Lin Evans

LOL - one of the benefits of being "seim-retired"... Of course being broke most of the time is the downside - HA! I'll have to fix those scratches on her table - hope I didn't put them there... The infinite zoom idea will definitely work. I had to use some fade transitions in the earlier frames because I didn't have any grid precise enough to do perfect matching, but with a perfect match on the end-slide, begin-slide sequence a "quick, no transition" is virtually undetectable as it was in several of the later images where they were large enough that I could more closely (on in some cases perfectly) align slide content position. I'm satisfied that this is indeed possible and would work to good advantage for things like panoramas where one might want to zoom in very tightly on particular areas. The key is in segmenting the huge files into "byte" sized pieces which can be seamlessly integrated with PTE both on zoom in and zoom out. Perhaps Igor will be able to give us a precise grid with reference numbers for the next release (5.1, etc.) and this will make it much easier to match things up. Of course the photography must be amenable, but that's another issue. Best regards, Lin

O.K., this is a first attempt at an "infinite zoom" sort of after the effect of Zoomify. Several issues became aparent. First, we definitely need a precision grid to do this type thing well. It's necessary to match image positions and sizes nearly perfectly from end of slide one to beginning of slide two, etc. Second, we need nearly perfect photography so this first attempt is not "perfect" because I had to quickly take an number of frames to attempt to match a macro I did several months ago. It was not entirely successful, but not bad considering. Third, we need to use consistent zoom proportions from slide to slide. For example, if you allot 30 seconds to each slide, then the percentage of zoom per slide must remain very consistent or there will be issues. In this sample there are seven slides. It's not feasible to reduce a huge high resolution slide to a small size then zoom in to 100% to achieve this effect because of the too large RAM loading on the video card. In Zoomify, and the new Microsoft HD zoom software, a huge image is broken down into manageable segments which are then switched in and out as the zoom progresses. I attempted to somewhat simulate this by matching 100% end size to reduced start size per slide. The subject was a tiny wooden carved Kachina doll made by a Native American Artist. The height of the carved portion not counting the tiny wooden base is about one centimeter, so very, very tiny. The final macro was done by combining nine images each taken with a slightly different focus point for infinite depth of field. Helicon Focus was used to achieve the image used in the last couple frames. The rest of the photos were taken hand held tonight with three different lenses. 15-30mm, 70-300mm and 80-400mm. Anyway, here's the first attempt. About 22 meg zipped executable and a bit over 5 minutes of zoom.... 6/10/07 - I've modified the program slightly for better registration between transitions and made it visually a little more appealing I think... Lin My link to Kachina Zoom

Hi Cor, I don't think you need a new computer, just a new video card. The computer itself has quite sufficeint power to run the slideshows without problem, but the MX460 doesn't. As I told someone else a few days ago, if you have an AGP (advanced graphics port) slot on the bus (run dxdiag to see) you can get an older ATI Radeon 9800 Pro on the web for a bit over (and sometimes under) $100 U.S. - certainly cheaper than a new computer and will run virtually any slideshow smoothly without problems. Best regards, Lin

Here's my take on it. If you are going to spend the time and effort to scan images from 35mm negaitve or transparency, you should go ahead and scan them at a dpi which will recover all the detail possible from the slide or negative within reason. By within reason, I mean that an expensive drum scan at a bit over 5,000 dpi "might" still pull a bit of extra detail from the transparencies or negatives "if" ond only "if" the originals were done with very fine grain media. In the case of "average" or "typical" 35mm frames, there is little probability that scanning at over 4,000 dpi would be of any value, but scanning at lower resolutions will not get all the latent detail in a properly focused original on fine grain film or transparency. The problem is that since there is a good deal of time and effort involved, why not create a digital original which you can later print at whatever maximum size the individual frame will allow considering subject matter and grain? You can "always" resample the images down for your slideshow to whatever pixel count you need or want, but you can't go the other way (interpolate) and get any more detail and quality than in the original scan. Just my $02 on this... Best regards, Lin

Hi Giel, Very nice! I love the happy mermaids!! Beautiful images of impressive rigging. Best regards, Lin

Hi Silvia, You would ask me that! LOL Actually, I didn't write it down when I made the text, I just picked one which looked nice to me. I spent about 30 minutes trying to match it and it may have been "Calligraph421 BT" in itallic. I created the text as a PNG file in Photoshop and I used the Layers Drop Shadow and Contour to give the characters some dimensionality so they don't look "exactly" as they would if I hadn't applied these effects. Best regards, Lin

