Lin Evans

It would be a great addition, but probably very time consuming to create all the effects possible with dedicated software. It will be nice just to be able to manipulate text and comments created solely in P2E without having to resort to Photoshop, etc. Best regards, Lin

I've modified my "Effects" demo a bit to include some video text effects both at the start of the slideshow and as "credits" at the end. Doing this increases the overall size of the show - actually more than doubles the size so there are some disadvantages, but there are some amazing effects which can be used which are not feasible to create with PNG and Photoshop. I use a product called Wildform Wild FX Pro which has some amazing abilities to animate text. The output can be ported to Flash SWF, AVI, MOV, MPEG4 and even sequenced still images (which is what I do with it for PTE). PicturesToExe has an amazing ability to sequence still images with quite sufficient frame speed to emulate high quality video. I used a 50ms per frame rate for these which were created with a 15 fps rate in Wild FX Pro. There are well over 400 different text effects with Wild FX Pro and these are great for opening sequences or credits. Obviously, one can't use them easily on background images without a video editor, but this doesn't diminish their value for effects. On tip for the user is that if your output sequence has some dead time, that is you have the same text appear for several seconds, it's beneficial to remove those frames and simply apply a custom time and effect to a single frame. Remember, if you are exporting 30 frames per second and you have a non changing slide which occupies 10 seconds of time - such as a credit which stays to be read for some extended period - you can save many megabytes of space by simply keeping only one frame and tossing the rest. Ten seconds of video equals 300 png or jpg images each with a reasonable file size. So throwing away 300 and substituting a custom time of 10 seconds in PTE for one of these frames means a savings of maybe 20 megabytes or so. Anyway, for those interested here's a sample link to a zipped executable - about 34 meg..... http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/effects2.zip Best regards, Lin

Actually, using the yet to be introduced (run external code) via Granot's accessory or by doing as Al suggested, converting to an AVI then editing in a video editing program you can achieve what you want to do. I'm not absolutely certain of this, but I "think" the reason it's very difficult to simply drop in a video file then create an executable or DVD revolves around the very featue which sets PTE apart from the rest of the presentation slideshow software - hardware rendering. Hardware rendering gives very high quality and very high resolution potential to an executable slideshow. Other slideshow software user software rendering and actually everything is rendered at DVD quality then for executable code the lower resolution images are interpolated to screen display dimensions which are often much higher in pixel count than the original rendering. There are several technical issues which need to be addressed before simply being able to drop in an AVG or such and seamlessly continue with the creation of a show. AVI or MPEG files are huge in terms of storage space compared to executable files. If you look at the size of the little AVI files which come from your still camera you will find that just a few moments of video/audio recording eats up a tremendous amount of memory. Then there is that issue of image quality and not having a huge jump in visible quality between the video portion and animated still portion. If you want to incorporate video into your present shows, it might be best to use one of the software programs for this which do software rendering. This will adversely affect the quality of your still images, but is still the most expedient way to accomplish what you want to do. Proshow Gold (Photodex) is a reasonably priced product which does an excellent job with this and you can simply drop in "most" AVI clips and continue on with your show. You "could" do it as Al suggests with PTE, but then you are lowering your overall quality to the level of the DVD. The bottom line is that no one product does it all. PTE has by far the greatest image quality, smoothest and most flexible animation capability and many other superior features, but for simply dropping in snippets of video code and continuing seamlessly with your slideshow Proshow Gold is my personal choice. Though I seldom use Proshow Gold any more, in this one area it has right now the decided edge and there's nothing wrong with using more than one product. Personally I use PTE, PSG, Vegas Video, Memories On TV, MediaShow and several other slideshow programs. I normally would not recommend a different product on a forum dedicated to my favorite software, PTE, but in your case you can do exactly what you want to do right now without the hassle of jumping through hoops by just using it for those cases where you want to drop in video. Best regards, Lin

