Lin Evans

Hopefully we will soon have a way other than the search engine to categorize previously covered issues, but right now we don't. This will become necessary as the number of posts continue to increase. No problem with asking any question - that's the best way to learn. Best regards, Lin

Hi Laura Anne, Since PicturesToExe isn't a sound editor, you can use any available sound editor to prepare any music the way you wish it to sound. You can play essentially any number of mp3's back to back in PicturesToExe by simply adding them to the music list. You can play them in random or sequential order and the majority of music has normally a short period of fade on the end by nature, but if you want something special you can use the freeware Audacity sound editor to easily modify, add periods of silence, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, There's almost too much to even contemplate, but Tom Bearden's site is a good place to start: http://www.cheniere.org/ From the considerable continuing university research (under the radar, of course) on cold fusion to numerous working inventions using variants of zero point energy extraction, breaking water molecules into their hydrogen/oxygen atoms without electrolysis, etc., to fuel autos and trucks via water, the list is exhaustive but mostly doomed to ever reach production until fossil fuel reserves are depleted. I've had the pleasure of seeing a few of these with my own eyes and can tell you that there's a tremendous amount of R&D which has been happening for many years but suppressed for commercial purposes. Best regards, Lin

Too cool! That's unfortunately the nature of technology. We can't actually produce and market the inventions as fast as they are invented because the R&D curve is miles ahead of production capabilities. Many years ago in the very late 60's when I was working as a PBX/Microwave repairman for AT&T in the Grand Station in Los Angeles, CA, we had step-by-step dialing. Two new systems (crossbar and computer) had been invented but the process of change-over was so complex that even though our potential technology was essentially 20 years ahead of what we had as an installed base, we couldn't make the change-over because of costs. Fiber-optic technology was actually "known" in the very late 40's but has only today become the de jure for new installations. We frequently skip one or two generations of major improvements for practical reasons. It's like the energy situation where we are bound because of financial pressures by oil companies to use fossil fuel when there are inventions which have been suppressed which would make free energy in abundance available to the world, but doing so would wreck many national economies. This new laser television may indeed replace LCD and Plasma before they really even gain common use - LOL. But what's really the issue in large countries is providing backward compatibility with systems such as NTSC which was developed in the late 40's and still is the predominate technology in the U.S. This is why smaller countries have "leap-frogged" the U.S. in their broadcast using quality, high resolution television signals. We can't make all the existing receivers people paid dearly for in the past 10 years instantly obsolete so they must be phased out as the high definition systems are introduced. Sad - but a fact of life. It reminds me of the old GE advertising slogan" Progress is our most important product"..... Thanks for the link! Best regards, Lin

Hi Cindy, There are a wide variety of tech sales statistics which all put the MacIntosh world market at slightly less than 3 percent. Here are a couple - one from 2004 and one from I believe from the year before. Sales for 2005 have hovered around 3% according to latest stats which I don't have web links to but which come from trade journals: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...412/ai_n8598904 http://daringfireball.net/2003/07/market_share The exact numbers are inconsequential, but you can safely quote 3% and not be off by any significant amount. It's not a Mac or PC is better situation, it's more likely cost and sale price issue. Many years ago when the MacIntosh was first released I was an Apple rep. I tried very hard to convince Apple management which I had any influence with to make dual-processor motherboards which would support "both" operating systems, but like many other "better ideas" the Mac faced a huge deficit with the business reputation and marketing clout of IBM and the emergence of Compaq with their "Lunchbox" business computers and the huge cost differences between Motorola based and Intel based processors and associated circuitry. Finally, Apple has come to their senses and are now adapting the Intel processors and making it much easier to have dual operating systems. Had they done this in the early 80's I believe they would be neck and neck with the IBM based PC in market share, but hindsight is always 20/20. The important thing is that even though absolute numbers of Mac sales are incrementally increasing, the head start and vast worldwide business adaptation of the Intel, etc., based PC have made it the undisputed winner in the market place. We make DVD's and Flash shows for our Mac based clients and otherwise deliver in executable format for the majority. Since we are in the Photography and Fine Art venue, high resolution is more important than to us than for the much larger majority and especially for the home or hobby slideshow market where DVD has been very well accepted. There's nothing wrong with delivering in both formats but I sure wouldn't want to ONLY have low resolution DVD or AVI as the media of choice. Best regards, Lin Hi Jason, No need to feel that way, I see where the confusion could easily originate. Best regards, Lin

Uhh Jason, The response wasn't to or about you - it was referring to the two posts referenced by Cindy - I have no idea who made the quotes she references. Lin

