Lin Evans

Hey Jeff, Thanks! Fun scenics and great critters here in Colorado and lovely ladies too... Best regards, Lin

Hi Howard, Thanks - the birds in Rocky Mountain National Park and the Colorado area are very interesting. As you probably already know these were the Clark's Nutcracker and Steller's Jay and of course Bald Eagle. The Steller's and Nutcrackers love to hang out on the high elevation roadside stops and beg for treats from the tourists. The Nutcrackers' as especially "crafty" and like seagulls will take food right away from you when you're not looking - LOL. Beat regards, Lin

Thanks Neil, Yes, Colorado is a great place for scenic wonders. Those of us who live in the great SW are fortunate to have many opportunities to capture nature just by waking up and walking outside in the morning. Sherry thanks you too! She's blushing - LOL... Best regards, Lin

Thanks Mike, No PhotoShop at all - that's Maroon Bells. one of the most photographed spots in the world just as photographed at sunrise. There's only about a 30 second "window" to catch the golden hues before they turn orange. You set up at the end of Maroon Lake about 4:00 am in total darkness and start snapping as the sun rises - definitely an awe inspiring sight. Best regards, Lin

A little fun family show I made for my mother-in-law who lives in California. Local Colorado scenery and wildlife and of course the "Colorado Girl" who is my wife, Sherry. The three images of her span over 20 years with the last one being taken this afternoon. Our two great roping horses, Naroya and Choco seen in the second horse image taken 21 years ago have passed on now and Nicky, the palomino in the last shot taken today with Sherry is 32 years young! Sherry will celebrate her half-century minus one year birthday next month - LOL. Both she and Nicky are doing great. http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/coloradogirl.zip (about 44 meg) - running time about 6.5 minutes Lin

Hi Igor, Closest thing to actually being there!! I hope you are enjoying your well-earned vacation - beautiful sky and cloud formations. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, In addition to Hawk's suggestion, there is one other way of certainly "running" the slideshows in sequence. I'm not certain exactly what you mean by "uninterupted" but if you follow my "invisible menu" suggestion (link to follow) what happens is essentially you start the invisible menu which in turn calls the first slideshow then the second slideshow, etc. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6834 If you do this, remember to turn off hardware acceleration in the "invisible menu" so you don't compromise any animations in the slideshows being called. By using this method, you can run the programs in a loop if you wish ending it at any prescribed number of iterations determined by the number of invisible slides in the invisible menu. Best regards, Lin

If you will post a link to a show which does this, we can check it out and see what the problem may be. It could be as simple as your video driver needing upgraded or it could be something else such as the video card itself - it's tough to tell without trying the slideshow on another system or two. Meanwhile why don't you try downloading some of the slideshows already done by others and see if you have the same problems. Here's a link to one I did a while back which makes extensive use of fades. If this one plays properly then we know the problem is caused by something in your show itself. If it doesn't, then the problem is probably hardware related. http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/vger2.zip (about 35 meg ziipped executable) Best regards, Lin

There is no real advantage to image compression. All images expand in memory to their full necessary size. All compression does is make the executable show size smaller but when the executable is loaded the images in jpg format expand as they are being played. It's actually the dimensions not the file size which is important in terms of resources. Best regards, Lin

Actually, The latest version is 5.0 which is a free upgrade from earlier versions. The Deluxe addition is Video Builder which adds internal DVD authoring capabilities. If you own any version of PicturesToExe version 5.0 is a free upgrade as will all future versions of the standard PicturesToExe program. Only Video Builder is an optional upgrade and carries a two year free upgrade warranty. Lin

Hi Dave, You can already do this. Some time ago Hawk provided the method which consists on a very simple copy/paste operation. Open the file you want to copy from and go to the slide list. Select all slides and perform an Edit/Copy. Leave the show open and open the show you want to copy to. Go to the slide list and do a Paste. Save the second show under a new name. That's it. Lin