Hi Geoff, Possibly, there are numerous ways to create a rain effect, but what I've done here is use a very nice freeware program to output a jpg file sequence which is loaded into pte and sequenced at a 50ms per image rate. You may just want to download and try the software. The up side is that you can do both reflections in water or ripples as from drops or rain or snow or any combination. You can adjust the amount of rain or snow, the length, brightness, position where it lands,etc., etc. The down side is that you must run a sequence and this makes it very difficult to do transitions or include text, etc., unless you have either lots of patience or a good video editor such as Vegas Movie Maker. You "can" animate and do captions, labels, etc., manually frame by frame, but it's terribly tedious so as good as the effects are, it may not be the "best" way to do these things unless you really want to work. Even to add text or other effects with a good video editor, you would export an AVI or MPEG file then you would have to use a decompiler to break the video back into still frames to import back into PTE. I have all these tools so it's easier for me to do these things, but I think the approach theDom is using may ultimately be the more versatile for quick slideshows. Of course you can't get the nice ripple or puddle effects that way, but for pure rain effects it may prove to be the superior method because it's much faster to animate a few PNG files than to tinker with hundreds of still jpg's. Still putting in sequential jpgs is better by far in terms of image quality to dropping in video clips and it's also much smaller in terms of code. It only takes about 60 images to create the ripple and rain effect then these are repeated many times. By doing it this way the overhead in terms of an executable is much, much smaller than if an AVI or MPEG clip were able to be dropped into PTE. Anyway here's a link to the software. You may want to try it - also you might want to try the free Morphing software from the same site. http://xiberpix.homestead.com/SqirlzReflect.html Best regards, Lin

Beautiful effect Igor - maybe a very fast Seagull sailing by would be nice too! Best regards, Lin

Hi Al, That was essentially what I was doing but I discovered that about 1/10th second is the ideal "pulse" time depending on the intensity of rain, etc. So I spaced the keypoints every quarter second then changed the time incremented by 100 to get the 1/10th second.. I have to set opacity to zero on every other frame so changing the keypoint timing was just another step but it would be so much quicker if I could have simply typed in 100 for an incremental value, loaded the timeline with the keypoints the just clilcked the > and placed zero at every other keypoint. I think having an option of setting the keypoint timings for the + key might be quite useful for doing these animations. Of course the majority of people who use the program probably have little interest in its animation ability - sort of a niche interest area - but it's such a powerful environment it's fun to play. Best regards, Lin LOL - I've already managed to do some major damage to my pickup truck by accidentally sliding into one of my brick columns holding the chain link fence in front of my house. I figure about $2500 between the truck, masonery work and such so I'm just going to quit trying until this thing completely blows over. It took Sherry and me 4 hours to dig the truck out so we could get it back on the driveway and it's a 3/4 ton 4x4 with lots of ground clearance and a big V10 and locking differential so it doesn't get stuck easily. It's going to be fun seeing how this program evolves - it's just so much better than the competition and much easier to work with for finely tuned animations. Best regards, Lin

In trying to create some effects which require turning on and off a PNG file extremely quickly, it became apparent that one feature which might be added in future PTE versions would be the ability to choose a timing for the addition of new keypoints. Right now when you set a custom time for a slide then click on the first keypoint and then click the + key the program inserts keypoints at approximately every half second (actually just a tiny bit slower than an half second). So, if you have a time for a slide set to 1000 (one second) the pte inserts a single keypoint at 550. This is a great feature, but not flexible enough for some effects which would be possible to create. Let me explain. I looked at theDom's excellent rain demo and the first thing which struck me was that with a wet pavement, there should be multiple tiny "splashes" as the rain drops impact the pavement to make the scene realistic. This can be done by creating a combination of black and white "noise" and using a PNG mask to confine the area of the effect to the wet pavement. But to make it realistic, the "splashes" must be random and turned on an off in extremely quick sequences. PTE can do this, but it's exceedingly difficult to physically move a keypoint 1/10th second from the preceeding one. Of course one can do it by typing in the numbers to turn on and off opacity but this gets extremely tedious. The one half second period is far too long for a realistic effect so I began thinking that the ability for the user to type in a time period for the timing between keypoints and have the + sign automatically select this typed time for the interval would be a very powerful feature.This would allow the user to create effects such as Jean-Pierre used for turning on and off the Christmas Tree blinking lights but would make it much easier to achieve a "random" effect and greatly speed up the creation of a slideshow using these specialized effects. So my request for a future version would be for the user to be able to type in a time value which would be implemented when clicking on the + to add keypoints. Best regards, Lin

Hi Volker, As the Dom said, this feature only appears on version 5 which is now in late beta but available for you to use. Download the beta from the forum you are in on the second link from the very top.In the beta of version 5 you will find this feature as well as the ability to zoom, pan, rotate, adjust opacity, use multiple layers, etc. Best regards, Lin

