Lin Evans

Hi Igor, In version 8 G the feature "Repeat until ESC is pressed" is no longer functional on my copy. Let me amend this to explain that the Repeat until ESC is pressed works if transitions are enabled, but if you remove the check mark from "Enable Transitions" in the Project Options then set the time for zero seconds and 100ms for all slides, the program will run one sequence then stop in either preview mode OR in the executable. In earlier betas doing this did not have this effect but the show would loop until ESC was pressed. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Another way which is sometimes used in conjunction with the previous suggestion is to have a disguised code which must be identified then typed in by the applicant. This code changes on a regular basis and appears to the viewer as a graphic containing numbers and letters which only a human could identify because the numbers and letters are not in regular fonts but distorted. A spyder or "bot" could not possibly know or recognize such a code because the machine can only interpret binary code containing ASCII characters and has no way to make the intuitive "leap" to translate a graphic image to a binary ASCII equivalent. For example one could have a "picture" of the number 3 and the letter Z and the "requirement" would be to type in 3Z which would take a human to actually accomplish. Since the vast majority of these spam messages are machine generated, this action requires a human to interpret. This process is used as security for some web transactions as well. I don't know if this is applicable to the INVISION web but it wouldn't hurt to ask them. Best regards, Lin

Go to Project Options, then the Effects tab and uncheck enable transition effects. This will give you a global setting for quick slide changes. You can still over-ride this for individual slides but this will work as the Quick Transitions did in 4.x Lin

To put this into laymen's language ;-) Just put both executables, the menu and all files on the root of the CD (don't use any folders) the call the executable by name with no path..... For example, let's say you have myslideshow.exe and yourslideshow.exe - the the command for the button becomes: Button 1 = myslideshow Button 2 = yourslideshow Lin

Hi Leonard, Let me just say a few things which may or may not be helpful. Obviously, you speak English and quite well. But let's say you developed a product like PicturesToExe and decided to sell it world wide. Let's say I lived in Russia and purchased your product and it was still in beta. Let's further say that you were nice enough to let me and any others actually download and use this product which was quite useful while it was still in beta format but that I was unhappy because I didn't have a product manual. So you write a very detailed manual but it's in English and I don't understand a word of it. What shall you do? Do you "try" to publish this manual in Russian? Do you pay many people to translate it into perhaps two dozen languages? But if you do, then to recover your investment and continuing costs of updated articles you must increase the price of your product drastically or otherwise why would you be in business? Such is the nature of this enterprise. Volunteers have done a great deal of translation from Russian to a variety of languages and volunteers have written excellent tutorials and manuals which are peer reviewed. It's an iterative process. Igor has done a commendable job of learning a foreign language and this forum is a perfect example as it's conducted nearly 100% in English - a very foreign tongue for Igor and his associates. Of course there is no written manual for the Beta - after all it's a work in progress. It makes zero sense to try to produce a manual for a product which is in the process of being developed and perfected. When version 5 is released, several of us will conspire to create a user's guide, manual and tutorials which will cover every facet of normal use and even esoteric uses - in fact there have been a number of these as you have seen on the Dom's site. The manual which Al wrote for version 4x is an extremely good reference which is very detailed and specific about every facet of the released version of PicturesToExe. As someone who has a very, very large collection of software ranging from single copies costing thousands of dollars (I'm not exaggerating) to very inexpensive software such as PicturesToExe, I'm in a position to comment about the state of the software industry and what is and is not available in terms of documentation. For the most part, the software industry has moved away from printed material because it's too difficult to update and maintain in a timely manner and printing adds a great deal to the costs. Typically today if you get anything other than on-line help it's on a CD which you have the option to print if you want to take the time and expense, but in the majority of cases you get very little. PicturesToExe is one of the true values in software I've encountered. As mentioned before, the users have a very special relationship with the author and their input is carefully considered and often finds its way into the product. Frankly, I don't know of another company in the presentation slideshow software business which is even remotely close and I have and use nearly every major presentation slideshow software available for the Windows environment. I suppose my bottom line is that you are always welcome to ask any question about how to do something and you will get a speedy answer here. Both the users and Igor and his associates go out of their way to be helpful but you do have to do a bit of research to learn the finer points of PicturesToExe. It's extremely powerful but also extremely easy to use once you get past the small learning curve. Best regards, Lin

