Lin Evans

Hi, There are numerous ways to convert to Flash - lots of 3rd party tools to convert the AVI files output by PTE to Flash or MPEG 4, etc. To play over the web you have several options. First one must decide if they wish to degrade the quality for web purposes or simply zip the executable and let the user download and play it at full resolution on their own system. Once you have determined whether or not this method is appropriate then it's possible to use several approaches. Any AVI file can be played by simply posting that file to your web site then providing a link for the user to click. Obviously, though high quality, an AVI is generally a large file taking time to download. It must completely download to your system before playback begins. One can also convert to Windows WMV and this works well for Windows users. It's also a reasonably large file but does have some preload and pseudo -streaming capabilities. Finally, there are a number of third party utilities to easily convert AVI to either Flash SWF or Flash FLV. If you have music synchronized with your slideshow and the duration is over 2 minutes or if the total number of frames in the slideshow (at 30 fps) exceeds 16,000 then Flash FLV with it's streaming and preload is appropriate. The least expensive way is probably to use the very inexpensive Flix Standard (about $39) or the even less expensive Riva Lite with the free Riva encoder. Actually, there are dozens of converters available. Eventually, an internal Flash FLV converter is planned but won't be implemented soon. Realize, of course that converting to Flash FLV or Flash SWF does compromise image display quality by a significant amount. Best regards, Lin

Hi Graham, The upgrade to 5.0 is free - only the DVD authoring (Deluxe portion) carries an upgrade fee. There are numerous programs which can convert the AVI files produced by PTE to Flash. If you do a search you will find lots of previous information on Flash implementation. Best reagards, Lin

Hi Graham, Unfortunately this is not something which Flash supports. When an image is converted to Flash or AVI or MPEG, etc., it becomes essentially a "movie" with no interaction possible with the user. Even DVD movies when you use your remote control to select chapters, etc., are not actually running the conversions at the time but are interactive because they are programmed to respond to the light frequencies from the remote control and in that sense at the time are actually acting as rather poor "computers". Movies themselves whether Flase or AVI or DVD or motion film have no ability to be "interactive" but are "canned" implementations. Executable code, on the other hand, is entirely different. With executable slide shows you are actually still in an interactive mode with the ability to detect "interrupts" from an attached pointing device or keyboard which provides interrupts. These type interrupts would have to be built into the Flash code itself before any programmer using Flash implementations could build them into their own code. PTE's authors are not Flash programmers and even if they were they wouldn't be able to implement such without permission from Adobe (Macromedia) so it's unlikely you will see such any time in the near future. Best regards, Lin

Hi Silvia, Jeff and I would very much like to find someone to translate the user guide to Spanish and other languages - any volunteers? Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, I noticed some of this on the original too. It's because of the slow start on the non-linear smooth causing the typical "glitter" pattern on overly sharp objects which is an artifact of the changing size. Try clicking on the "blur" in the Properteis tab (objects and animations screen). If that isn't enough to ameliorate it, select the tops of the chairs where the "glitter" appears using Photoshop or your choice of programs and apply a guassian blur at about 1%. If you have problems with this, post the image where you are having difficulty and I'll "treat" it for you to eliminate this issue. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, A difficult task to choose fitting images but I believe your choice was appropriate. My only suggestion for possible improvement would be to use non-linear smooth on the zooms to prevent the rather abrupt stops. Best regards, Lin

A wonderful tribute Peter - very well presented and with excellent narrative! Best regards, Lin

Hi Bart, You don't want to install "all" the codecs from ACE, only selected ones (this is one of the install options). You can install the Microsoft MPEG 4 and a few others but certainly don't need (or want to install) all of them. The quality of the AVI created will depend on several factors including compression. For a high quality output you really don't want a great deal of compression and you can create the high quality AVI with PTE then import this and mix with your video in Vegas. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, That's great that it worked out the way you wanted. Best regards, Lin

Hi Martin, You can use an audio recorder software (inexpensive or free) which picks up the sound signal from the audio card and saves it as a wav then converts to mp3. This is the one I use: http://www.mp3-recorder.biz/ There may be a free one available - check around the web. Unfortunately the Windows recorder (the one which comes with Windows) is limited to about 30 seconds..... Lin

Hi Peter, Link to Sample: Yes, you can do this. I've provided a sample: Essentially, you need to remember that when you rotate something in one direction, you need to "unwind" if you want to rotate the same object in the opposite direction. So if you rotated counterclockwise to the left top and wanted to rotate clockwise to the bottom right you would go from a negative through zero to a positive. Let's say you rotated -1440 for four revolutions of your text to the top left and now you want to rotate to the bottom right four times. So you set your first keypoint (when the text was in the center) to zero rotation. The second keypoint to -1440 and the third keypoint to zero. This "unwinds" from -1440 in a clockwise direction to zero again. If you wanted fewer rotations in the clockwise direction then you would use less than zero or a less negative number but still a negative number. If you wanted greater than four rotations you would use a positive number. So if you wanted five clockwise rotations you would use 360. Play with it a bit and it will become clear. For the text sweeping like a second hand you must move the center from the default point (center of the bounding rectangle as if you were to draw diaginal lines from opposite corners - where they intersect) to the edge where you want the rotation. For example, if you want the text block to go clockwise and rotate on the left edge, click on the green "dot" at the center of the bounding rectangle, hold down the keyboard shift key and drag the dot to the center of the left vertical bounding rectangle border. Do this at the start "AND" at the ending keypoint and set the second keypoint to 360 to sweep the text in a clockwise direction once, etc. Let me know if you need more help: Lin

