Lin Evans

Yes Neil, Video cameras record perhaps 30 frames per second and at not over 2 megapixel resolution for even a high end unit. This records ten times that frame rate at VGA resolution (300 frames per second) and at full six megapixel resolution records twice the frame rate of the movie camers. This means you can then slow the frames for play back and create the equivalent of time lapse for very fast events such as seeing water splash, watching the motion of a golf swing, the distortion of the ball as it is struck by the baseball bat, etc. Lin

I thought somebody would get the significance of this for PTE but think of it like this. You record high speed image sequences, then put them into your slideshow at slow sequenced play back and get an incredible world not possible from normal still or motion photography. Guys this is tailor made for PTE's high resolution playback. Look at these movie clips. Click around on this link and think about the possibilities !!! http://world.casio.com/ngdc/en/ Lin

Hi Mario, In my case I don't actually sell photos per se, but rather sell services and do photography "for" our art gallery clients. We use slideshows as demos, but do it all via zipped executables unless the client has a MacIntosh. For those we do high resolution AVI's for demo samples. I suspect perhaps that people who do wedding photos deliver slideshows via DVD for their clients but probably that is supplemental to the actual printed photos and perhaps used as more of a sales tool than a deliverable. You might ask Barry Beckham about that because I believe he began as a wedding photographer but I don't know if he still does weddings on a regular basis or not. Best regards, Lin

Neither PAL nor NTSC are high enough resolution to look anywhere nearly as good as what you get from your executable on your monitor. PAL (you're in Australia?) is 720x576 and NTSC is 720x480. So no matter what you start with the images will be resampled to one of these DVD resolutions. I've found that using 1024x768 works pretty well when downsampled to DVD qualilty, but it still is not nearly as crisp as your monitor at 1280x1024. The only way to get the quality up to monitor standards is to use one of the new Plasma or LCD HD television receivers and feed it at least 720p (preferably 1080p) which would give you up to two megapixel screen resolution. Of course the problem is getting that resolution in a format amenable to your receiver on compatible media. You may want to look at Ray's tutorial here: http://www.peoplesoftheworld.org/audio-visuals.jsp Best regards, Lin

Just an aside - Casio announced a new high speed 6 megapixel camera concept with 12x optical zoom from about 35 to 430 (approx) mm. Not too unusual except it shoots 300 frames per second. That's not a typo - three hundred frames per second in VGA mode and at full six megapixels it shoots 60 frames per second continuously. Lin

Let me just throw in my $02. for what it's worth. I think we can't have "any" rigid rules for pans and zooms but rather tailor them to the mood and theme of the production. Sometimes movement is appropriate, sometimes not. Sometimes during a pan we may want to zoom, stop, resume, etc., and sometimes not. The way I see it is that the images and intent will guide the producer in determining what is appropriate or not. What is appropriate for a slideshow about one subject may be inappropriate for another and we should let the content and what we wish to say help determine how we proceed. Just as with photography, we may have a "golden rule of thirds" but rules are not rigid and there are times when they "should" be broken. Best regards, Lin

As many of you must know by now, the Greek islands are experiencing one of the worst tragedies in their history. Fires of unbelievable magnititude are raging in the forests and villages on southern Greece bring death, injuries and distruction to innocent people, wildlife and domestic animals. The human death toll is now at 63 and sure to eventually be much higher as more are discovered. A multi-nation task force has begun to help with fire-fighting equipment and supplies to the many stranded people who have lost their homes and all their worldly possessions. This 20 meg slideshow was assembled from relatively tiny News agency photos enlarged to fit the screen. It makes no pretense of being anything other than a means of letting people know what is going on in southern Greece. It's not pretty, but everyone should see it because it shows the devistation wrought by what appears to intentionally started fires. A truly sad situation. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Greece. http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/tragedy.zip Lin

