Lin Evans

Hi Jeff, Just click on the Video tab as if you were going to burn a video from beta 10 and you will find a link. Lin

Great News Dom! Best regards, Lin

Hi Bob, It could be that you have two keypoints very close together. Use the small arrows < > located to the far right on the far right to step through keypoints in the direction the arrows point. The quick solution would be to just delete the first keypoint by right clicking on it and choosing delete. Then you can again right click and "add" keypoint then set the timeing to zero in the keypoint block. On the next version I think if there are two identical keypoint there will be a color change from blue to red or something to warn you but in the present version they only way you know there are duplicates is to actually use the arrow keys. When you press the left arrow and nothing else happens then you know you have reached the first (or last) keypoint. If the numbers don't change to zero then the only solution would be to delete the first keypoint and re-create it as described above. Actually there should not be a difference in the numbers as on your example. Even if they are extremely close together the keypoint in blue shoudn't display a different value than the one in the block in numbers - something may be wrong but I can't for the life of me figure out exactly what it is. The way the keypoints work is that the very first keypoint on each slide registeres zero as the starting point for that slide but it's possible to "drag" a keypoint forward from zero and on other than slide one backward so that effects for that slide begin as animations for the previous slide end. In other words slides can overlap which is commonly used to blend actions from one to the other. Subsequent keypoints on slides (after the first or zero keypoint) indicate real time. If you have say the default of four seconds and the second slide has keypoint two one second from the start its time would be 5000 or five seconds. There may not really be any problems with your show. The important thing is whether or not it performs as you wish. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, The navigation bar will be enabled in beta 10 which should be out any day now. It is not enabled in beta 9u or previous betas. Betas proceed and new features are slowly added to facilitate debugging. Version 5 release is tentatively slated for about one month from now with "all" the features enabled. If you read the forum regularly Igor announces the features which will be available in each beta release. Here is a link to the latest statement: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6485 Lin

Hi Bob, That's really strange. Changing the value in the box absolutely "should" set the corresponding value in the first keypoint. Of course the "only" place you will ever see zero in the first keypoint is on slide one of all slides since the keypoints are carried in a cumulative fashion as the timeline represents the entire slideshow rather than on a "per-slide" basis. Could you make a screen capture and post it so we are sure we are on the same page? Just use Irfanview or similar screen capture for a jpg of the timeline and maybe we can sort this out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bob, Just go to the keypoint time block under the Objects and Animations screen in Animations block and enter a zero. You can always enter values to "fine tune" what you approximate by moving the slider with the small green arrow. The values are in thousands of seconds so the 1000 equals one second, 2000 equals two seconds, etc. Lin

Hi Ron, It was more of a serendipitous discovery than a "fix". We know why disabling the sound card "fixed" the issue with the smoothness of movement, but what is still to be understood is why the problem didn't return when the card was re-enabled. As much as is presently known about electronics and signal interactions, there is still much to be discovered. There are so many different combinations of drivers, sound cards, video cards, etc., out there that it constantly amazes me that anything works as expected. We indeed owe a great debt of gratitude to Igor and the team for the fantastic job they have done in bringing us this fantastic software which is even more amazing when one looks at the myriad obstacles there are to successful results. Best regards, Lin

Problem solved on my system per Igor's suggestion to disable my sound card. After disabling my Sound Blaster Audigy card, the problem with the jerky pan went away. I was expecting to see it re-appear when I again enabled the sound card, but it didn't! Everything works now as smoothly as before. Igor is running more tests now and will have more information later. Lin

I suspect this is related to some changes which have been made since version 8v. I have multiple systems and my development system is the most powerful having an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AGP card. It has been glass smooth with all versions until beta 9 but has severe issues with jerky pan in version 9a. Also I've discovered that shows created with 9a give me a "picture not found" error when I try to open in earlier versions such as 8v. With my other systems I'm not getting this jerky movement but it's there and very plain to see with 9a. Best regards, Lin

Between 8u and 9 I've noticed a "pulsing" of horizontal movement. Take a single image and set the size to about 25 percent of original so there is plenty of black surrounding the image. Set the custom time to about 10 seconds. Start with the image completele off the screen to the left and set a single keypoint at about the 10 second point and drag the image off the screen on the right. Run the preview and see if the horizontal movement "pulses" or jerks at about 1 second intervals. It doesn't do this in 8u for me, the movement is very smooth, but it does do this in 9 and 9a. Note: I've discovered that this problem seems to be limited to my development system which uses an ATI 9800 Radeon Pro AGP graphics card. Something between 8v and 9a has changed because this card has been glass smooth with all movement until now. Problem is now solved. Igor had me disable my SoundBlaster Audigy sound card to test and with the card disabled through the control panel, system, hardware, device manager, sound-video and game controller, the problem went away. I was fully expecting it to return when I re-enabled the sound card but it did not return and everything works perfectly now with butter smooth pans, zooms and so on - fantastic. Igor is doing further tests now with log files from my system... Lin

Hi Andrew, If I understand you correctly, I don't believe there is. You can copy and paste complete segments from one show to another, as Hawk explained long ago, but you can't copy only the properties and insert a corresponding keypoint with actions without the associated image. So as far as I know this can't presently be done. Lin