Lots of interesting physics in this one. Uses acceleration, deceleration, linear, XY axis manipulation and rotation math... LOL.. ------------------------- Bottle of Wine, Fruit of the Vine, when you gonna let me get sober, leave me alone - let me go home, I wann'a go back and start over. Ramblin' around this dirty old town - singing for nickels and dimes Times getting rough - aint got enough to buy me a bottle of wine Little hotel, older than Hell Cold and dark as a mine Blanket so thin, I lie there and grin Buy me little bottle of wine Aches in my head, bugs in my bed Pants so old that they shine Out on the street, tell the people I meet Won'ch buy me a bottle of wine Teacher must teach and the preacher must preach Miner must dig in the mine I ride the rods, trusting in God And huggin my bottle of wine............ ----------------- http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/rubberball.zip (just bouncing balls - about 443K ) http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/rubberballtitle.zip (with movie menu intor - 24 meg) two executables - run title first & will call rubberball.exe Lin

Without actually seeing them, it's very difficult to make suggestions. Essentially DVD, whether PAL or NTSC format are low resolution not even reaching 800x600 (SVGA) standards so will never look like an original. But in addition to low resolution, when they are displayed on a computer monitor they rarely if ever look as good as when displayed on a television. So more specific information is needed to really answer your question. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jan, That should work very well indeed. Best regards, Lin

Hi Keith, The circle effect was done by setting the display time for the slide and the effect time identical. For example 23 seconds display and 23 seconds circle from center. The amout of feathering comes from the thickness of the smoothing line. Remember to put a check in the box next to it or whatever numbers you place there will be meaningless. The larger the numbers the more feathering and the smaller the less. If you put zero the program will change it to a slight amount but the edge will be very clean. I discovered a work-around for those who have experienced "sparkles" on pan or zoom start for sharp images that eventually smooth out. Of course you can always use the "blur" which helps on some but not all situations or you can apply a 1 pixel gaussian blur to the image but that, of course makes everything a bit too "smooth" or slightly blurred. The answer is to apply a gaussian blur of about 1 pixel to the entire image but save it under a different name. Make the blurred image a child of the main image. Set the main image opacity at start to zero and the blurred image to 100%. Fade in the original at the point where the "sparkle" normally quits and fade out the blurred image at the same time with keyoint opacity settings. Works like a champ.... Lin

Hi Ken, Yes, going from such a tiny image (subject) size there is really no good way outside of doing a gaussian blur (not really good for the image) to stop the shimmer. A faster zoom can help, but this was just for fun anyway. I'm planning on using my Swarovski ST 80 HD spotting scope for some patches to panos and just wanted to see how it might work out in terms of focal length steps with a combination of other lenses. What I learned was pretty much what I expected, that is to really do it justice it's necessary to include a good bit of extra real-estate when preparing the close-in zooms at 1280mm. To do this requires making a number of mini-panos which I didn't bother to do hence the circle zoom to mask the less that full screen before zoom on some of the frames. It's tough making panos at 1280mm primarily because of the difficulty of holding the scope rigid enough to shoot at an effective 1280 mm without using mirror lockup, remote release and lots of time and patience. If the light is good enough a higher shutter speed can do the job, but when I shot these it was overcast and pretty dim so had to boost levels a good deal in Photoshop. On the next good day I'm going to try another real pano similar to the last one. I was up at 4:00 am this morning for the 30 mile drive to try, but the overcast never burned off so a wasted trip. Best regards, Lin

Just playing around. This is a 15mm to 1280mm zoom for fun..... About 39 meg zipped executable... http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/prowler.zip Lin

Hi Vince, could you explain what a "jotplus" file is? Since the main PicturesToExe is free upgrades for life, the old key is good for version 5.0 as well a 4.48. Only if you need the Video Builder upgrade (internal DVD authoring) do you need to buy anything else. So the immediate solution seems to be whether your 4.xx version is "registered". If so the same key works for 5.0. So if you can help by explaining a "jotplus" (sorry it's a term I'm not familiar with) file is then perhaps we can figure out how to make it work for you. The issue with Regnow must be something between your ISP and the site because it seems to be working for the majority. There will be a solution, we just need more information. Best regards, Lin

