Lin Evans

This question is best answered by Igor, but let me say that it is much more complex than running an AVI. PicturesToExecute hardware renders at the resolution you feed it. AVI. MPEG, etc., are low resolution movie formats which are quite different than the executable files created by PicturesToExe. High resolution intermediate images (intermidiate between the start and ending keypoints) are rendered then played back at speeds which allow smooth movement in scroll, rotate, pan and zoom. These are then wrapped into an executable format designed for the PC. You could create an AVI or MPEG file on your Mac then find a utility which would convert this to an executable format by including a run-time engine, but the results would be far from the quality of images produced in a PicturesToExe executable file. Your best bet, however, would be either to use PicturesToExe with one of the Macintosh utilities which allows running Windows on the Mac or use one of the MacIntosh slide show programs to create the original. Then convert it to Flash 8 which can then be seen on either Mac or PC machines. Flash is the most common format which is cross-compatible via the web. If you create an AVI or MPEG this can also be downloaded from the web then played on either a Mac or PC since each can play these formats. But as far as I know, there is nothing native to the Macintosh which can produce PTE quality in a presentation slideshow. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, Look at the linked jpg's. The html is to run the Flash.SWF player which in turn will play the Flash.FLV. It's a bit convoluted in how it all works but an SWF file is required for the player itself. You can embed the FLV or SWF directly in your web software without a player and it will play within the confines of your space alloted. Which web software do you use to create web pages? Most have a Flash import facility which is sometimes the easiest way to go. If you zip up your files which you have generated and post a link I will look at them and see what else you need and produce a page for you which you can link to via your host as a sample. http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/flix1.jpg http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/flix2.jpg Here's a link to an early test show I did when I was still trying to figure out how to center the display as I mention in the tutorial. This one was from a PSG show made into an MPEG then converted via Flix Pro to Flash 8 and using the optional Player from On2 Technologies. You will see the script I described in action with the "loading" message while my 10% preload was downloading. http://www.lin-evans.net/flixtest/flix.htm Lin

Hi Mike, It's found in the same reference as in your script sample below. Search for "Movie" Value= and find the slideshow name following. I don't know if you can substitute a PTE AVI filename in the Photodex script or not. It would be worth a try. The last time I was on the Enthusiast forum there were complaints about the Photodex Flash implementation not working quite right. I don't think that it's Flash 8 and I don't know if there is a Flash detection Java script in it or not. I no longer post there because the site owner emailed me that he had received "complaints" from about a dozen forum users who complained about theDom and about me posting instructions on how to use PTE created AVI files with Proshow Producer and Gold. Apparently there is a Fan Boy attitude with some there who feel threatened by any other products and felt we were "promoting" PTE. I can tell you with absolute honesty that that wasn't the case with either theDom or me but we were simply showing people who had emailed and asked how to create things with PTE then output to AVI and drop this AVI into their Producer or Gold slideshows. It it were possible to do with Producer or Gold there would be no desire there for using other products, but obviously it's possible to do things with PTE which can't be done or can't be done easily with Photodex products. The administrator removed a long and popular thread about theDom's Photo Album template and how to use it with Gold and Producer. I think the Fan Boy attitude by some users there is out of hand a bit - LOL. I returned his email and explained that I would not tip-toe around and compromise my honesty in answers to the many questions so therefore wouldn't be posting on his forum any longer. The bottom line is that I'm probably not the best source to ask about whether or not this can be done. It's definitely worth a try, but you may want to check the forum there and see if the problems with Flash output have been resolved yet. Best regards, Lin

In the first installment I covered general Flash information and gave links so you could investigate various Flash implementations. In this installment rather than tie up lots of bandwidth, I will post a link to a PDF I've created to discuss various issues with running a Flash 8 FLV slideshow on your web host server. I've used On2 Technologies Flix Pro as my sample, but the Java script sample and discussion can be used with any Flash 8 generated FLV slideshow. The issues I want to cover concern how to detect whether the visitor to your website or link has the Macromedia Flash 8 player installed and if so just play the slideshow and if not send them to the Macromedia site to do the very quick installation. The second part of the PDF concerns using the optional On2 Technologies Flash 8 player which is a very low priced solution to having a formatted framework to play the slideshow in. Remember in the previous installment I discussed the difference between the Macromedia Flash 8 Player and a Formatted Flash 8 Player necessary to have controls such as "start" "stop" "volume" and so on. In the next installment (not this one) I'll discuss converting a Riva Flash Player for use with Flix Standard or other Flash 8 FLV generated shows in case you decide to use Flix Standard or other Flash 8 conversion tools. Here's the link: http://www.lin-evans.net/tutorials/Flas8.pdf Best regards, Lin

