Lin Evans

But not yet "to old to cut the mustard" LOL - looks like some tired ol' boys but the fishing and scenery made it all worth while. Great job to get some beautiful frames and memories. I can almost taste those fish! Isn't that in the Cottonwood area? If so, isn't that a bit over a 4,000 ft altitude increase in a bit less than four miles? Bet you had some sore muscles the next day or so? LOL... Best regards, Lin

What brought this to my attention was a timing issue I seem to be having which I have not been able to figure out yet. I have the Sun with Venus orbiting in an elliptical orbit. The sun consists of several PNG's designed to create a swirling gas/flame effect by moving in opposite rotational directions and by "horizontal flip" of one of the PNG's. Venus consists of a Venus and "dark Venus" PNG. The dark Venus PNG is in a child relationship to the regular Venus and exists to create the "silhouette" effect when Venus crosses the image of the Sun on the side facing the viewer. For the first orbit, everything worked exactly as expected. I adjusted the dark Venus to zero opacity at the start and put a place holder zero opacity just before Venus crossed the Sun on the first orbit and a 100% (some interim steps omitted for clarity) when it was over the sun. As Venus leaves the sun the Opacity was changed back to Zero (in increments) and everything works perfectly! The problem became apparent on the second orbit. When I essentially duplicated the procedure for the first orbit, Venus turned dark way too soon. After tinkering with it for about a half hour I finally did an iterative solution by making dark Venus zero until well into the Sun and didn't change the opacity back to zero until it was well out of the influence of the Sun. If you move the blue arrow manually through the second orbit you will see what I mean. However, the actual preview doesn't match the manual simulation. The actual Preview looks correct now, but to make it look correct I had to "fudge" quite a bit. Perhaps this has to do with insertion of a keypoint and then subsequently changing the time and may be solved by something I suggested earlier about the possibility of "linearity" of effects in terns of pan,zoom, etc., being optional or fixed via a "switch" check box - I don't know for certain, but if anyone wants to run the pte simulation, just click and hold on the blue arrow and run through the second orbit with the view set to about 150% so you can see what the manual movement reveals versus what happens with the Preview. Tis a mystery - LOL http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/venus.zip Best regards, Lin

LOL - It does indeed! I completely missed it - perhaps because it's labeled "Position". Shouldn't it correctly be labeled "Time?" That will teach me to be more observant!! Best regards, Lin

In a future version of P2E would it be possible to see the numbers represented by future keypoint positions without actually adding and clicking on a keypoint? What I mean is if you slide the little blue arrow across the time line, would if be possible to display the keypoint numbers in a window with the time numbers scrolling by so the user knows precisely what time is represented by a given position of the little blue arrow? If so, then watching the movement of an object on screen while sliding the arrow might help place the keypoint at a precise position represented by the object rather than trying to "guess" at what precise time to type into the keypoint block to make an event happen when the object is at a precise point. Something like Photoshop uses in the Info Window when you move the cursor across the screen and the XY coordinates are continuously updated, except for time rather than position? Thanks, Lin

Hi Derek, I created an new pte so as not to disturb your original. Here's the link. Yes, you want to add the original image and fade it in after you finish the assembly of the puzzle pieces to remove the line. My version is a bit different than what you probably had in mind, but you can get the idea by looking at the pte file. What you are forgetting is that when you set opacity to zero at the beginning then to 100%, etc., somewhere else along the time line, what you are asking the program to do is to gradually change from zero opacity to 100% opacity throughout the time from zero to the next keypoint. What you should do to maintain zero opacity until a particular time is put an intermediate keypoint where you want the change from zero to 100% opacity to begin. For example, if you want the piece to remain hidden for six seconds then begin to appear so it would appear at 8 seconds then you put another keypoint at 6 seconds with that set to zero opacity. The program will then keep that piece hidden because you have informed it that you want zero opacity at zero and zero opacity at six seconds. When six seconds passes the piece will begin to "materalize" and become 100% at 8 seconds. To make a longer fade it move the six second keypoint back toward zero to maybe 5 seconds. See how that works? So you have it going well. Next place your original image in the front position (use Order, Bring to Front. Set the opacity to zero. Go to 13 or 14 seconds or so and put another keypoint set to zero then at 15 seconds or whatever make it 100% opaque. Here's the link: http://www.lin-evans.net/drury/drury.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Andreas, Why can't you copy the dll file from one to the other pc? A dynamic link library file is like any other in that it can easily be copied to a CD or DVD or floppy disk then copied to another computer into the Windows/system32 folder. If you can't "see" the file you need to change the Windows parameters in control panel to make hidden and system files visible to explorer. Best regards, Lin