Hi Laura, Two things: 1. Download and install Version 5.0 (free upgrade from 4.48). 2. Purchase upgrade to Deluxe with Video Builder ($20) Go here and download user guide PDF http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7202 Though you can create the DVD using external software with version 4.48, the program doesn't automatically burn a DVD. Version 5.0 deluxe has it's own internal DVD burner and it is very easy to create the DVD. The 121 page PDF user guide has complete documentation. With version 4.48 you need to use an external program such as Ulead DVD Movie Factory to actually burn the DVD from the AVI "template" (not an AVI stand-alone file) which is created. With version 5.0 Deluxe you just click on Video and it's very easy to create the DVD right in the program. Version 5.0 is, as mentioned above, a free upgrade and can be downloaded here. Deluxe is a $20 upgrade if you want to burn the DVD right in the program. It can be purchased from the main page of the forum. Best regards, Lin

I agree 100% with Al - check out Xara, it's got everything you need and is infinitely adjustable in terms of font shape, 3D look, shadows, etc. Then, as Al says, you can then manipulate it further in Photoshop to get the exact look you want to achieve. Lin

Hi Jacques, Unless it's a very "small" slideshow AVI is probably too large and one must wait until the entire show has downloaded to play it. Flash, as you know, has two formats: FLV and SWF. SWF works fine for slideshows without music synchronization for over 2 minutes and for shows with not over 16,000 actual frames. It dies at 16,001 frames. What this means then is that if you use 29.97 fps you have about eight and a half minutes of capability at this frame rate. FLV has no limitation in number of frames or any problems with music synchronization so it is preferred. There are a number of different Flash iterations. Right now, the better quality is Flash 8 and above but the user must have a Flash 8 or Flash 9 player installed. This can easily be done free via the Adobe Macromedia site. There are several products which can implement Flash 8. The least expensive is On2 Technologies Flix Standard. Flix Standard can output a Flash 8 FLV file using the AVI output of PTE as the source. Flix Standard is very reasonably priced. Also there are incoders for Flash 8 from Sorensen and from WildForm.The Wildform product is actually an On2 Technologies OEM product. If you want to go with older Flash FLV implementation you can use Riva Lite (about $30 U.S.) and the free Riva encoder. The file size is a good bit larger than Flash 8 and the quality is not bad but not as good as Flash 8. There are others as well, but I'm not familiar with the latest versions. My suggestion would definitely be Flash rather than a straight AVI. You can also use Windows Movie Maker and output WMV files which are smaller than AVI but larger in general than Flash. Best regards, Lin

Cheap golf cart works great and you can leave your tripod and lens attached. I use this when things are tight and when I've got lots of room I have a little red Radio Flyer wagon which works great. Makes all the kids at the zoo jealous - LOL.. Lin