Hey Tom, It's a long story, actually it's very easy to do if you have the proper software and hardware, but I borowwed this image from one already so processed then broke it down into individual files, duplicated the files many times and rendered it in P2E as a short video. The basic process for taking these images requires a slider mounted on a tripod which allows the camera to shoot multiple frames each from a slightly different position. A series of about a dozen were used for this example, but it's smoother if you use about 20. Each sequential image has a slightly different "perspective" on the frame and it's incumbent on the photographer to have something in the foreground, the middle and the background for best results. The depth of field is set so that the background is slightly blurred and the foreground and subject are in sharp focus. As the camera is moved along the rail, a shot is taken at regular intervals so that the background being further from the lens has more "shift" than the foreground. There is very little shift up close and greater amounts in the far view while the subject has some but not a great deal of movement. The images are then adjusted sequentially and reversed (in sequence) to obtain a "scan" right then left, etc. The whole sequence then is repeated multiple times and the slideshow is repeated until esc is pressed in this example. In a real world use, the frames would be precision interlaced in specialized software then printed with a high resolution printer. After the print is made, a special lenticular plastic "lens" is carefully laminated to the image. When a viewer passes by the image or moves the image in relation to their eyes the 3D effect is created. Actually there are a number of effects which can be created this way including zoom, animation, 3D, etc. This process is used comercially (lenticular printing) to produce holographic effects from tiny holograms on currency to huge poster sized and even billboard size prints. Best regards, Lin

Let me add a bit to the already excellent answer... Best regards, Lin

A little sample: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/3dsample.zip Lin

Hi Al, I have Spyware Doctor (PC TOOLS), NOD32, and Trend Micro Venus Syptrap along with AdAware, but I had not run AdAware in several months. Apparently the other's missed whatever this was which seemed to not only disable my ability to edit on this forum, but also resulted in the "Can't load library from memory" message. AdAware found four issues and I'm still looking through the logs trying to decipher which might have been instrumental in causing both these issues. Of course it's entirely possible that it may not have been the same code responsible for both, but I think the odds are good that it was. In any event I will run AdAware more frequently since they have corrected at least four issues missed by the other three. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Very interesting indeed! I have several good anti-virus and spyware programs which I run continuously. I also have Adaware but hadn't run it. After reading the link you sent, I tried Adaware and it discovered four issues of which one both cured the "Unable to load library from memory" issue AND the unable to edit this board issue. I'm going back into the log to see if I can determine which of the four was responsible for the unable to edit. Thanks much, that resulted in a cure! Edit function works normally now... Best regards, Lin

LOL - I was looking everywhere except the obvious. I did try all three (outline, standard, line art) and it didn't help so I guess I'll just have to keep trying. The fact that I'm getting the strange message about "can't' load library from memory" may be a clue. Just edited on one of my other systems here, so problem is in my development computer - I'll work on it later - Thanks all.... Thanks, Lin

I can't seem to locate "Options". I've looked under My Controls but cant find it - LOL Lin

Hi Guys, Thanks - I'm scratching my head on this one. I've flushed all the buffers and caches and still can't get it working. It works on other Invision boards, but not on this so has to be something in my system. I'm also getting a "can't load library from memory" message when trying to do a Windows Search so something is wrong - guess I'll have to run all my spyware detection programs again - LOL Best regards, Lin

How strange! I only get a mouseover message and no response when I click on the Edit - it must be something in my system.... Thanks, Lin

As some may be aware, ATI was purchased by AMD and now comes an investigation about possible price fixing between AMD & nVidia... Link for those interested: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2066731,00.asp Lin

For a few days now I have been unable to get the Edit function to work on this board. I used to see "quick edit" or "full edit" and now I see nothing when I click on Edit after one of my posts. I can "delete" my post, but in no way "edit" it. Any suggestions would be welcome.... Lin