LOL - I love it! Nice frame and great way to exchange images!! Best regards, Lin

I'm assuming you don't mean the reflection "wave" or rain falling in water "ripple" effects but rather something like a boat floating in water with waves lapping at the hull? If so, it may not be an easy thing to animate. The various "reflect" and wave action effects and ripples in water from drops, etc., are essentially done by multiple frames in a movie type action. This makes it difficult to put in other objects with their own animations simultaneously because to work correctly the other objects must appear in each frame of the sequences with slightly different positions to create the illusion of movement. With the reflection and water movement effects the same still image is repeated for each frame giving the illusion of only the water/ripple moving. To get wave actions using PTE it would be necessary to use multiple images each with a slightly different frame and to do this would require one of two alternatives - neither very easy to achieve. First one could animate the various objects in each frame and sequence the frames in movie fashion as separate slides. The other way would be to have multi-frames as separate "objects" each on their own individual layer and turn them off an on using the opacity function. Doing it this way would allow normal animation of other objects and achieve the movement effect of the water via pattern repetition. If the effects could be created with only a few (perhaps 10) frames for the water, then it might be possible to do without overloading the graphics environment but it would almost necessitate a recreation of the difficult timing sequence each time the effect was needed - in other words not terribly amenable to templating. If I get a chance, I may try to do this just for the curiosity of seeing if it could be done. On the other points of animation demos versus slideshows enhanced with animation - PTE is primarily a tool to produce superior presentation slideshows - on that I think we can all agree. But to explore the power and use it to its full advantage it's helpful to some of us to probe the depths of its power. That's how we learn what can and can not be done and how we can best use these effects in a show to elicit the desired emotion or response from the audience. The nice thing is that we "can" do more than pan, zoom, rotate and scroll if we so desire. There is no reason for anyone who only wants to use only the PZR effects (or not) to need to learn these alternative powers, but as many of you may have noticed, there have been numerous great slideshows created which "did" take advantage of more than just PZR (spotlights, opacity masks, falling leaves,etc.). So we should be thankful that we have a choice. The power to animate and the restraint to not animate when it doesn't fit. Just remember that most of us who are creating animation demos are doing so with the intent to learn more and to pass on that experience to those who may not have the time, energy or aptitude for experimentation. There is a method behind the "madness" folks.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, Let me just make a couple comments. Storage is dirt cheap. Let me give you an example. My hosting is through 1and1 (very good company). I have 250 gigabytes of file storage space, 2500 (two thousand five hundred) gigabytes per month of transfer bandwidth and this costs me less than $90 per year. You can get 120 gigabytes of storage and 1200 gigabytes of transfer per month for less than $45 per year: http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/MsHosting...amp;__lf=Static There is absolutely no reason why anyone who wants to host their own slideshows on their own site should have to worry about storage and expense. As a professional photographer and storing hundreds of slideshows, demos, thousands of images, etc., I haven't even began to use the capacity I have. I'll begin gathering the data I have put up in the past on Flash and such and get it organized and re-posted. It may take a couple days, but I'll get on it. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, There is no reason why you can't convert PTE's AVI output to Flash, I do it all the time. There are a number of good AVI to Flash converters and some are quite inexpensive. If you have a website, you can always post your slideshows there, there is no need for a dedicated server to do this. Long ago I posted many examples of Flash and rather complete information about the differences in Flash SWF and Flash FLV. One thing to keep in mind is that Flash is designed as a way to highly compress information and doing so has its downside as far as image quality is concerned. If you compress sufficiently to make your slideshows amenable to web use, the quality will suffer. If you don't compress greatly then the problem is that the file size is so large it takes a long time to upload and those who don't have the latest broadband connections will have problems playing the shows over the web. Besides Flash, there are other web formats which are also amenable to use. If there is sufficient interest, I will repeat the content of my posts about how to convert to Flash and other amenable formats and furnish samples. Best regards, Lin

That's a good question. I think sometimes it definitely does raise expectations and sometimes it's not feasible to do a really good simulation of reality. I think that's why animated movies often don't try to do more than "simulate" a modicum of reallity - just enough to let our imagination do the rest. For example, moving the grass in a realistic manner "can" be done, but I didn't do it. It would take far too many resources and too much time to do it correctly - at least as far as I know how to do it. So sometimes the animator would be smart not to use certain backdrops, etc., It would have been far easier to land the helicopter on a rocky mountain top and perhaps just stir up some dust - but not having a suitable image handy made me lazy and I settled for less than good... But it did give me something to play with this afternoon while dreaming of what beta 9 might bring!! Best regards, Lin