Hi Fish, Go to the bottom left corner of your Windows Desktop and find the "Start" button (green). Left click your mouse on this then look for the "Run" choice near the bottom right of the resulting menu. Left click the mouse on "Run" then type "dxdiag" into the "Open" dialog box and then left click the mouse on O.K. Click on the various tabs to read the content. Best regards, Lin

Hi Cindy, Neither of the posts demonstrate a great deal of knowledge on the part of their posters as evidenced by the thousands who download P2E slideshows without a single known incident of virus. The second post shows the bias as well as inexperience of the poster. All program code for the PC is furnished in executable or command format - that's what they use. The VAST majority of PC users have adequate virus protection software which would quickly detect and delete any virus associated with an executable file. If you want the high quality, high resolution slideshows for your clients then that's what they need. MacIntosh has more of less three percent of the world market for PC's. The rest are Windows. If you have large percentage (unusual) of MacIntosh clients then furnish the shows in wmv, flash or DVD format for these few. the other 98 percent will be very happy with the superior executable format. Frankly, the majority of P2E users create slideshows for specific purposes, not for general web distribution. There will always be those few who wrongly "think" that a virus can't be distributed via a DVD, CD, etc. Believe me when I tell you that they absolutely can. I have received virus code from major software distributors on their distribution CD's so there are no guarantees. Visiting a web site which infects one's computer is the primary way virus and trojan codes are transmitted today. It's simply false reasoning to think that eliminating executable code is in any significant way helping to avoid infection. The "best" way to avoid infection is the regular and dedicated use of a very good anti-threat software such as NOD32. Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, The files are now again downloadable. I tried it on my weakest video system: Intel 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset - 64 meg The pan was smooth on the pano with a very slight hesitation during the fade transition to the second image. All else was quite smooth. Gateway 915GAG with 1 GIG RAM Sound: Realtek 100 type WDM sound card Best regards, Lin Hi Fish, You can go to Start, Run then type in dxdiag and click O.K. This will tell you everything you need about the video card, system, etc. Lin

Hi Michel, Yes, that cured the problem and it works very well on my ATI Radion Pro 9800. I did notice that on subsequent attempts to access the file I can't get in because a message pops up which says "bye bye" then asks for a user name and password? Best regards, Lin

Just a clarification so as to avoid misunderstanding. I belive Michel when he says "His place is not on this forum" is actually referring to a "comment" which in English would be to say "its place is not on this forum". Sometimes translating from a romance language (French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, etc.) where objects have a "gender" to an Old English based language where non animate objects carry the "it" rather than "he or she" the end result can be confused as if Michel were referring to a person. I'm certain this was not the intent. Best regards, Lin

Hi Michel, Something strange - I can't open the executable to run it. The zip file contains the executable and a text file, but the executable doesn't work for me. My Windows XP system trys to run it, then after a delay presents a list of programs such as Photoshop to choose from to "run" the file. It's possible, I suppose that it became corrupted during the zipped download. Best regards, Lin

If you are using the beta rather than the release version 4.48, music synchronization is not yet enabled. If you want to use the beta then you need to precisely measure how early the slides get done and add a few seconds to each slide or if the time is indeed exactly 20 seconds early add a half second to 40 of them. It's really not all that difficult to do the timing manually but if you want to use the mucic sync feature then use the release version 4.48. The present beta is not the last beta so no one can say with certainty exactly when the music sync feature will be enabled, but it will happen by the final release of 5.0. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mark, Go to your second slide, then to the Objects and Animations tab and click on Customize Slide. Next click on the Effect Tab and see if the Use Own Transition Effect blcck is checked. If it is, then check on the Effect Duration to be sure that it's not abbreviated. If this doesn't make the second slide fade as expected, use the File, Create Backup in Zip feature and post a link to the zip file created and I'll see what's happening. It "should" work perfectly normally. If you find the Use Own Transition Effect block not checked along with the Fade in the Customize Slide, then check it and do likewise for the other slides not working. No one else is having difficulty so I'm pretty certain that it's a settings issue, but you can't find the answer then post the zipped file and we will sort it out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mark, Even though it is a beta, the fade works fine on my system so I was wondering if you could be more specific about how it's not working "properly?" If you could give some details perhaps we could help sort it out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, That's really bad - people who do such things need to be horse whipped at the town square, then sent to a Siberian salt mine for "recovery". If there is anything any of us can do to help you get data or information back please let us know. It may be possible to get information from various caches. Did you have your own server? If not, usually an ISP will have a backup though it may not contain all the most current data. Let me know if I can help any way with links, etc. Best regards, Lin

