Lin Evans

MAJOR UPDATE 7/29/07 - Jeff noticed that I had forgotten to discuss the Animations tab - big DUHH for me! I have completed it and it contains lots of important information - about eight additional pages covering linear/non-linear and other important features. Link has been updated.... Lin As many of you probably already know, Jeff Evans and I are cooperating in producing a comprehensive PTE documentation. Jeff is doing the Main section and I'm doing the Objects and Animations section. When we are both finished, we will combine and index the two documents and add a glossary of terms. But right now, we are still a few days from having it completed. One of our French speaking members, Cèlou, has completed a very nice executable document in French which is now available on the Tutorials forum. Since there are so many new users, rather than wait until we have the documentation combined, I believe it may be useful for many to be able to access what I have completed as a PDF document. Jeff may want to do the same with his portion when it's ready. We "will" combine the two into a comprehensive and integrated document when we are both finished, but until we do this my portion which is Objects and Animations is available here: http://www.lin-evans.net/tutorial/ObjectsAnimation.pdf At the end of the O&A portion is a complete keyboard shortcut list followed by the first of a number of planned addenda (Understanding and Using Keypoints). Eventually, I hope to combine the main document with a complete series of these "How-To" addenda which get into the nuts and bolts of PTE. Also I plan to organize into a "library" the various AVI tutorials I have created to augument the documentation and addenda. The eight page Understanding and Using Keypoints is also available in the tutorials forum as an independent document. Lin

Hi Igor, Please!!!! Take some time off - we need you healthy and happy!! Don't feel pressured, the product is doing fine with no major issues at all. I just wasn't sure the last two emails were getting through - no big issue at all just a quick question so I can finish up the O&A draft for the docs and send it to you. Relax and stop worrying about another upgrade - we are VERY HAPPY with what we have. Get some sleep and tomorrow will be another day.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Check your Email - need a question answered. Thanks, Lin

Hi Neil, It's probably the size of the original images. They played fine on my system but I have a pretty powerful graphics environment with lots of resources. Best regards, Lin

Hi David, What a great final resting place and beautiful tribute. It's too bad that he passed away before his time but the opportunity to choose one's place in such a beautiful location is rare and the opportunity for you and Becky to visit frequently is, I'm certain, very much appreciated. Best regards, Lin

Hi Phil, Let me take a stab at answering your questions. PTE creates AVI files of any resolution you choose up to and including HD (1920x1080p) so "quality" won't be an issue. That said, if you plan to play your combination shows on DVD at NTSC or PAL resolutions then the quality can't be any better than the display device is able to produce. Since PTE uses hardware rendering to give the very finest high resolution and smooth output, you are correct that trying to play video directly is a technical nightmare on more than one front. We can simulate video by simply decompiling AVI or MPEG video to jpgs and sequencing them at speeds equal to the 29.97 fps of standard video, but it's a bit obtuse to do it that way so your idea of creating output to AVI then using a good video editor is the preferred way if you plan on mixing the media. Something like Vegas Video or Adobe Premier or even Premier Elements would be fine for doing this. The quality of the AVI files produce by PTE are equal to any other means. DVD output via PTE's Video Builder is great so you should have no problems with using PTE created AVI files along with other video clips combined with a good editor to output to DVD. The question of web output is another issue entirely. There are a number of ways of doing this so the first thing one needs to ask is which "quality" level you want to use. The "best" quality output to the web right now is via the Active X used by a competitor Proshow Gold or Proshow Producer by Photodex. This requires the viewer to install Photodex Presenter, an Active X enabled device. Some are hesitant to do this but I've not seen any really issues. The down side is there will always be Photodex advertising splashes on the file and you have to use Proshow Gold or Proshow Producer rather than PicturesToExe to get this. Regardless, this is still the smoothest and best web output not equaled yet by Flash, Quicktime or Windows methods. The next best way in my experience is to use the latest Flash iteration. This means Flash 8 or Flash 9. If you want a "professional" look with a customized player with your own company logo or name on it then the best I've found is On2 Technologies Flix Pro. If you don't need the player but want to embed the Flash on you web page then you can use Flix Standard which is much less expensive. The difference between perhaps $200 and $40. I use Flix Pro myself, but either works well. You will, however need to do your Flash shows as Flash FLV rather than Flash SWF if you want sound synchronization over about two minutes and if you want progressive download (similar to server side streaming, but technically a bit different). There is an absolute maximum frame count for Flash SWF of 16,000 frames which is about 8 minutes at a full 29.97 fps. Flix lets you have automatic Flash level detection and a link to the MacroMedia site for those without the latest player needed. It also allows a preload so playback in not interrupted by slower links. PTE has by far the finest quality output of any currently available Presentation Slideshow software regardless of cost. However, output to DVD or web really won't take advantage of this very large difference. Once things are reduced to below 800x600 resolution there are not a great deal of differences in image quality output between various softwares producing slideshows. The main difference with PTE is that it can do animations not possible with other software, but this may or may not be important in your own case. Feel free to ask more questions and we will all try to help if we can.... Best regards, Lin