Hi Mario, I think the part which could be confusing is that the "effect" of zooming out must be exactly compensated by zooming in or vice versa. Consider the situation where the parent is zooming in. What the child does is follow the parent's lead as if it were "attached". Think of it as a real child and its parent. The child could be a year old or ten years old so it could be any size. But regardless of how large or small the child, it's attached to the parent by a leash and harness. So if the parent gets in a car and drives north, the child does likewise. If the parent gets on an airplane and goes up or down so does the child. But the leash is very long and the child can also be going down while the parent is going up, etc. The child could turn left while the parent is turning right, etc., so though the child inherits the parent's movement it can also have its own independent movement within the parameters of it's association with the parent. Because the child inherits the parent's zoom it will necessarily be compelled to do likewise but because it can also have its own zoom properties, you can counteract the attachment by giving the child the "opposite" and equal amount of zoom out. The net effect is zero. On of the animations I used as an example which I will link to demonstrates this. It is a bunch of "objects" rotating around the screen. But some are rotating on their own axis while also circling the screen. Some stay upright in position, others turn upside down as they reach the bottom of the screen and lie on their left or right sides when they reach the right or left center. This is all accomplished by the parent/child relationship as well as the off-center rotation capabilities of PTE. PNG objects all are actually rectangular in nature, but the actual rectangle is transparent so that all you really see are the objects themselves which may be any shape. Even a totally non-symetrical shaped object such as a human is surrounded by transparency which has a rectangular or square shape. The "center" for all objects is by default the center of this rectangle. This is very easy to see when you rotate an image. The image by default rotates on this imaginary center which can be found visually by drawing lines from each corner to the opposite corner and crossing the center of the image. Where the lines intersect becomes the defacto default "center". With most presentation software, the center is then fixed, but with PTE you can place the center for rotation anywhere you wish by simply left clicking on the little green circle, holding down the left mouse button and "dragging" this center visually anywhere on or off the visable area of the screen. Wherever you leave this center becomes the new center of rotation for that object at that keypoint. Bear with me for a few minutes and it will be clear where this is going. So if you place a PNG object at the top, bottom or right or left extreme of the screen then move the center to correspond with the physical center of the screen itself then place another keypoint further along the timeline and change the rotation from zero to 360 at that point, the object will rotate on that center axis and follow a circular path on the screen. Of course the object will turn upside down by the time it reaches the bottom of the screen (assuming you started it on the top) then when it reaches the full 360 degrees it will once again be upright. Let's say you wanted this object to follow this circular path around the screen but instead of turning as it describes the circular path, you wanted it to stay upright. How could you accomplish this? Well you can't do it with a single object, but this is where the PTE capabilities of unlilmited opacity, parent/child and off-center rotation allow this animation to be easily done. What you do is simply duplicate the object and make it a child of itself. Next move the child into exact alignment (let's say at the top of the screen) and exact zoom (size) of the parent so that the child directly hides the parent. Next set the opacity of the parent to zero thus making it invisible. Make it invisible at the start as well as at the keypoint where the 360 degree rotation ends. So now all we see is the "child" and the child looks precisely like the parent. So if we were to run the animation just like it is now set up, since the child has inherited the parent's rotation it would look "exactly" like it did without the child. But - let's now set the child's own rotation with a kepoint at precisely the same location as where the parent completes its rotation to negative 360 degrees. In other words we have made the child rotate on its own center mass axis (original center) in the opposite direction at the same speed as the parent is moving it in a circular direction. The "net" effect is that the child stays perfectly upright as it circles the screen. It's being pulled in the 360 degree circle around the screen by its inheritance from the parent which is invisible but turning upside down at the bottom of the screen. But since we have set the child to rotate in the opposite direction it's own opposite rotation on center mass axis is causing it to stay upright. For every degree the parent rotates the child clockwise, the child is rotating one degree counterclockwise so that the net effect is it follows the circular path of the parent but stays upright at all times. Now think of your original question. You make the parent zoom in but you set the child to zoom out at the same rate. Net effect? The child stays the same size. Here's a link to the sample. Pay attention to the different motions on the different objects. If you wanted the child to get smaller, you would set it's own zoom out to a greater degree than the parent is zooming in over the same period of time. If you wanted the child to rotate you would give it its own keypoint and degree of rotation, etc. Once you break through the block and think like the child you will see many ways to use these significant capabilities to achieve a number of stunning effects. It's possible to create eliptical paths, bezier curves, just about any type of motion you can imagine with a little thought and experimentation. Here's the link: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6817 The above will link you to the tutorials section to both the demo and an AVI showing how to accomplish these movements. Lin