Thanks Giel, The NVidia geforce 7600 is a decent video card - about mid-ways in terms of absolute performance among notebook computer GPU's so apparently capable of handling most any PTE presentation. In the U.S. we probably have an equivalent to the ASUS A6T but not under that brand name. The important thing is that the geforce 7600 can handle the 1400x1050 resolution output. What is the native LCD output? I'm assuming you don't run them simultaneously (LCE and Projector). Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, Here are links to two seemingly identical, or nearly identical 32 piece puzzles. One will play on almost all systems, even 32 meg video cards. The other presents a challenge to even the best video cards. If the laptop can play it smoothly, it can play about any PTE show smoothly. The difference is that in one case the PNG files which make up the individual puzzle pieces are relatively tiny with almost all the excess invisible background cropped out. In the other case each puzzle piece consists of an entire rather large PNG file most of which is invisible. When compressed into an executable format, the sizes are very close to each other and only about 4.3 meg. In fact they are nearly identical. But one is "actually" 4.3 meg while the other expands in memory to fill a 128 meg video card's capacity. The first is the very large RAM model: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/puzzle.zip The second is the small RAM model which will run on nearly any computer: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/puzzlesmallRAM.zip You can distinguish them from one another while playing in two ways. The small ram version ends with a "spinning goat" and the words "TA DA" on the center of the image. The large RAM version ends with the words "TA DAH" (an "h" in 'DAH') at the bottom of the screen. Both have midi music (very annoying - LOL) and there is an extended delay of about 7 seconds before the large RAM version begins to run. Put them on a USB flash memory card and run the executables on the test computers. Laptop's with the better Video cards will run both. There may be a slight "stutter" with the one puzzle piece which "circles" in the front on the large RAM version even with a decent video card. A machine with no "stutter" at all on this puzzle piece indeed has an exceptional video GPU. Lin

Hi Bill, Just a "quickie" on this - there are a number of elementary "tutorials" written by a few of us until we get a unified user's guide finished. I'll link you to another thread where you can link to the PDF's. Essentially you go to the Objects and Animations screen. Change the display time for the display of the individual image first by clicking on the "Customize Slide" then the "Main Tab". Once you have the time set to more than the four second default, go to the timeline (blue at the bottom) and put your mouse cursor just under the horizontal line which divides the blue portion and right click. From the resulting menu choose "add keypoint". Click on the added keypoint and drag it to the right or left to reach the actual time where you want the pan or zoom or rotate to end. Next click on the black arrow in the small blue box at the top of the screen between "Paste" and "Close" and change the percentage to something like 25% so you can see fully the bounding green rectangle surrounding your image. Click on one of the little "boxes" such as the one at the center, hold down the left mouse cursor and "drag" the image to make it the approximate size you wish. Click inside this and drag the image into the position you want for either a zoom or a zoom and pan. Be sure you have clicked on (highlighted) the second keypoint before doing this. Wherever you leave the image is where it will zoom or pan to. You can enter as many keypoints and changes as you wish. The closer the keypoints the faster things happen. Experiment.... Click on the link below and scroll down to get links to some elementary PDF explanations. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6959 Best regards, Lin

Hi DAB, Try verying the thickness of the smoothing line and see if that has an effect. Lin

Hi Jan, The DVI connect is primarily important for running large dual monitor LCD systems such as the 30 inch Apple, etc. I don't think you need this but best to check with the projector people to see what their requirements are before making a decision. Try this link to see which NVIDIA cards are in which computers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/wtb_notebooks.html Lin

Hi Jan, You might want to go here: http://compreviews.about.com/od/video/a/NoteVidSpec.htm scroll down and read about the various video cards used for laptops and their respective performances. The X1300 isn't one of the better rated video cards for performance, so I would be cautious about choosing that one. They are rated approximately according to their top-to-bottom position in the list. LCD displays really are optimized for a particular resolution and don't display properly at other resolutions. It's pretty much the nature of laptop LCD displays so you will probably not be able to see the show properly on the LCD while using the projector unless their resolutions are matched. But most have a function switch to give you a choice of external or internal display or both. The list above should help you make a choice. Best regards, Lin