I suspect he is busy with the new house and moving, etc. It's too bad that people use his site to dump porn under false pretense, but there is lots of that going around today. Someone is posting on other sites using my identity - I just discovered today. Unfortunately the web makes it relatively easy for these juvenile and moronic pranks and theDom has suffered greatly having already had one site destroyed and this one being invaded. It's necessary to stay on top of your web site 24-7 to prevent this type thing. He may have to let a few others from various time zones police his site as moderators with administrative powers to delete, ban ip addresses, etc., to get rid of this nonsense. Best regards, Lin

Hi Geoff, Yes, just set the screen to 16:9 in Project Options then in "Tools" set the TV Safe Zone on so yu can see what will be lost on top/bottom and to each side, then size, pan, zoom accordingly and burn to DVD at 16:9 and it should work perfectly. Best regards, lin

Hi David, Nice walk! What a great place to spend one's 78th year - rocky spot for a headstone though! Lin

Open one in Photoshop and be certain the extension is ".jpg" not .jp2 or .jpn. That's strange. Lin

Hi Geoff, I'm having a bit of a problem trying to sort this out. Do you mean how wide could the image potentially be with a hight of 768 pixels? Actually, if that's the question there is no real absolute limit other than that imposed by your own hardware until you reach the single slideshow 2 gigapixel limit imposed by earlier versions of Windows. For practical considerations I think your pano size is fine. My suggestion would be to use the default "fit to slide" then enlarge with zoom until it just fills the slide and use that as a minimum during your pan. You could zoom in more but don't zoom out past the point where this fills the screen. I've done many pano's this way and burned to DVD and they worked exactly as in the executable show. Be certain you have the DVD set for 4:3 and not for 16:9. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Probably because most input sizes would need reduction anyway unless they were resampled before loading. When we use the originals, just as they come from the camera they will generally much more than fill the screen. There is no "technical" reason why we can't do this except that the image will appear differently in terms of display depending on the screen resolution. So if you use the original without setting it to either "fit to screen" or in the default mode, and the user is watching on a 1024x768 screen and you created the file on a higher resolution screen then what you "expect" in terms of what things will look like will vary greatly. That is the original will look smaller on higher resolution screen displays and larger on lower resolution screens. So any specialized animations you may program would behave differently depending on the user's environment. With the "fit to screen" and default modes, what you see on your monitor will be what the viewer sees regardless of their individual screen resolutions. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Partially. In Project Options, Screen Tab you can set "disable scaling of main images" for all slides which is the same as "original" in the properties tab "mode" but there is no way to set "cover slide" universally that I'm aware of. Of course you have "fit to slide" as a default which would be universal so what we are missing, I think, is a way to set "cover slide" universally. Lin

Hi Ron, Since I don't have the same action, I can't be certain what can be done with it, but the "easiest" way to to this effect is to make single images with the film strip on each then put them in separate slides on the slide list. Next choose the number of them you wish to go in whichever direction by clilcking on the first one then holding down the "shift" key and clicking on the last one. This will "select" all files between the first and last one. This can be used to select two, four or all, etc. If you want to select random ones, hold down the CTRL key while left clicking the mouse. Once you have selected any number from one to all, you can then open "customize slide" and whatever timing and transition you choose will be applied to all. What I did was choose the "Push Left to Right" and "Push Right to Left" transition with a timing of 5 seconds (5000) for the transition. The slides were entered 1 through 10 then 9 through 1. The first ten got "Push Left to Right" the last 9 got "Push Right to Left" The time for each slide display was set to 7 seconds. Using individual slides make it easy to size and you will get perfect matching by just using the default 100%. Best regards, Lin

http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/filmstrip.zip or http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/filmstrip2.zip I don't have that particular actions so this is just the film "sprocket" with the dividing "threads" removed. Lin