Go Here for Instructions: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....amp;#entry31206 Lin

Hi Laura Anne, Actually, they are not backwardly compatible, that is you can't play beta 6 pte's in 4.48 and earlier, etc, because there are many features not previously available, but older pte's can be read and played now. Read Al's information about timing differences on the calculations of slides plus transitions on the other post, don't use wma sound files and they should work fine for all presently enabled features. We use our old pte's in Beta 6 without problems. Best regards, Lin

Hi Al, One additional thing is to avoid wma format music at least for now. One of our posers was getting a blank (black) screen when loading 4.47 pte into beta 6 and the cause turned out to simply be the music - otherwise everyting worked perfectly. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Actually, there is no qualitative difference in our experience in using Photoshop (5, 7, CS - we don't have CS2) and using IrfanView - essentially the same algorithms are available in both. The primary advantage in my experience of using IrfanView is speed and convenience. Creating a Photoshop action can greatly speed up doing 500 images in Photoshop, but IrfanView already has batch processing, auto sharpening (you set the amount), automated file rename, etc., which makes it ever more convenient. It's definitely easier, especially for those without serious Photoshop experience, to use a program like IrfanView to do batch resizing. Yes the high resolution moniotors are very nice but complex (we have one) and tend to spoil the user in terms of image quality expectations. Our medium resolution monitors (Nokia 445Xi) which have screen displays at 2048x1536 pixels are plenty good for any practical purposes. Actually I keep mine at 1024x768 most of the time because my 64 year old eyes are not as good as they onece were - LOL. Best regards, Lin

Hi Catherine, Unfortunately, the only feasible way to recover the images is via screen capture software. There are a number of good screen capture utilities available and if you have reasonable display time (at least a couple seconds) you can definitely recover the images, but sadly only at screen resolution. If you know what the resolution was on the originals, then the best way would be to play the show on a high resolution system so the higher the display resolution the more likely it will be to capture higher resolution frames. One of our forum members in Thailand, Granot, has a very nice screen capture utility availabe called "Restore PTE" which automatically names the images (1, 2, 3, etc.) and stores them in a separate folder so you can very quickly capture a large number by simply pressing a key as they appear. Here's a link: http://www.thailandphotoalbum.com/ Scroll down and look at the very top of the last group (the largest one) of programs.... Best regards, Lin

Probably you will want to resample the originals down to a more usable size. The highest resolution monitors built today are 9 megapixel so unless the owners are using a $6,000 monitor to display the slideshows, you would get better results on the executables by doing a batch resample using something like IrfanView to get the image sizes down to the display resolution of the monitors being used to view the slideshow. Even though P2E does on the fly resample very well, you will get better images by doing it yourself and it doesn't take IrfanView (free) very long to batch resample using some very good interpolation algorithms. For best results with DVD you would also want to do this and resample down to around 1024 on the longest axis rather than let the program downsample the originals. It will go quicker and the results will be superior. Just a suggestion.... Best regards, Lin

Yes, but the way you must do it is to combine the pte's then create an executable. What she really needs to do is learn how to copy and paste pte's from various shows to create the executable. As with any executable code, multiples can't be combined into one so I doubt that is really what she wants, just the end effect. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dom, She is using some of your templates, the one's where he replaces your samples with his own images. He wants to combine the effects of several different templates in one executable file but doesn't know how to proceed. I think he needs to learn how to copy/paste the pte files...... Lin

Hi Laura, Text has not yet been enabled in the beta so you need to create your text in Photoshop or other graphics editor. The easiest way is to create it as a PNG file (there are a number of tutorials concerning this available for download). You can change the background color in either Project Options, Screen, Background or you can do it for individual slides via Customize Slide, Main, Use Own Background Preference. With each of these you can use any solid color or gradient. You can also create solid jpg files in your choice of image editor and use these via the Objects and Animations on a layer behind your images. You have two ways to fade in pictures. You can use the Fade In Fade Out effect or you can use the Keypoints and set opacity for any image initially to zero then place a keypoint at the time you wish the change to full opacity to occur and set that opacity to 100%, etc. This will fade in the image to either a full or any transparency you wish - very versatile. I would suggest downloading and reading some of the tutorials and playing with the new beta for a while before switching over completely because there are many powerful new capabilities. Igor is slowly introducing all features to facilitate debugging. There will be at least one more beta before the release version is ready. Best regards, Lin