing. I wish I had better suggestions for workflow but after over 40 years of doing photography professionally I'm still scratching my head - LOL. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mark, Beautiful imagery, photography and presentation. I really like the music which has both a Celtic and northern flavor. The full screen version (which is the one I see today on the download) plays perfectly for me. The "only" thing I would change is to straighten the horizon on about slide 8 or 9 depending on whether you count from the opening page turn or first slide. You've captured the very somber mood of this lovely place. I can see why SAD (seasonal affective disorder) might be prevalent. This reminds me of lengthy times I spent in northern Alaska where you begin to go slightly nuts from lack of sun. The Inuits there sometimes have a disorder similar to what in Algonquian culture is called Windigo Psychosis where a craving for human flesh is supposedly caused by mythological giants (Windigo's). One must suspect that prolonged deprivation from the sun must have strange effects on human behavior. In any event you did a first rate job with this and your new D300 didn't let you down either! Best regards, Lin

Hi Mark, This sounds more like an issue with video drivers then with hardware. I suspect you have plenty of video power and computing power to run nearly any PTE show but the first thing I would do is update the video drivers. There are only a few cases I've seen where a newer computer running an "as shipped" version of Vista has so little video power that a PTE executable wouldn't run fairly well. If you would, go to the "Start, "Run", then type in "dxdiag" and either press "Enter" or click on O.K. and wait for the computer to run a diagnostic to return a screen with multiple tabs. Click on the "Display" tab and check the date (right hand side of screen) on the video driver and compare it to the latest on the manufacturer's web site for your video card. I suspect updating it may resolve the issue. Also be sure you have the latest Direct X installed. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Sorry, have been out of town for a few hours. Go to the "Burn DVD Video Disk" and uncheck the "Create Menu" feature and drag the PTE file down like you would to make a DVD. Click on "Next" then put a check by "Create MPEG 2" and uncheck "Burn DVD Disk". Be sure to place the path where you want the file to end up under "Create MPEG 2 File" then click on "Start" and PTE will create an MPEG 2 for you. Here's a new wrinkle to consider. If I change the timing for the slides to four seconds then go back and check auto spread slides and synchronize music it makes a perfect AVI. Be sure to save the original and don't change anything until Igor gets a chance to look at it. Also if I check music plays independently and uncheck synchronize slides and auto spread slides it works perfectly. Go figure. There is something about the combination of the timing, synchronization and such which is causing this problem and it's definitely a bug of some sort. This is why it's important to save the original. If you want to experiment save the PTE under a different name. Try changing the timing to four seconds then apply to all slides and remaking the AVI. Best regards, Lin

Never mind Irfanview, I just tried it and still have the problem..... Lin

Hi Gary, The fact that you tried and failed with the original's from the camera is significant. I just tried your music with different slides to eliminate that as a variable and it worked fine. Just for testing, you may want to open each of these files in Irfanview and save them again to a different folder and try with the files after saving. There is something in one or more of these image files which is definitely throwing a curve to the AVI generation tool but not to the MPEG generation tool which works perfectly. Irfanview will often "correct" difficult images and uses a very conservative save method so sometimes if I have a difficult image which fails to open in Photoshop I simply open it in Irfanview, save then it works fine in Photoshop. It wouldn't hurt to try this but preserve the originals for Igor to look at. You can work around the issue by converting to MPEG then using one of many conversion tools to convert to AVI but better to get to the bottom of what it is that's causing the problem. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Click the link below to retrieve an AVI and MPEG file of your slideshow. There is something about the files which the AVI generator doesn't like. My suggestion would be to email the link to the PTE zip to Igor and perhaps he can determine what the problem is. I had the same problem you have but the work-around was to create an mpeg file then convert that to an AVI. Probably you should tell Igor what software you used to reduce the size and how you saved the files as jpeg or jpeg progressive, etc. here's the link to the successful conversions: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/Xmas-2007.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Thanks, I'm glad it was helpful. You may want to read my reply to Mary to get some more ideas and details. best rgards, Lin

Hi Mary, I'm glad that it was helpful. As I recall, about a year ago Dominic (theDom) made a slideshow using this method and that touched off a whole series of map-type shows. Depending on the specifics of your trip and the direction and degree of turns, etc., it may be necessary to use more than one colored (red in this case) file to make it work. Also, the reason I used a PNG file for the red with a transparent background is that sometimes it's helpful to make a portion (corner, circle, spot, etc.,) of the red rectangle transparent to allow a feature to show or prevent the red from showing up at the wrong time or place. I didn't get into that in the tutorial to keep it as simple as possible, but when you do a lot of these sometimes it can be helpful to have this option. Also somtimes the route file may need to be circular as a small red circle can be used to make sharp turns then another rectangle can be brought up behind once the difficult area is passed and the opacity of the temporary red circle PNG can be turned back to zero. There are numerous permutations I'm sure you will appreciate once you get into doing your map. Another is the creation of small PNG files to overlay on the top layer to preserve details like bridges or any area unavoidably obliterated by the red cut out. Sometimes something as simple at the text for a city name, etc., which crosses the route may need to be preserved. The nice thing is that once you realize how easy it is to use the overlay/cutout principle the sky is the limit. Actually we played with moving boats and ships down the inland waterway around lakes, etc., and it was lots of fun coming up with new and innovative ways to use this approach. Best regards, Lin