Just messing around - bored, I suppose - LOL http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/helicopter.zip Lin

Another great one Dom, I don't know where you find the time - LOL. Best regards, Lin

Also some very nice "unintended" (perhaps) consequences. By using a soft mask frame around the peripheral of a moving photograph the aliased edges (sparkles) are eliminated for that portion of the photo as one can see when you have both the masked and unmasked photos simultaneously moving on screen. Excellent use of the mask to highlight portions of a photo and draw and focus the observers attention to that area. Very nice effects and lots of work! Thanks!! Best regards, Lin

It was indeed "messed up" because it wouldn't let me report them either. I tried multiple times to report the spam messages (the one's with the yellow smiley face) and the system wouldn't respond. After trying about six times I finally was able to get two of the three I tried to report to go through and return the "message sent" reply but it's as if the system locked up every time I tried to use the "report" function. Since there doesn't seem to be any repeat these sex, spam, etc., posts right now I think the new system security is presently working very well. Best regards, Lin

Hi Brian, That certainly solves the problem of running the program and developing slideshows using PTE on the Mac. Of course anyone wanting to actually "play" the slideshows on a Mac would need to also have it or convert to DVD or Flash. Another situation I encountered a while ago was how to create really good Flash implementation so that anyone using a Mac could see the show on their own operating system without going through the web and the resulting losses of bitrate and quality. I discovered that one of the Flash programs I use to convert my AVI's from PTE to Flash (Flix Pro - by On2 Technologies) has a feature which not only lets the user wrap a Flash 8 player up along with an executable file which automatically calls and runs the Flash show even if there is no Flash 8 installed on the machine, it also can create a Mac and Linux projector to wrap the show and use it directly with those operating systems. It's not an "inexpensive" solution, but it does solve the problem of how to get a quality show in Flash to other operating systems without relying on them already having an installed Flash 8 player. This works equally well for SWF or FLV Flash implementation. Best regards, Lin

I would like to ad to the list and say that our own forum contributor Barry Beckham (Beckham Digital) carrys a great line of excellent royalty free music at very, very reasonable prices. Personally I have purchased eight or nine of Beckham Digital's Royalty Free CD's and find them very useful. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/index.htm Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Actually it's a heavy sandcast sterling silver bracelet by famed Hopi silver and goldsmith Preston Monongye (deceased) and many, many years old (a bit hard to tell that from the photo angle). Preston was one of the early innovators in inlay work which was followed on very successfully by his son Jesse Monongye. In the old days they didn't have some of the fine tools to work with that they have today so often split work into two pieces rather than try to drill holes with rather crude tools. On this particular piece I can't truly tell if it's a cracked inlay or if it was made that way. There are some chipped turquoise pieces on certain areas of the piece which just adds to it's aura. This piece sold for over $4000 U.S. about 15 years ago and is probably valued at twice that today so a rare find. His son Jesse does extremely fine inlay work, but he has the tools which his father didn't enjoy. Preston's pieces are rare today - most owned by collectors who don't turn loose of them very often. As they age, dirt gets down into the cracks and makes them more visible so I'm guessing that this may be a natural crack from shrinkage in the material over the years rather than a designed split but it's only a guess. Best regards, Lin Hi Ron, Someday when I can save enough I would love one - the prices of Plasma are coming down in the states now that LCD screens are being "hyped." Personally I like the Plasma, but they do have issues at high altitudes . Right now I live at about 6,000 so no problem but some areas in our states are too high for plasma. Best regards, Lin

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/plasma.zip About 14 meg...... Lin