It is indeed a great value. Not only do you get the full version, but there are multiple cuts with convenient timings, etc. In some cases as many as 11 separate selections ranging from 30 seconds or so to 5 minutes. The music is quite good and mood selected. This is interesting. The issue is that musicians with well known bands and leading jobs are under contract to ASCAP or such so that their music is mass marketed and subject to very stringent regulation. But in the world there are many, many talented musicians and vocalists who struggle to make ends meet and make a decent living. Some of them are now discovering the world of royalty free music and the web which offers a chance to not only share their music with a large audience, but also make a decent income from doing so. This works not only in the favor of the musician, but also in the favor of those small business people who would love to use decent background music for web, for slideshows, for wedding photographers, for clients, etc., but can't foot the bill for the normal $35 U.S. or more charges for a single royalty free selection from the big guys. If you consider that a wedding photographer might use as many as eight selections in a slideshow and multiply that by the cost of purchasing these tunes you find that it might cost nearly $300 for his or her overhead for a single event or wedding, etc. By offerings such as this or the excellent selections from Barry's company, small business people can actually afford excellent music and the musician can make a decent living as well - it's really a win-win situation. What is needed in this direction is more vocal recordings along with the fine selection of instrumental music. There are thousands of older songs which are in the public domain and from which a great vocal selection might be made. Hopefully things will move also in this direction! Thanks much for the link, Larry - this is yet another great source which will grow in variety and size over time. Best regards, Lin

Most excellent Stéphane! Thank you and welcome to the PTE forums and PicturesToExe.... in the release version there will be the feature of having background music as well as sound for each slide or continuous across the slides so in effect two sound tracks. Best regards, Lin

Beautiful job Paul - smooth as glass for most except those with challenged video environment. Excellent photography and stunning presentation. Best regards, Lin

I too very much enjoyed your slideshow, Henri. It allows those of us on the other side of the world who may never get the opportunity to visit the great Italian museums an opportunity to see the great works of art from yesteryear... Best regards, Lin

Hi Bruce, I also use Vegas Video and I didn't mean to imply that Vegas "itself" was possibly a part of the problem, but that in a number of cases in the past the Nero and Roxio drivers have conflicted and that even if one is uninstalled, there could be issues of conflict due to parts of the code left in the Registry. My statement about Vegas was that I'm not sure whether Vegas Video may not use one or the other or portions of either as OEM burn engine components. Vegas Video was purchased by Sony from Sound Forge a while back and it's very difficult to know what the internals contain and how this may or may not relate to the OEM burn engine library product used by PTE. So one can't entirely rule out apriori that there is not some confilct causing this issue. One thing you might want to try is to use a registry cleaner such as Registry Mechanic, etc., to remove any possible vestiges of code which could impact this. The fact that there are only a couple people having this problem would tend to indicate something possibly in common between these two affected systems which are not resident on other computers. Just for the record there are only a very few true burn engines for creating DVD's and many license their products from either Roxio (formerly an Adaptec creation) or Nero. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bruce, Could you capture a screen of the Project Options on the Video Builder page, or if you don't have a screen capture tool just write down the individual settings and post them? Something seems to be causing this and I've seen this type problem before with a conflict between Roxio and Nero drivers. I'm not certain which system Vegas Video is using, but there may be some conflict which is causing the problem. If you are not already doing so, I would suggest getting some rewritable DVD +R media so you don't end up with expensive coasters. I was having problems with earlier beta burns, but the latest is working perfectly for me on seven different systems so I'm thinking it must be a driver conflict or some similar issue which is causing the problem, but it would help to see the Project Options and know the exact steps to try and duplicate the failure. Best regards, Lin

Just an aside, but the "Edit" function doesn't appear to be working for me on this board right now. I wanted to add to my first post that I've discovered that the Perspective correction on the zoom doesn't act the same way in the Preview as in the executable and note that I have posted links to a sample where you can test the pte file with preview against the executable. Best regards, Lin

It's not working the same way for me in the preview as in the executable. I've created a short executable using a 1 foot (12 inch) ruler. I have duplicated the slide so the first slide with no transitions runs for 30 seconds without perspective correction while the second slide (duplicate) runs 30 seconds "with" perspective correction. I've put a stopwatch on it and checked the time it takes for the 2.75 inch to reach the left margin of the monitor. Without perspective correction it's approximately 16 seconds. With perspective correction it's about 23 seconds. So the executable is doing opposite the Preview where it appears that the Perspective correction is acutally a bit "faster" to that point but only by a second. Here are links to two zip files. First the pte for the two slide demo then for the executable: http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/perception.zip http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/perspective.zip Lin

Hi Igor, My "perception" is that the first part of a zoom in is "quicker" with "Perspective correction" checked, but perception can be deceiving. Is this what is happening? Is it a non-linear zoom? Best regards, Lin