Hi Henri, Not as far as I know. The Camera Raw.8bi file is an Adobe product and couldn't be used without special and probably very expensive licesensing agreements if at all. There are some less expensive alternatives used by some software developers such as IrfanView but the problem is that new dSLR cameras keep using new and different RAW algorithms and even Adobe has problems keeping up. For example if you have Photoshop CS you can't use the latest Camera RAW files. I think Adobe forces upgrades by not furnishing the Adobe Camera Raw as a separate program as they did when they first sold it. I paid $99 for it when I was using PhotoShop 7 then when Adobe released Photoshop CS they included the Raw Converter. But when CS2 was released the RAW converter (CameraRaw.8bi) was not compatible any longer with CS and you had to "upgrade" to CS2 and they no longer sold it as a separate item. Then CS3 was released and the RAW converter wouldn't work with earlier versions. So I bought Elements 5.0 just to get the RAW converter. It also works with Elements 6 but I would be willing to bet that when Elements 7 and the next Adobe version of Photoshop comes out the RAW converter having the latest and greatest dSLR RAW conversions won't work with earlier versions. It's almost a full time job keeping up with all the new RAW files being developed by Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sony, Olympus, Samsung, etc. There may eventually be a way of doing this with PixBuilder but I'm guessing that would not be something of primary interest for the development team since it would be terribly time consuming. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, My suggestion would be to describe it like this is there is room: Anti-shimmer (Mipmapping) Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Mary may be correct. Could you try using the Zip feature to zip up the content of your show including the PTE file then place them all in a new folder on the C: drive, open the PTE file from that location and try making the AVI again. I think also that there may be an issue with the images not being available when the program needs them if they are possibly being loaded from an external device too slow to present the images in a timely fashion. If this doesn't work, post the zipped file and others can try to make an AVI and rule out any issues with a particular image, etc., causing the difficulty. It would seem that you have adequate resources to easily make an AVI file. I'm not certain about the video card but certainly you have sufficent RAM and storage space on your C: drive, but the attempt to read from E: is perhaps a clue. By doing the zip and moving the whole thing to the C: drive it should eliminate any possibility of not having the images available quckly enough for the creation of the AVI. Best regards, Lin

I got exactly the same results as you. I think perhaps Mary may be on to the solution for the issue in that perhaps the images are not being loaded quickly enough for creation of the AVI from the source. Lin

Hi Gary, There is yet another possibility which we have not ruled out and that is that perhaps there is no problem with the created AVI at all, but a problem with the media player being used. If you have one or more of these created AVI files which play only four slides and quit or where the music is a problem, could you possibly post a link to one or two so that we could try playing them on several different players? Best regards, Lin

I suspect the reason for some confusion concerns what the setup indicators say. When you first look at them pay no attention to the wording but look at the bracket. The default is for them to be "glued" but the wording says "separate here" which is perfectly logical but anti-intuitive. When you click on each of the points which says "separate here" they change to "glue here" Glue here means they are actually separated. So when you do everthing in linear then go to the keypoints (I recommend choosing the second one) then click on the default "separate here" on each keypoint between the first and last for pan, zoom and rotate respectively, the process separates all keypoints between the first and last at one time. It may seem counter-intuitive but when you think about what is actually happening it makes sense. I hope this explanation isn't too confusing. You don't need to burn a DVD to test, just make an executable and see what happens with it. The DVD should work in exactly the same way with the exception of the "viewable" portion where the horizontal ends of each file "may" be cut off depending on the difference in aspect ratio between your monitor and your television. When you are actually making your slideshow if DVD will be the final destination be sure to go to the Project Options, Screen Tab then choose the aspect ration corresponding to your DVD screen display then click on the Tools tab at the bottom of the Objects and Animations screen and choose "Show TV Safe Zone" and keep the areas of the slide you actually want to see within that blue boundary. Best regards, Lin

Hi Henri, PixBuilder isn't an "addition" to PTE, it's a totally different program designed to create and manipulate graphics and photo files. To my knowledge, just like other graphics programs it doesn't support RAW file formats. Even Photoshop doesn't support RAW files, you have to have specialized plug-ins (8bi) for that purpose. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mario, This media player, like any other will not play a video if the codec is missing - no media player can do that. You will still need to have the correct codec. Many codecs are included, but should the author of the AVI or MPEG file use codecs not supported you will still have to find and install them if you want to play the file. There are other reasons why I prefer this one to Windows Media player including size of code, compatibility and flexiblility, ease of use, no "nanny" nagging, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hello Mario, VLC Media Player is free. I have no idea why you would think otherwise. Even the source code is available free. Here are multiple links where you can download: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ http://www.download....4-10781296.html http://www.versiontr...fo/macosx/14738 Lin

The AVI tutorial on how to do the map route is now up and ready for download here also linked from Tutorials: http://www.lin-evans.net/smart/routedemo.avi Lin

Hi Hugh, About a year ago there were numerous "maps" done with PTE. Here's a sample and following, an explanation of how to do it: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/cimarron.zip I will be making an AVI tutorial on how to do this effect and adding it to the PTE for Smarties section in the Tutorials. Here's how to proceed. Get a jpg of the map you want to use. Go to Photoshop or your choice of editor which allows transparency and copy and paste the map on top of an identcal sized transparency then use the Eraser tool with an appropriate sized brush to trace the route you wish to display. Save this file as a PNG alongside the original. In PTE place the PNG map on the top layer in the Objects and Animations screen with the original map in the layer beneath. Between these two layers place a red circle, square or rectangular PNG file which will be moved at the speed you wish to trace the route. You can make this a simple moving area of you can make it stay as a trace of the route depending on the size of the PNG you use. Think of it as two identical maps lying on top of one another with one having the route "cut out" with an Xacto knife and a piece of colored paper sandwitched in between and slid along the route. Best regards, Lin