Hi Isabel, That was a great tribute to a beautiful and obviously "very" intelligent little girl! It's a shame that her life was cut short but her candle burned oh so brightly... Great selection on the music as well. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Here's a tiny sample of a flag waving. A 12 imag GIF animation was broken down into it's component files then made into small png files and played in PTE at 100ms per image: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/flag.zip Lin

Hi Neil, In all probability what you saw in Proshow was an AVI movie clip of a real flag blowing in the breeze. It's possible to use a movie clip with Proshow but PTE doesn't support drop-in movie clips. You could use an inexpensive decompiler to break down a movie clip of a flag blowing in the breeze into individual jpg's and play them sequentially for the same effect. There is no good way to simulate this by altering an entire image but it could easily be done by repeating a simple clip by creating a PNG file where the actual flag portion changed sequentially. Best regards, Lin

Hi B. Trosclair, You not longer have the same feature because of the animation possibility, but it is quite possible to create a manual show either with or without animation and transitions. First you need to use the Navigation bar which can be set to appear with mouse movement or to "hide" after a determined number of seconds, etc. Let's start with a slide show completely manual with no transitions between slides and with no animations. You simply click on the "Pause" button from the Navigation Bar then when it changes from the parallel lines to the arrow you use the forward and/or backward arrow to move completely manually without transitions between slides and without animations between slides. This is a completely manual slideshow much like you would have if using IrfanView, etc. The second way is to set a relatively long time period for the display of each slide. Set something like five minutes (300 seconds, etc.) and simply use the Navigation Bar to move between slides and to move forward or backward. As long as you don't exceed the time you choose while "resting" on a slide, this will essentially work just as with the older method. With this method you have full pan, zoom and rotate ability as well as any transitions you choose between slides. If five minutes as a default isn't enough time choose the equivalent in seconds to 10 minutes or 20, etc. You can also use the spacebar or even a PowerPoint unit designed to advance slides which simulates a PgUp, PgDn, etc., to change your slides if you wish. Just set the appropriate "allow keyboard" commands in the Project Options. Download and read the User Guide from either the Help File in PTE or from the PTE webside on the Tutorials link. Best regards, Lin

Only by using a screen capture tool. There are a number of these available or you can use Shift PrtScr with older Windows versions or PrtScr with newer ones. Best regards, Lin

Hi Michael, IPTC data isn't supported but "some" EXIF data is. Unfortunately I have not been able to get EXIF "Comments" to work. Date and image name work as well at path, etc., but EXIF "comments" doesn't work for me. Perhaps Igor may shed more light on this. Best regards, Lin

Hi Lorie, It's very easy to create an AVI file for use on Youtube. To do this you need to click on Video then on Create AVI file. Next you need to check "create a custom AVI file" then choose an appropriate Codec. Codecs are compress/decompress algorithms which vary on different computers because they are not something which actually "comes with" your operating system but are installed by varios programs which you may have installed. The one most commonly used and which works very well is Microsoft Video Codec 4 which you may or may not have resident on your computer. If you don't have it, you can download free codec "packs" which let you selectively install different codecs. The on I suggest is ACE Mega Codec pack which you can easily find by doing a Google search. You download it, then install the software then it lets you choose the codecs you want to install. You certainly don't need or want to install all of them but just choose the Microsoft Video codec 4 and install it. Once its installed it will show up on the list of codecs you see when you right click on the arrow beside the Video Codecs. Just choose this and remember that for Youtube you don't want the size to be too large because it just takes additional resources and time for them to compress. As Ken suggested, you may want to let them have access to the full sized executable slideshow but remember that if they use a Mac they "may" not have software allowing them to see it. On the other hand the quality would be much better than a small AVI on Youtube. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I don't think Elements has guides - that's the problem. Best regards, Lin

Unfortunately I don't have Elements (maybe someone who uses Elements can help here) but I did check on this with a friend who uses it. Apparently there is no easy way to get an exact position but it probably isn't really all that important. In Photoshop you can quickly create a temporary reference guide line either vertical or horizontal with pixel precision thus making it relatively easy to get precise positioning, but it doesn't appear that Elements has this feature. Normally, extreme precision for this type thing isn't necessary because you can easily move the images to visually approximate what you want. But if you want to get it exact here's how you can proceed. Tape a couple pieces of string diagonally across your monitor from the corners of the image to find dead center. Next draw your rectangle with the Rectangular Marquee (you can move it about on the screen) and find dead center on it. Use a similar technique to find center of the rectangle and move them to coincide. I think you can click on Edit, then Preferences, then Units and Rulers also Grid and set these to pixels so you can also probably find the centers that way by simply using the Info Window and dragging. So divide 1024 by two and 768 by two then find the junction of 512 horizontal and 382 vertical. Truthfully, if you just eyball it you will probably do about as well. Best regards, Lin