Hi Judy, Thanks Judy! Those are small discs of adobe brick laid out on cement slabs. They are used as color samples by the rangers when mixing and matching sandstone and mortar for making repairs which have to be done on occasion to keep the integrity of some of the buildings and walls. Best regards, Lin

Hi Neil, Good to hear. Both Al's and my pano should be smooth with most systems. Best regards, Lin

Hi Al, The same base algorithm developed by the authors of "autostitch" at UBC is used in Autopano Pro but there is very sophisticated automatic blending, etc., to take care of the problems which you needed to address by cloning. This method is licensed now to three different pano software developers. Autopano Pro was used to stitch the 13 gigapixel Harlem photo. Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, Not a problem in this particular case because the subject was quite far away and typical of Bryce Canyon images - primarily the beautiful rock cliffs. The same was true for Peter Grote's Annapurna frame done with the Betterlight scanning camera. To get great results from many, many overlapping frames, it's necessary to choose the subject matter more carefully. I've used PTAssembler and PTGui and both have strengths and weaknesses like most stitching programs. The reason I like Autopano Pro is the combination of power and simplicity. It has excellent blending uses three types of interpolation, can match odd frames which are very difficult for other programs and you can simply throw all your images into a single folder, even ones not part of the stitch, and the program will automatically find, order and stitch every possible pano. It has some fantastic features. I'll get back with another test a bit later. Best regards, Lin

A suggestion would be to create a quick and simple slideshow with music which does this and let some other users try it on their systems. Are you by any chance using a SoundBlaster Audigy sound card? The reason I ask is that I get some of this through my headphones with my SoundBlaster, but when I play the same slideshow on other systems the sound plays perfectly. The sound on this system plays fine on CD's and such but there is something not quite right about the SoundBlaster. I don't have this issue with any of my other seven computer systems. Best regards, Lin

If I understand right you are looking for a "universal" or default setting? If not, each button's size can be set in one of two ways. You can either simply drag the bounding rectangle until the size is suitable, or you can do that then look at the zoom numbers and duplicate them for each button. The "problem" for me is that if the text lies on the button itself, the button will change sizes depending on the "quantity" of text characters. For example, if you have the default word "Button" on the button, it will be larger than the same button with the simply the letter "B" on it. So you can't change the font size directly, except by choosing a different font, but you "can" make the text on the button invisible then add your own text which you can size as you did the button with the bounding rectangle. The you can set set the text to an "action" if you wish. It's a bit kludge, but is a work-around. It would be nice if there were a way to simply set a default size for all buttons and change the font sizes to keep the same button font but use a smaller font size for longer button I.D. text. It's something I asked about in an earlier post but Igor has been very busy with trying to get version 5 out so we may have to wait until the first upgrade for him to address this question. Best regards, Lin