Assuming you know already to go to the Advanced Settings menu.....substitute your own pixel dimensions for the original then do as explained below: In Irfanview simply find the top left coordinate for X (horizontal axis) and Y (vertical axis). Find the original pixel dimensions of your file. In the case of wanting to make a 12x10 into an 8x10 you need to crop one inch on the horizontal axis off each side. So let's say the original dimensions were 2160x1440. You divide 2160 by 12 to determine how many pixels per inch on the horizontal or X axis exist. That gives you 180 ppi. You then place 180 in the X axis block and set the value for Y to zero. Check the "Crop" box in the Advanced options, put a dot in "top left" and the values 180 and 0 in their respective places. Next you need to subtract an inch on each side of the X axis so you subtract 180 from 2160 twice leaving 1800 as the value to place in the Width space. Since you don't want to change the height, place the original 1440 value in the height space. Be sure you have a folder assigned to receive the cropped files. If you want them resized you can do it simultaneously by giving the dimensions to Irfanview in the appropriate place in advanced settings. click on start... That's it\ Lin Lin

HI DAB, Once you have the PNG file created - or several different PNG files, depending on the appearance of the snow you are looking for, you place the first at the begining of your slideshow in the Objects and Animations screen on its own layer above the slide you wish the effect to be seen on. Position the rectangle representing the snow PNG so that the bottom of the PNG rectangle just goes beyond the bottom of the image in the backgound (your slide image). Be sure you expand the size of the snow PNG with the zoom or pull the green handles so that it completely covers the area of the image it appears over. Select the snow PNG and place a keypoint at the end of the timeline then pull the rectangle representing the Snow PNG down. The further you pull the rectangle down, the faster the snow will appear to fall because you are moving the "snow" a greater distance in the same time frame referenced between the begining and ending keypoint. The larger (zoom) you make the Snow PNG rectangle, the larger and softer appearing the snow flakes. Now to get a realistic effect, add the same (or a different) snow PNG again on its own layer just as you did the first one, but this time position it at an angle of perhaps 15 degrees or so. Create another keypoint at the end of the time line for this second PNG and drag down the rectangle at the 15 degree angle rather than straight down. Perhaps make the size of the second and first PNG rectangles different with the zoom, and make the second one travel a different distance than the first. You may yet place another copy of the PNG at yet another angle and make it's descent yet a different speed. By varying the angle, speed and intensity of the snow PNG's with the Opacity feature, You can achieve different effects which mirror what you might see in a real snow scenario. To get a blowing snow effect in sync with perhaps a wind sound as I did in the Storm Coming example, use a very fine snow PNG and move it horizontally across all or part of the image and to make it disappear as you would expect in a real scenario when the wind dies, move it all the way off the image. To make a horizontal snow PNG you will want to "feather" the edges of the PNG file. You do this when you are creating the PNG by using less opacity on the eraser tool on the edges than in the center. I will try to show the differences in another Flash Tutorial, but probably will have to place and executable along with the Flash show to demonstrate the motion effects themselves. I'm still working out a way to demonstrate this effectively without too many complications. Best regards, Lin

Hi David, Yes, lots of possibilities for future tweaks - I suspect once the release is out Igor will start working with scaling and such. I was in Wales about 7 years ago. I told my wife I wanted to look up some of my relatives so got the phone book for Cardiff - LOL - half of it was "Evans" so I had to give up that idea.... Maybe some day I'll get some time to research it. Seven Evans brothers came to the U.S. and settled in KY and IL. One of these was my great, grandfather. They scattered about and our side ended up in Colorado, Kentucky and Missouri but I really don't know much of our history beyond my grandfather who ended up in Missouri and died young. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Just one observation. PTE does have a choice of "actual pixels". When you go to Project Options, Screen then check the Disable Scaling, you get the actual pixel dimensions. Best regards, Lin

See above: Best regards, Lin The danged wind is blowing a blizzard tonight again and more drifts have completely covered all my shoveling - HA! Actually a nice soft snow as in the demo doesn't need the wind noise, but we do get lots of wind noise lately with out snow... I'm working on sending it all NORTH - LOL. Beat regards, Lin

Effects demo - rain & snow, etc.... http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/effects.zip Lin

Hi Dom, This one may hold more promise for what we want to achieve, but it requires running a sequence of jpg's rather than creating a PNG directly. That presents issues as well - not an easy one to resolve. http://xiberpix.homestead.com/SqirlzReflect.html Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, I haven't kept the links except for one: http://xiberpix.homestead.com/SqirlzReflect.html This one is most promising so far, but the rest haven't helped. Most create a rain effect for a given image but what I'm looking for is a rain effect which can be used independently of a particular image such as the snow PNG files I've created. Lin