Hi Sylvia, I honestly don't remember which font and size I used, but you can use any font just so the text fits in the space of about 800 pixel width. My original text was very large as was the PNG file which was simply reduced with PTE's zoom to fit inside the scroll. As JPD has shown, it works much better to use smaller PNG files which you create and link together with a parent/child relationship using a rectangle as the parent. Then the first four paragraphs are introduced one at a time in sequence to avoid having the text appear on the back of the scroll as it unrolls. When I created the text, I used the layers in Photoshop to place a drop shadow, bevel and contour on them to get a dimensional effect. I have created a simplified version of JPD's sample which you may want to download and examine. It removes the text from the back of the scroll but doesn't correct the black from showing on the bottom of the scroll as it unfolds, but most everything is done with a single animation slide frame - only the ending white background occupies a separate slide. Here's a link: http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/scrollbetterpte.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, Thanks! And do look at JPD's version of this as well, especially if you want to avoid the text on the back of the unrolling scroll. To simplify the explanation of what he did to avoid this, it's done by breaking the text into segments which are linked to a "parent" so that their action is simultaneous, but by breaking it into short paragraphs two important things are accomplished. First it will not bog down a 32 meg video environment and secondly the timing of their introduction is such that the unrolling with no text on the back of the scroll has happened just prior to the appearance of the text on the front which is sequentially introduced as the scroll unrolls. By doing this with a couple other slight of hand tricks he avoids the issues of trying to reproduce the back as a secondary overlay while still giving a perfect illusion of the unroll sans text on the back. It works very well but might be a bit austere for a novice to either understand or try to duplicate with other text, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Just to avoid confusion. The term "template" is actually being used two ways on the forum here. First, as explained above for creating a stand-alone compendium of the files, image and relationships so you can later easily reconstruct a slideshow on any system having PTE installed, but there is another meaning which could result in confusion if one didn't know the context under which the term was being used. Members also create specific effects and animations which can be shared with other PTE users but unique in that it's possible to substitute the variables (images, text, etc.) specific to your own purposes and enjoy the animations, etc., seen on the original slideshow. For example. Suppose you wanted to see JPD's (Jean-Pierre's) or the Dom's photo album but with your own pictures and as a component of your own slideshow? Then you download and use the "template" provided by the original publisher but substitute your own images (variables) by renaming your images to the same name as those used by the creator of the template. Then when you play your slideshow you get the animations, etc., of the demo but with your own pictures, etc. A recent example of this was the Snow Globe template I posted. You simply use my PTE file but substitute your own framed image inside the PanosFX snowglobe via the Panos Photoshop action (obtained free by registering on the PanosFX site) for my panostest.jpg image by either removing my image from the folder and replacing it with your own image (also named pansotest.jpg) or overwriting the original with your own. The when you create your executable, AVI or DVD your image appears inside the Snow Globe with animated snow falling. So this is yet another meaning and use of the term "template" as used here on the forum.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jean-Pierre, Thanks very much, and also for the very clear table and explanation! That works very, very well and on older graphics cards as well so it's good to know that it can be accomplished. You've put much work into this - and I thank you. The very clever way of keeping the shadows with text scrolling into them at top and bottom is a much better solution I think than my partial transparency method and the removal of text from the back during the unrolling of the scroll is a much more realistic effect. I would invite all who are interested in this effect to download JPD's PTE and examine the results which are greatly improved over my original. The text scrolls seamlessly into and from the shadows of the roll and the back or the unrolling scroll shows no vestiges of text bleed through. This is a very professional result! Best regards, Lin

Hi John, There's one on Yahoo as well, but this one is a dedicated PSG and PSP Enthusiast forum with lots of nice people: http://itsmygallery.com/ProShow/ Best regards, Lin

Hey Al, No particular reason, just a fade to a screen for a few seconds before returning to the desktop. The roll-up works well too but needs to be a bit later to match the end of the music. When it works again (maybe with beta 9) I like the last slide to remain on the screen rather than go back to the desktop icons automatically - normally with ending scripts, etc., but just happened to have a convenient white jpg to fade into. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, It's the nature of betas to introduce only a few features into the new code at a time to facilitate testing and debugging. The beta development has been progressing for some time now with each new beta having more and more functionality. The next beta (beta 9) will have "most" of the full functionality of the release version of 5.0 but we must be patient. The vast majority of software developers do not allow the general public access to to the beta versions and we are all very thankful that Igor and his team allow us all that privilege so we have the opportunity to learn to use the myriad new features. There are many, many, thousands of lines of code in the program which require great skill and patience to put together so everything works smoothly. If you want to see what happens when you release a product before it's ready for prime time, go over to the Proshow forum and see the many complaints and problems (over 300 "fixes" since the release of version 3.0 a scant few months ago). Have patience, the full functionality of version 4.48 plus a host of new powerful features await us with the release of version 5. Best regards, Lin

That would work, or just the way I did it for JPD by dividing the long png into "byte" size pieces - LOL. I just divided into two parts which cut the size down sufficiently to let it work fine on the older video card. Yes, the size could be adjusted to make it more distinct on larger displays (I'm using 1024x768). With my display it looks fine but I'm sure on higher resolution monitors it could use a few more pixels. Just an idea for those who would like to use it to play with. I wish there were a "custom" option for the backs of the screen for the roll/unroll transition then I could use a texture match for the parchment and masking jpgs on either side to perfectly fit the contours of the yellow parchment so the text didn't show through, but then it would also be nice to be able to manually control the roll/unroll so as to stop the action at any point or roll the top down while the bottom was rolling up - LOL Too many "wants" - and better to let Igor work on getting out the next beta I think. Best regards, Lin