Hi Jean, You may want to wait for beta 10 which will be out shortly. Lin

Actually, it's not a linitation of the program at all, it's a limitation of the font features of the computer. Each computer is shipped with so many default fonts. When yu go from operating system to operating system or when you add software containing fonts this number or quantiy and type of fonts changes. Because of this it's not possible to be certain that the font you choose will be available on another computer. When you suspect this may become an issue, the best way is to convert the font to a graphic file via the rasterize to PNG function. By doing this then choosing the PNG file you assure that the font you have chosen will appear exactly as you intend even if no such font exists on the computer it's being played on. Fonts have always been a problem for not only slideshows but for other programs using text. Computers are designed so that when a particular font isn't found, the operating system will substitute a different font. Fortunately, PTE has a nice way around that limitation via the rasterize to PNG feature. If you want to avoid this, it's best to stay with very "common" fonts such as Times Roman, Arial, etc. Lin

Thanks!! Incredible! On schedule and progressing very, very well! Again, congratulations and all are looking forward to upgrading. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mayy, The quickest way I know to get rid of any animation is simply delete the keypoints. Since everything in the way of animation happens between keypoints, deleting kepoints on the timeline for the individual object leaves you with the starting condition of the object. Lin

Hi Granot, Click "Tools" then "Device" then . Uncheck the Microphone and check Wave/MP3. Also check whether Advanced properties are turned on by clicking on "Options". There you will also find another checklist. It works very well from sound card capture. I don't think you need anything else. Best regards, Lin

Hi Granot, Just like there are video capture tools, there are audio capture tools which capture sound from the sound card (rather than record directly from speaker output). Here's one I use which works well and is inexpensive: http://www.mp3-recorder.biz/ Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, In some of the newer dSLR cameras there is a sensor which detects when the camera is used in the "portrait" position. This "tags" the image so that when it's displayed with various photo editing software when this "tag" is detected the image is automatically rotated 90 degrees for viewing. The "assumption" is that it would be rotated counter clockwise assuming that the photographer held the camera so that the shutter release would be on top rather than on the bottom. This has created some confusion when software automatically rotates the image because the rotation is normally only for viewing and the file isn't automatically saved in the rotated position. So even though it appears rotated for the purpose of viewing, when the same file is placed in another environment which is not sensitive to the "tag" it appears in its original orientation. Obviously for print purposes it doesn't matter but if the file is manually rotated and saved then the problems begin. Assuming the tag isn't removed when the file is saved, then other software sensitive to the tag sees it and rotates it 90 degrees counter clockwise it's once again misoriented for viewing. It works well for people who have a fixed workflow but can be annoying for those who use a variety of software. Lin

Hi Igor, I think she means to select from a list of fixed font sizes in pixels or "points" as in a word processing document. Of course one can select with the "slider" now from "15" upward as a default, but I think Silvia means that if a fixed font size were selected it would be constant across all text for the display. It's very easy now to visually set size then check reference number by slider and repeat for other text. Best regards, Lin

Alain, Click on the object in the objects list to highlight. Next click on the "Common" tab and click inside the "transparent to selection" block so there is a check mark there. If you follow the SWF tutorial I linked to per your question about how to do the XY & Z axis from the sample you see how I used it in the helicopter rotor blade example. By clicking inside the transparent to selection block you will be able to easily move the text rectangle with the mouse. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, Notice that there is now an additional tab called "common" between Animations and Properties. Inside this tab window is a greyed out "action on mouse click" which will be where you set the attributes for the particular object or button. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, Not to answer for Igor, but the blur does work on the text. The rasterize text to png is simply a convenience. What if you wanted to apply the perspective distortion to a png text paragraph to simulate the Star Wars effect? You just create your text in PTE export then open the png file in Photoshop, apply any specialized effects with the layers properties, free transform, transform, etc., and you have saved lots of effort in trying to type in your text and so on in Photoshop. As you know it's very difficult to make corrections on a PNG file once it's been created. Doing the hard work in PTE makes it a snap. Best regards, Lin

Hi Alain, Yes, the effect is done by using the parent/child/grandchild relationship using two rectangles and the object to be manipulated so that rectangle one is the parent, rectangle two the child and the object to be manipulated on the XY and Z axis the grandchild. After setting up the relationship and creating the animations, the two rectangles are made invisible by setting their opacity to zero. A while back one of our forum members wanted to create an effect where he had a helicopter flying across the screen. The problem was how to make the rotor blade rotate in a horizontal fashion. It was easy enough to separate the main rotor blade as a separate png object in Photoshop thus having the helicopter body and tail rotor as separate png files, but the issue was how to make the main rotor blade rotate horizontally rather than vertically. Jean-Pierre (JPD) devised a very interesting and useful way by taking advantage of the fact that PTE allows parent/child/grandchild relationships. By rotating the child rectangle about 52 degrees inside the parent rectangle, then by using the available independent XY axis (change zoom independently) it became possible to not only distort the perspective of the main rotor blade so that it appeared to lie on a horizontal plane, but also when rotated using the regular object rotation feature, the rotation as a child of the "child" rectangle, maintained the perspective distortion thus allowing horizontal rotation. This was not easy to explain in words, and JPD is a French native speaker, so I made a little AV Flash Tutorial on how it was accomplished (link below). The brief tutorial is in Flash 8 SWF format. If you don't have a Flash 8 player you can use the latest version of IrfanView which can play it. It's in a zipped format so you can download and play the tutorial on your own computer. It's in English - possibly somone who speaks other languages could translate. It demonstrates the use of this principle which I also used to do the little demonstration with the ship image. If you follow the tutorial, it will be easy to see how I used the same principle for the ship. http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/rotorblade.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, Though I don't think the buttons are yet linked to the various functions, you can indeed create "invisible" buttons. As objects, the buttons can have any attribute just as any other object. So to make a button invisible, just decide what area you wish to cover, size the button accordingly and set the attribute for opacity to zero and the button becomes invisible. Best regards, Lin