Lin Evans

Hi Igor, He wants his videos made with Video Builder to "autorun" on his DVD player attached to his television rather than having to go through a "menu". That is he doesn't understand that video doesn't work like an executable. Best regards, Lin

Hi Neil, Thanks! For the first series of hawks (all except the soaring hawk and the two perched on the metal "T" fence post) the camera was a Canon 40D with a Canon 70-200 F2.8 and a Kenko Pro 1.4x Teleconverter. For the Pronghorn antelope, the Waite Philips mansion and the three hawks previously mentioned (soaring - "T" post) the Sigma SD14 plus Sigma 80-400 F5.6 OS or Sigma 15-30 for the mansion. The moon-rise shot was with the Canon and aforementioned lens. The baby bucks play-fighting was with the Canon. The opening and closing shot was with the Sigma SD10 and Sigma 70-300 F4/F5.6. Best regards, Lin

I believe that's one of the bugs yet to be worked out. Igor is looking into the problem. Best regards, Lin

Thanks Judy, They are indeed wild, free and beautiful creatures. I never get tired of photographing them and go to Cimarron a couple times or more each year. The word cimarron means "wild and unruly" and this characterizes well the history of this colorful part of the SW. Best regards, Lin

Thanks, Ken Best regards, Lin

Hi Bernard, Thanks! Yes the size of the image presents a problem for older machines. Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, Yes - just the wind... Thanks! Best regards, Lin

Beautiful Jeff, Captures the mood and scenic wonder of the SW. Basil's music is perfect. best regards, Lin

Hi Bernard, Beautiful imagry and excellent composition for the show! Best regards, Lin

If you like hawks .... Some views from Cimarron, NM - about 36 meg - good video card needed... http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/cimarronnm.zip Lin

Hi Bill, The two puzzle slideshows were made with a beta copy of version 5 but work exactly as they would had they been made with the release version. Though they appear very similar, they are quite different from a hardware requirement perspective. The one which ends with the spinning goats will play on almost any computer, even one with only 32 meg very weak video card. The other one requires a pretty good video card to run smoothly. The difference is in the expansion into memory. Where the first has a total size equal more or less to the compressed size, the second expands to require about 128 meg of video RAM and a fairly good video card to run smoothly. The fact that the second would not play on your old desktop means that you will not be able to play or create many of the more sophisticated PTE shows without upgrading your video card on the desktop. If you go to the Start, Run then type in DXDIAG and clic on OK you can run the diagnostic and it will report exactly what you have in the way of Video RAM, Video Card and Active X. You first need to find out what type video bus your desktop computer has such as PGI or AGP then a recommendation can be made as to which type replacement video card you should get to allow running PTE properly. You can ask Igor for recommendations, but if your motherboard supports it, the NVIDIA 8600 is very good. If you have the older AGP video slot then one of the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro cards can be used which are very good. They were originally about $500 but can now be purchased for around $75 over the web. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Did you find the possible bug that Stonemason was reporting in Beta 10 where manual advance was not working properly after working properly in Beta 9? http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7688 Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Sorry, I was looking at a different portion of the image - the trees surrounded by a slight halo which can sometimes happen when fill light is used. I think the lighter at the top with crepuscular sun rays converging inward rather than outward is explained by the extremely heavy, dense, low cloud cover. I've seen this effect after a storm in Tahiti when dark, moisture laden air surrounds an area heated by the land mass. The cool air clings to the surrounding water while heat rising from previously warmed land and vegetation clears an area above the land causing a funnel shaped corridor which creates a path for the sunlight following the funnel shape. Best regards, Lin

Welcome back John! The lighting effect might be partly explained by the use of fill light in software. Did you by any chance use Adobe Camera RAW and "fill light"? Best regards, Lin

Hi Bruce, Actually, it's not a "problem" per se - but rather that in order to insure that a font is going to look the same on a different computer you need to convert it to a PNG file thus insuring that it will be identical. As you discovered, if a font is used as "text" and that font is not resident on the computer a slideshow is played on, Windows chooses a replacement font. But if you convert the text (rasterize to PNG) to a PNG it becomes a graphic image rather than a text object and will always look exactly the same regardless of the machine used to play the slideshow. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bernard, Thanks! If you talk to him tell him we miss him around here but to get well and rest up - we just wondered how he was doing and were worried. Best regards, Lin