A question from a forum member prompted me to write this brief reminder. If you have the need to automate running several of your slideshows sequentially from a CD or from the computer in a sequence without intervention from the user you probably realize that this can be done by simply setting the last slide in each show to run the next program in sort of a "daisy chain" sequence, but what if you would like to do this without having each executable be encumbered with a code which runs some other file? Perhaps you would like to use these executable files without having to modify each to fit a particular purpose or one-time use?? The use the "invisible menu". This is easily done by taking advantage of the fact that PicturesToExe can make any object or slide invisible by setting the opacity to zero. So how can this be used to create the scenario above? Just create a brief executable file containing a few "invisible" slides (set opacity to zero). Set the time to a couple seconds or so for each invisible slide, set the effect to "quick, no transition," and set the slides to run an external progam which would be the slidshows you wish to sequence, etc. This "invisible menu" then runs the first invisible slide, executes the desired program, returns invisibly and runs the second invisible slide which in turn calls the next desired program, etc. Thus you have circumvented modifying each slideshow with a slide which calls another show and eliminate the need to make changes to several slideshows. Lots of possibilities here folks! Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, I'll touch on a few of them. First let me say that Memories On TV Pro, Proshow Producer and Proshow Gold are very, very nice programs. Each are feature rich and there are things such as drop-in video clips, adjust images within program, some sound editing capabilities, etc., which Producer and Gold can do which are not currently possible with PTE. Also with Producer there are advanced masking features, Flash and Presenter output for web and some dynamite transitions which are very nice. These are also things which are not possible with PTE. Now for PTE's features not available with Producer, Gold or any other commonly available presentation slideshow software. You already know about hardware rendering and image quality. Memories On TV Pro doesn't make executable files, of course so that's one feature. Producer and Gold do, so that's a shared feature with PTE, but of course without high resolution output by hardware rendering. Three of the very powerful features not shared with other programs are parent/child relationships, off-center rotation and object calls from within the program. Let's start with off center rotation. Normally, in a slideshow program images rotate on their center mass axis. So if you choose to rotate an image (let's use a silver dollar as an example) the dollar would "spin" clockwise or counterclockwise so many rotations in such and such a time span. Of course you can also do this with PTE. But PTE goes much farther in that you can move the axis of rotation anywhere you desire. With this feature coupled with unlimited keypoints (keyframes in producer lingo) you can describe circles, bezier curves, elipses, etc. For example, let's say you wanted an object or small image to circle around the perimeter of the monitor rather than rotate on its own axis. You simply move the center of rotation to the center of the monitor and when rotate is used the object or image circles around on the screen. Now let's discuss the parent/child relationship. This feature lets you make any object a child of any other object. This can mean child, grandchild, great grandchild, etc. A "child" takes on the attributes of the parent. So if you rotate the parent, zoom the parent, pan the parent, etc., the child follows this action precisely. But, if you wish the child can also perform its own independent zoom, pan, rotate in conjunction with the animation of the parent. So how does this work in a practical example?? Let's take the above off-center rotation example. When you move the axis of rotation to the center of the screen with the object at the top or sides, the objec rotates around the screen. But when it reaches the bottom the orientation is naturally reversed or "upside down". What if you wanted it to remain upright while rotating? The you could simply duplicate the object as a child of the original, set the rotation for the child to the polar opposite of the parent, make the parent invisible with the unlimited opacity capability and when the object rotates only the child is seen and the orientation stays upright regardless of the position on the screen. This happens because the parent is rotating 360 degrees in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction and since the child follows this animation, the normal rotation for the child would be as the parent. But if you set the rotation for the child exactly opposite that of the parent without changing the child's default center-mass axis of rotation, the child will mirror the circle described by the parent but rotate on its own center mass in the opposite direction at the same rate as the parent thus the net effect during the circle movement on the screen is zero rotation or stasis in regards to it's center-mass axis regardless of the position of the child object on the screen. Another possibility is to rotate a cube and see all six sides rather than the three sides possible with Producer or Gold. Let's say you want a helicopter to fly level across the screen with the tail rotor rotating normally but with the main rotor blade rotating horizontally? With the parent child relationship it's easily accomplished. You can't do this with Producer or Gold. What if you want to animate a picture and rotate it on not only the X and Y axis independently, but also on the Z axis? This too is possible with PTE. Finally, the ability to use object calls from within the program. This gives you the possibility of running any external executable file from within your slideshow program then returning and continuing on seamlessly with the slideshow. You can easily make your own menus and do things not possible with Producer or Gold such as immediately jump to any slide number from a menu called from within PTE. Pop up a menu slide from an invisible button, click on slide 23 and immediately go to that slide, etc. Control your slideshow manually, automatically or both by a navigation bar. Sure you can pause a Producer slideshow, but try to random access to any slide in the show. Then there is total control over zoom, pan and rotate characteristics. PTE shares llinear and smooth zoom with the others, but it also has non-linear accelerate, decelerate, and smooth which the user can adjust to any curve. So complete control over this between any two keypoints. Also there is "perspective zoom," another feature not found in the others. The bottom line is that Producer and Gold and Memories on TV Pro are essentially programmed approaches while PTE is a low level tool to let the user create their own "program". It's not nearly as feature rich as the other three but in many ways much more powerful from a "low level" programming perspective. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Thanks - I told Fred that this might be the case. I asked him to run dxdiag and see if his bus supported an AGP slot. If so, I gave him a link to a place to buy an inexpensive ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card which should work very well with larger and difficult animations. Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, The Cliff Palace pano is a stitch of five images. Right now the current largest stitched image contains over 2,000 images and is 13 gigapixels in size. The first gigapixel stitched image was done by Max Lyons of a scene in Bryce Canyon, UT. Max used his old D60 (six megapixel) Canon to make 196 separate overlapping captures. He then had to write his own software to handle the stitching of the +2.00 gigabyte file. The result was a beautiful 1.09 gigiapixel image which was printed uninterpolated at 300dpi by LightJet technology. The largest print size possible for the LightJet used could not do it in on a single page so separate prints put the entire image together for the final ten by twelve foot print which Max displayed at PMA in Las Vegas three years ago. I spent about forty five minutes examining the beautiful print which was absolutely breathtaking in detail. At the same PMA show another beautiful huge print was displayed by Peter Grote which he took in a single scan with his Betterlight scanning back. This one was taken in a single frame and consisted of over a 500 megapixel panorama file of a scene in the Annapurnas (mountain range in the Himalayas}. Peter was using a motorized pano head. He printed it at an uninterpolated 180 dpi on an Epson 9600 inkjet. The print was about 17 feet by 4 feet and done from roll paper so in one continuous piece. After carefully comparing the prints, Max actually had more detail from his stitched image. So the bottom line is that it is entirely possible to have incredible resolution gained from overlapping multiple stitched images. The problem in displaying them (up to 2 gigabytes in size for all current Windows compatibility) is not PicturesToExe, but the computer hardware. Just stitching these huge images in an overwhelming task. Once they are stitched, the file size must be small enough to be amenable to the Windows operation system being used. For overall compatibility that would be 2 gigabytes of file size. But this would only be possible for an animated (pan, zoom, rotate) still image if the GPU (graphical processing unit) in the Video card could process the image and if the video card had sufficient RAM to handle such a load. With present technology this would only be possible if the images were broken down into bite-sized (byte-sized) pieces. So for performing an "infinite" zoom sort of as you see on Google Earth, you would need to mix different still images ending one with level of zoom in where the next begins. This can be done, but it requires careful mix and match techniques. To a degree, doing a single zoom in on a reasonably highly detailed large panorama is quite possible, but likely to exceed the hardware capabilities of many users. Of course if you are only making the slideshow to be displayed on a projector using your own equipment, then whatever limitations that applied would only be applicable to your own system. Actually, the reason I posted this test is to approximate finding workable limits for this kind of application for general use. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Thanks! Good to hear that it works well on the Nvidia FX5700 - so far I've only had one response (email) from someone who has had trouble, but time will tell I guess. Best regards, Lin