Hi Ken, The link say's 8s but the actual installation says 8r - I have the same problem so don't know if it's really 8s but Igor forgot to change the designator or what.... Lin

I believe this will be implemented when version 5 has all the features added and version 5.0 is released. (perhaps two to three months) Right now there is no way to control the position of the object when screen resolution is different. Lin

Hi Volker, In the Objects and Animations screen under the Properties Tab check the "Perspective Correction for Zoom" box. This doesn't control the degree of zoom, you do that visually when you create the amount and direction of zoom with keypoints and numbers but it does simulate the camera zoom perspective you are looking for. Best regards, Lin

Hi Geoff, I've been working on that but have not yet found exactly the technique which I want to pursue. There are some decent programs which generate rain effects including puddles on the ground complete with raindrop effects. They output AVI or individual sequential jpegs and I'm looking into possibly using this technique. When I get it nailed down I'll post on it. Best regards, Lin

O.K., this is the third Flash Turorial which deals with how to achieve snowfall animation through a window without getting your couch wet! LOL. Flash 8 player required (Free with the latest version of Irfanview and Irfanview Plugins, or you can download Flash 9 player from Adobe "Macromedia" free as well). About 8 meg zipped Flash 8 SWF file: http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/snoweffectflash3.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, As others have noted, you need the latest plugins from Irfanview. Actually I would suggest downloading the latest version of Irfanview (free) and also the plugins. You really only need the Flash 9 player which is free from Adobe (Macromedia) to view a Flash show. You can download and install it in just a few seconds. It wouldn't hurt to have both the Irfanview plugins set as well as the free Flash 9 player from Adobe. Best regards, Lin

Hi Folks, We have an old saying "there's more than one way to skin a cat" whch means essentially that there are many ways to achieve the same end. This second installment of Flash Tutorials on Making Snow for P2E slideshows concerns using a different filter, the "texture" tool and the "grain" effect. Fast, easy and flexible, it's another way to create a PNG file with yet a different texture and feel for the snow. http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/snoweffectflash2.zip This about 13 meg - requires Flash 8 or better Best regards, Lni

Yes, very nice effect by using a quite similar approach with Elements. There are a number of ways to actually create the PNG file including the sponge, noise, etc., Also sometimes it works very well to use a solid color such as dark blue or red before adding noise or the sponge or sprinkles, etc., The reverse the process and select the red or blue and erase. This will usually take several iterations to get rid of all color except white. You will usually have a number of black grain which you can select then paint over with white leaving areas formerly black now in white. My second AVI tutorial will be ready tomorrow and will cover doing the above. One thing you could do, and I will cover this in a future tutorial, is to create a PNG mask for the snow on the ground. The purpose of the mask is to soften the effect of the snow falling on the large white area. As you can see in your example, the snow falling on the rather intense white of the snow packed ground area draws a bit too much attention. You make the PNG mask by creating a transparency just as you did for the snow. Make it the same dimensions as your picture then paste the picture over the tranparency. Use the eraser to carefully erase all areas where you want the snow to be visible using 100% opacity. In the areas of the large snow pack on the ground, set the brush size large enough to cover the entire image and the eraser opacity to about 15% and click once on the entire image. This will make the area of the snow pack on the ground semi-opaque. Then in PTE, place the original image on the bottom layer, the snow in the center and the mask on the top. The areas which are totally transparent will reveal both layers (image and snow) and the semi-opaque area will soften the snow effect on the ground region because it will only allow semi-transparency so the snow falling it that region will be greatly ameliorated. The same PNG mask is used to obtain the effect of seeing snow falling outside from inside through a glass window. Make the glass area totally transparent but everything else opaque such as window sills or dividing wood areas. The snow will show then only in the transparent areas, the scene through the window will come from the base image and the rest will be seen from the top PNG mask image. Best regards, Lin

The first of several Flash AV Tutorials on making and using the Snow Effect is up now. You need Flash 8 to run this - I suggest using the freeware Irfanview. This one deals with creating the PNG file. The following ones will deal with variously how to get different effects from the same PNG file and how to use PNG masking to see snow through windows, etc. About 22 meg - link below to zipped SWF file. http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/snoweffectflash.zip Lin