I haven't see a post from JPD in some time and wondered if anyone had heard how he was doing after his illness??? Lin

Translation: Thank you, yes I have the Deluxe version. I will try it without checking the MPEG and let you know. Thanks Bernard, Yes, it's not necessary to check the "create MPEG" Lin

Translation: Hello, I bought PTE Deluxe and I made a slideshow but when I want to view it on my DVD it (connected to TV) it doesn't start automatically, I have to use the menu. Did I miss a step in the preparation? Is there a tutorial? Hi Bernard, This is how it normally works - you click on the DVD menu and the show starts just as you choose from a menu with your commercial movie DVD's. The User Guide has instructions, but they are in English and have not yet been translated to other languages. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, You have hit on one of the primary reasons why PTE doesn't directly support video clips; the large change in resolution between normally low resolution video and high resolution still slides. There are two ways to use video with PTE and frankly neither are completely satisfactory because the program really isn't designed to do this. The first way is to use a video decompiler to break the video down into separate files - usually jpg - which can then be played back in sequence at a reasonable frame rate of perhaps 150ms per frame. This means you would have your still frames with whatever animations followed by a movie sequence made of still frames followed by more stills, etc. It's not difficult to do this but the number of frames in your slide list can become quickly problematic if your video clips are very long. The second way with PTE is to use Video Builder and create an MPG II file then a third party video mixer to combine the video clips and save back to MPG II then burn the combined show to DVD. Video Builder does let you add video clips as separate chapters to a DVD show but not in an integrated way in a single slideshow. Some good video decompilers are very inexpensive - here is the one I use: http://www.onestopsoft.com/ Normally I wouldn't suggest using a different program because PicturesToExe has the very highest quality output of "any" presentation slideshow software, but if mixing video with your slides is a major part of what you are intending to do you may want to try a different software program for this particular purpose such as Proshow Gold: http://www.photodex.com Proshow let's you drop in video clips seamlessly into your slideshow programs. The down side is image quality which isn't nearly up to PicturesToExe standards for executable slideshows, but if you are mixing in video it really doesn't matter because the show will generally be degraded to 800x600 pixel true resolution for rendering then for executable shows interpolated back to whatever screen resolution you choose for your slideshow. This has the end effect of greatly softening the images and a loss of resolution. Of course if DVD at NTSC or PAL resolution is the final product it really doesn't matter because the resolution will be degraded no matter which sodtware you use. So essentially, you have two ways to do this. One - using PTE which is awkward or try Proshow Gold for doing slideshows where you need to mix in a number of video clips. It really doesn't matter a great deal which video camera you use as long as the output is digital rather than analog. So most of the new video recorders will output digital - just choose one which has the resolution and zoom and stabilization features you like. Best regards, Lin

I'm sorry, I don't understand your question exactly - perhaps you can explain. Why do you need something "better" than PowerPoint if all you are doing is showing pictures which you advance manually? Powerpoint is certainly plenty powerful for that application - in fact much more than necessary so why the need for something "better"?? You can use a simple slide display like IrfanView just show images with no transitions...... Best regards, Lin

Hi Bernard, I think people do not understand your question completely. It is not necessary to toggle MPEG-2 to burn a DVD. Do you have PTE Deluxe? If so you only need to tell it to Create DVD. If not, you need to follow the instructions in the User Guide which can be downloaded in PDF format either by choosing "help" from the PTE menu or by going to the "Tutorials" section of the forum. Without the Deluxe (internal DVD Authoring) what you do is use a third party software such as Ulead DVD Movie Factory. Please give more information about whether you have Deluxe Version or Basic PTE... Best regards, Lin

This was a problem once before where programming slide count began with zero but slides numbering began with one. It was "fixed" in the 5.0 betas - looks like it's slipped back. Lin

Lilting, haunting, melodic and majestic, Barry... Lin

Hi Bill, Beautiful photos and excellent presentation capturing the "mood" of rural Ireland. Loved the choice of music as well - nice Celtic ending! Best regards, Lin