Hi Gerry, I don't know of any way you can use an executable slideshow as a "template" other than by simply duplicating the effects, etc. As for copyright, all images taken by a photographer are copyrighted. So using anothers images without express written consent would be a violation of copyright. A number of fourm members have created "templates" which you can use to produce identical effects using your own images. These consist of PTE files in which you substitute your own photos renaming them to the same names as those used in the template. These photos then assume the animations and timings given with the originals. In many cases specific files are included such as PNG files which create specialized effects. Those are donated by the author for your use. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, Click on "timeline" then on "Auto spread slides along music" to cause the slides to be equally distributed along the music track so that music and slides end together. Otherwise you need to time the slides to equal the length of the music. That is if you need the slides to be of different durations then you need to manually synchronize them. Best regards, Lin

Assuming you are using PTE version 5.0 the best format for music is MP3. If you could tell us which version of PicturesToExe you are using and which sound format files it would help. Best regards, Lin

Hi Joy, There should be no problem at all with Video Builder - it sounds like perhaps a codec issue or incorrect setting. The "Default" in Video Builder is for PAL rather than NTSC so if you live in the US or Canada, you will need to change this via Project Options from Video Builder: At the top of the "Project Options" box where it says "TV System". Be sure you have the correct one for your part of the country. Otherwise just use the defaults and you "should" get a perfect DVD... Could you provide screen snaps of your process or explain exactly the approach you are using? Typically, just using the defaults will produce perfect DVD's. The way to test is to use rewritable DVD's and make a slideshow of only about 3 slides to minimize the time for rendering and burn until this is worked out. There isn't a tutorial yet, but will be before too long. Lin

Do you mean you want to play them in sequence, one after the other? Or do you want a menu so you can choose which one to play? Do you want them to play on your computer, or are you trying to run them on a DVD. The executable files must be located on your drive where the program can find them. It's easier if you put them all in a single folder. Lin

You probably are doing everything correctly, but it's a bit convoluted. The program "reads" comments which have been placed in the EXIF file but doesn't have a provision for writing "to" the EXIF. Other programs such as IrfanView, PowerExif, PixVue, etc., can write to the EXIF and let you put in comments but it's still not as straight-forward as one would like. The problem seems to be that the data you enter via these different programs apparently doesn't reside in the same location to be called with the same general retrieval call. I have put comments in via IrfanView and can read them with IrfanView but when I open the same file in PowerExif or PixVue I can't find these comments anywhere. I can enter comments via PixVue or PowerExif and read them but then can't find them in IrfanView. I have yet to be able to retrieve them via the PicturesToExe feature but I"m quite certain it's not PicturesToExe which is causing the problem, just that where PTE is "looking" for these comments is not where they are actually being stored by these various programs. To complicate things further there are EXIF comments (which I assume is where PTE is looking) and there are IPTC metadata files which can also have "comments". I'm working right now on experimentation to see if I can put different comments in different places and perhaps find where the proper place and with which "tool" they can most easily be placed and then retrieved. In the next version of PTE (5.1) I believe Igor will perhaps add the ability to retrieve more EXIF data. Right now it's quite limited and I'm certain part of the difficulty is because of this "apparent" non-standard among different programs for data which "should" be standardized. The bottom line is that right now neither Comments nor Description are working in PTE but Date and Time are .... Other EXIF information is not yet implemented. I've discussed this with Igor and he will be looking into perhaps a complete EXIF retrieval or at least the commonly used EXIF inforation for the next PTE version. Perhaps it's of limited use to you right now, but it is possible to export the EXIF data as text by using PowerExif, etc., then import the text file via PTE in the comments field where you see "load". This way you "can" display the exif information, but it's a bit obtuse to have to export it for each image then import it as a text file for each image. Lin

Hi Felix, In version 5.0 there isn't a way to "directly" and automatically insert a blank slide from a menu choice, etc., but you "can" do it this way: Put a regular but unwanted slide in where you want the blank to appear, then go to the Objects and Animations screen and delete it. This will leave a blank slide at that position which you can then use as a backdrop for text, etc. The original will remain in the main "slide list" an look just as it did when you entered it, but when the show is played having deleted it from the Objects and Animations screen it will appear as a blank (black) screen with whatever text or other animated objects you may have added via the Objects and Animations screen. Actually, I find it helpful to create a folder and place blank jpg's of various colors, gradients, etc., which can be used over and over whenever needed for title screens, etc. Lin

Try temporarily removing the fifth slide then try again and see if it still gets disabled on the fifth slide. It sounds much as if there is a problem with that particular image. Could you say which version you are using, the operating system, video card type and amount of video RAM? It's difficult to diagnose without some more details, but the first two things to try are to first remove the fifth slide and if there is any music, remove that as well. Once you determine whether it's an image issue you can proceed with other tests. Lin

Like this? http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/transition.zip Lin