I did get an email from a user with a Matrox Millenium G550 card who say it jitters really badly on his system. He says he has created the same type movements and had no problems with his own. I asked for more information and also for him to try downloading some other shows and see if it's possible to find something in common. It's a tough one sometimes to figure out why a show will perform properly on one system and not another. I'm a bit surprised though that if it runs on Patrick's system that it doesn't run smoothly on about any system, but time will tell. Best regards, Lin

Hey Ken, LOL - that should be a fun one to try - I'll work on it. That was nice of them to fix you up so both of you can watch in living 3D color!! Best regards, Lin

Hi Paul, Thanks much for the feedback. I've altered it a bit with a re-stitch and re-blend to remove the blue sidewalk, etc. I may tweak it a bit more by less zoom on some frames. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, I've redone it with a different transition which should be much better and rasterized the text so that should fit fine now too. You can actually have any size panorama, but the wider it is, the smaller the overall appearance will be when trying to display the entire frame without panning if you size it with the bounding rectangle to fit the monitor aspect ratio. For the title show, I just opened the original in Photoshop then set then copied and pasted to a giant screen with the grey background. Then I set the crop tool for 1024x758 for the proper aspect ratio on my monitor and cropped to the extreme of the horizontal dimensions leaving whatever vertical grey space remaining. The interesting thing is trying to determin which zoom percentage equals a 1:1 from the original. More on this below in my answer about the zoom percentages. Best regards, Lin

Thanks Patrick, Good catch. I went back and checked my originals (no problem) and discovered that I had an incorrect blending parameter set in my stitching software. At first I thought it was only a reflection from the blue sky on the fresh pavement on the far right because of the abrupt change at the point where the new pavement met the crushed rock/sand walk, but then I noticed that on the far left side the bush had strong bluish overtones on the bare areas. After restitching with the proper color/blend parameters and a quick check in Photoshop it looks proper. I corrected in the smaller pano used for the title and ending as well and re-zipped and loaded. It's good to hear that even the transition went fine this time. Thanks, Lin

Hi David, Thanks much! The brown one or the white one with half an ear missing? I corrected the problem with the font which was due to my mistake in using an uncommon font without rasterizing to PNG. I've done that now so text should display properly. The font Windows substituted is larger at identical point size than Viner Hand which I used. I also changed the circle transition on the end slide to a center open "gate" which I hope uses a bit less processing power and should work better on Patrick's system. Since Patrick gets a smooth response, I suspect this will play well on nearly any computer because his system has minimal video processing power and has been a great measuring stick for other slideshows. Best regards, Lin