Don't try to display the photos at native size. If you let PTE do the resize they will fill your monitor screen automatically. The ideal situation, assuming you have a video card up to the task would be to duplicate and resize your images using Photoshop or Irfanview, etc., to 1900 x1200 or whatever the closest actual aspect ratio for your own camera is. In other words just make the horizontal aspect 1900 and let the software work out the vertical. Next set PTE to the default which is "fit to slide". Then when your slideshow plays on "any" monitor or computer system the slides will either be uprezzed or downsampled automatically to fit the system they are being viewed on. For your projector, resize to 800x600. DPI really doesn't have anything to do with image size unless you are printing. DPI is a "tag" in the EXIF header which tells the printer how closely to space the pixels. The number of pixels is fixed by the file and the camera used. You can make more pixels by interpolation or fewer by resampling, but whatever "size" file you feed the printer the number of pixels can only be changed by the printer driver or software interpolation and resampling. If you have a 1600x1200 image (2 megapixels) and you set the dpi to 300 then the print size will be exactly 5.33 inches by 4 inches (1600/300 x 1200/300). To get a different size print you must do one of two possibilities: You can move the pixels farther apart or closer together, i.e., change the dpi, or you add or delete pixels. Most printers have optimal dpi which reflect their print engines requirements so in almost all cases pixels are added or deleted (interpolation/resampling). To understand dpi, you need to think of what happens when you move pixels closer together without changing the number of pixels. Moving them closer together simply makes the image smaller. When you spread them out it makes the image larger. But this "dpi" doesn't change the "quality" of the image in that it doesn't add resolution or detail nor does it remove resolution or detail. It simply tells the print or device how close or how far apart to print each pixel. A display device can't move pixels closer together or farther apart. The pixel locations are fixed by the very nature of the monitor so what it can do is simulate what happens with different dpi settings by increasing or decreasing the number of pixels, not by moving pixel positions as done by print devices. Pixel size is fixed on a monitor so they can't really make larger or smaller pixels either, just "simulate" this by using several pixels to "represent" the content of a single pixel. Something is definitely not right about using a smaller dpi and having a smaller pictures. Something else is going on because using a lower dpi makes an image larger not smaller. By a smaller number the pixels are being spread rather than moved closer together. Because they are spread out the apparent quality will diminish. I can't tell you what is going on with you projector and pixel pitch (DPI) but I can tell you that it has nothing to do with PTE. The bottom line is that for "most" PTE shows having the image for your own monitor set to the native display resolution as a match (in your case 1900x1200 or as close a possible without image distortion) will give you the best results. This assumes that your video card is up to the task (not a 32 meg or 64 meg card). If you have any deep zooms beyond 100% image size you may want to increase the size of those individual images. Don't worry, PTE will resize them at fit to screen but when you zoom in you have more resolution to work with. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mario, It's easy enough to do this as theDom suggested. Let me clarify a bit in detail. Since the child inherits the parent's zoom but can have it's own animation, what must be done to "apparently" stop the zoom is from the one minute keypoint the child must zoom "out" at the same rate the parent is zooming "in". So what you would do is note the parent's zoom numbers and the child's zoom numbers at 60 seconds. Then note the parent's zoom number at 90 seconds. Calculate the zoom difference for the parent at between 60 and 90 seconds and apply that amount of change to the zoom "out" of the child at 90 seconds. Remember that if you set the child's end zoom figures to exactly the same as they were at 60 seconds, the child will still be larger to the degree that the parent increases in size even though the numbers don't change. That is, cloning the child at 60 seconds and moving the cloned keypoint to 90 seconds will not give you the desired result, you must increment the zoom out of the child by the same percentage of change as the zoom in of the parent from 60 to 90 seconds. As Barry suggested, unless there are specific reasons why you want to keep the parent/child relationship, it would be much simpler to just make them separate objects on the slide. Best regards, Lin

Very enjoyable Patrick - beautiful scenery, beautiful captures and the mood music was excellent. Do you know the names of the actual artists who did the music? The last segment sounded very Celtic to me. Best regards, Lin

You can slide the blue arrow across the timeline and see your images and transitions manually, but you can't use "Play" unless you have something (music) to actually play. Use care that you precisely select the blue arrow and don't accidentally move the block beneath with the "number" on it. There may be a bit of confusion possible because of the fact that the word "timeline" is used in two different ways in PTE. The timeline which you access via the Main screen deals specifically with synchronization of "music" or "audio" with the images. The timeline you see from the Objects and Animations screen deals only with images and keypoints where changes in the state of the image or "animations" of some type are programmed. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mario, Clone a keypoint duplicates the specific settings for that keypoint while adding a keypoint assumes nothing and just places a keypoint with nothing but position and the values from the previous keypoint on a timeline. The "clone" feature copies the values of any particular keypoint. When you want a condition to "hold" for a period of time, the easiest way is to clone the keypoint then just slide it to the right for the amount of time you want it to hold. You "can" just add a keypoint as long as there is no other keypoint in between and perform exactly the same. But think about this: What if you started with a zoom in and a pan, then on the next keypoint you wanted to zoom out and perhaps rotate or something then for the third keypoint decided that you wanted to return to "exactly" the condition you were in for the first keypoint. If you simply "add" a keypoint then you must type in the precise numbers for the pan, zoom and rotate and perhaps "center" if you have changed it. On the other hand if you simply "clone" the first keypoint then slide it to the desired position you will save yourself all the effort of manually copying the values for PZR from the first keypoint. Right now, no more in-depth AVI on this that I am aware of. Best regards, Lin

Sure, Linear relates to continuous motion neither speeding up nor slowing down. Non-linear is anything else. I realize that is over simplistic so perhaps more specifically. A linear effect begins almost immediately at full speed and ceases abruptly. A non-linear "smooth" has a gradual sloping curve beginning slowly then building in speed to a specific velocity determined by the distance between keypoints and the tme alloted to the slide. Near the end of the animation there is a deceleration period equal and opposite of the acceleration at the beginning so the curve has a slope at the head and tail which are exactly opposite but equal in duration. An accelerate begins slowly and continues to build in speed for the duration of the animation ending abruptly. A decelerate begins like a linear then at some predetermined percentage near the end of the animtion slows down gradually. An easy way to see these graphically is to put in a couple keypoints then from the O&A menu and Animations tab click on the down arrow beside "Linear" and you can see the curves. With PTE it's also possible to adjust these curves to any custom pattern of non-linearity you wish and even save the changes as a template. Best regards, Lin

Hi Rich, It's neither a bug nor a problem, just that you haven't set it up correctly. First, download the User Guide and read the section on keypoints then I'll give you another link where you can get some more specifics. Essentially, you use linear to do your animations then change to non-linear where you wish non-linear motion. This involves separating glued keypoints which is explained in the manual and in the reference information. There are fixed non-linear motions of smooth, accelerate and decelerate plus you can customize the curve to any conceivable shape but you must separate the keypoints for pan, zoom and rotate because they almost always interconnect. You'll find the user guide on the Tutorial's section. It's 121 pages of documentation which every user should download and read. Here's a link to a reference I did a while back about specifically keypoints. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6549 Lin

If you can give some more information it would be helpful to give you some advice. For example, what is the original size of the images? Are they all the same or are they different? PTE can automatically fit to screen any image so getting them all the same size in appearance on your slideshow is as easy as using the "fit to slide" or "cover slide". Of course this is individually adjustable per slide, but the default (fit to slide) should make them all fit horizontally. Whether there is black on top and bottom depends on the aspect ratio of the images versus the aspect ratio of the viewing screen. It's also possible to resize all the images outside PTE and then use "Original" size but then this would not automatically resize for different computer screens. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, There's no valid reason to save captures as tiffs, better to just save them as JPG's then do whatever join work necessary in Photoshop. I don't know about the quality level used by Freestone, it may be very high or not depending on the particulars and whether or not there is a setting. Just because a file is saved as a tiff it doesn't "necessarily" have high quality if the actual "capture" quality was not sufficient or, of course, if the screen resolution wasn't fantastic. The latter doesn't seem to be a problem, but why don't you download Snagit and try it (it's free to try for about 30 days) and see if you get better results. best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, Could it be that you have less than eleven minutes and 26 seconds programmed for the time of your slides? If you go to the timeline from the main menu and click on "auto spread slides along music" what happens? Lin

Try this link: http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/3DTransform.zip Best regards, Lin

Try this link: http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/3DTransform.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Leona, You can use a batch resizing program such as available with Irfanview. Irfanview and the Irfanview plugins can be downloaded via: http://www.irfanview.com (install both the Irfanview program and the Irfanview plugins). You can always add music to a file, but depending on the size of the files you might end up making the show too large for emailing to most recipients. Check the size of the MP3 an add that to the size of the completed executable slide show without music and you will have some idea of how large the show might be. If you intend to do this very frequently, it might be better to send your email recipient a link rather than the file itself. There are several free services which you can use to upload your files where a message can be sent and the email recipient can then download a full sized show. Also, depending on how often you do this you may want to just get an inexpensive web host where you can post your slideshows in zipped format. The costs are as low as $3.00 per month and you can have gigabytes of storage space. I use 1&1 which is quite reasonable. Lin