Hi Drury, Let's start with the last question first. Project Options, "Main" tab, then you have the choice of repeating the show or ending the show after the last slide. You can also have the last slide remain on screen at the end of the show (the user then presses ESC to leave and go back to the Windows Desktop). These features have been enabled since beta 4 so no reason not to stop a show at the end if you want it that way. Now let's look at the X - Y axis. When you choose to zoom you can make the image larger by either dragging the corner of it's rectangle, placing a different number inside the "Zoom" box in the Objects and Animations screen on the "Animations" tab or you can select the object by clicking on its name in the object list and hold down the up or down arrow key next to the zoom box which will increment the numbers up or down. Notice that when you do this you will see the object get larger or smaller proportionally. But what if you wanted to distort the object so it got larger or smaller on the vertical axis but not on the horizontal axis or vice versa? Then you click on the tiny box between the horizontal and vertical zoom. When you do this the appearance of the box changes slightly and then when you increment the numbers larger or smaller with either the horizontal or vertical zoom arrows, instead of the image getting larger or smaller proportionally, the object becomes distorted on either the horizontal or vertical axis (X or Y axis). This allows you to perform adjustments for a variety of conditions as well as create effects such as "flipping the Morgan Dollar". The effect of rotating the dollar was done aa an illusion by changing the amount of width while leaving the height constant until only a thin line exists, then substituting the opposite side of the coin already "squeezed" to a vertical line and gradually, over time, expanding it back to normal size on the reverse. The visual effect is somewhat as you would see when you "rotate" a coin standing on its edge. An optical illusion. That's what the tiny box between the Horizontal and Vertical zoom is for - to change from a linear expansion and contraction of the image to allow independent manipulation of the horizontal or vertical size. As for the "Preview" not looking exactly as you see when actually changing the numbers, try dragging the keypoint at 15 seconds over into the white on the right side until it will stay and see what happens. My guess is that you are not quite at the end of the action when 15 seconds rolls around. If you zip up the pte file and images you are using and post a link I'll make it work right and then you can see what the changes were. Use the "File" "Create a Backup Zip" to automatically zip up everything then post a link to that file. Best regards, Lin

Nice one! Looks great - wish we had some larger screens so the whole known solar system could be simulated. Best regards, Lin

Hi Drury, (Addenda) It just occurred to me that you may not have created the puzzle pieces using the same method I explained (Photoshop action by Panos) and if so, it may be confusing because the pieces are "synchronized" via the PNG transparency so that they line up perfectly for the assembled product at 100% zoom. If your puzzle was made otherwise the instructions may give you spurious results. You don't want to add the keypoint to the "right" of the blue because that gets you into the following slide's timeline. The timeline for your individual puzzle piece is all in blue. 19 seconds would make the end point for your piece extend into the start time for the following piece. This is fine if that's what you want and is frequently used to give overlapping "fades" for effect, but for what you are trying to do this is not correct. Slide the keypoint back just into the edge of the blue at 15 seconds. I suspect the easiest way for you to learn this is to start with only two slides. Set the time for each to about 15 seconds via the "Customize Slide" feature. When you "insert" a slide, the effect in terms of pan and zoom will be keyed to the precise timeline position where you actually inserted the keypoint. You can "approximate" the time but once you make the insertion, the effect will be linear between the previous keypoint and this keypoint, but not necessarily linear between zero and the new keypoint unless you were very careful with your insertion. This probably accounts for the discrepancy you notice between where you inserted the keypoint and whatever effect you may notice even after you move the keypoint. Eventually Igor may make a feature to calculate what "should" be the proper zoom or pan number at the point where the keypoint ends up, but right now it doesn't work like that. The "black circle" tells me that you have a transition selected such as the "circle" transition. That's why I think you should hold off on your slideshow until you learn how things work by using only two slides at first. The more slides you have and the more objects, the more possibilities there are for confusion until you get a handle on the mechanism. Once you figure it out, it will be very easy to use, but there is a learning curve. So try only two slides and experiment with pan/zoom/rotate and with various keypoint positions. Follow the tutorials step-by-step and once you get the hang of it you will find it extremely powerful and easy to do very complicated things with this program - things not possible with ANY other current slideshow program. It's always fun to try and make a "real" slideshow right away, but you can quickly get into problems and better to start with very simple things like learning to zoom, then learning to pan. Even with things like zoom there are some very powerful features which can get you into trouble. The small "square" between the X and Y axis, for example, can be clicked on to make it possible to change the X axis and not the Y axis. Run the Morgan Dollar simulation on my website (click on the Slideshow Demo link) and you can see what I mean. Its a small zipped executable, but demonstrates some of the power you will have once you work out the kinks. http://www.lin-evans.net Best regards, Lin

Hi Ron, Thanks much for the feedback. The ripple effect only really makes sense for a lake or relatively still body of water which can be either smooth or have "ripples" along with reflections. In a river or creek such as the coyote is standing in where the water is running, reflections are rare in any substantive way and the "lapping" effect of ripples in still water wouldn't work I'm afraid. The may, perhaps, be another way to simulate the running water. I'm working on that now... The Reflect effect is done by a program (not in Photoshop, etc.) which uses the original image to create a mirror image at the bottom and then create multiple images each having slightly different distortions to simulate a "ripple" effect in the water which is also simulated by the program. The program has three output methods. It can create an AVI file which you can adjust the length of via the program, it can create an animated Gif file or it can output sequential jpg's, etc., which can be used in your PTE show. To do the effect in my sample took a total of 211 jpg images which consisted of a repetition of 30 original jpgs. Each of the 211 images has a display time of 66ms which effectively simulates a 15 frame per second "movie". I have run as many as 10,000 of these jpgs using PicturesToExe in a simulation. There is no additional memory overhead after the original 30 which are then copied en mass and duplicate to to 100 then that 100 copied to get to 1,000 and the 1,000 copied to get to 10,000. For normal displays lasting a few seconds such as the one I used in the demo, a couple hundred set at 66ms works out very well. You can download the software from AL's link and install it and play with it. I find images which "could" have a lake or pond beneath (not which actually "do" have such) work best. The Moose cow and calf were actually headed down to a pond which was around 20 feet below the actual bottom of this frame so the realism is more believable, I think. So you wouldn't want for example a tree cut in half by the frame at the bottom of your image, but rather an image cropped in such a way so the water and reflection would be a legitimate possibility for the effect. Best regards, Lin Hi Ken, It's a pretty large file (the pano) so perhaps some resource issue may be responsible for the slight jerkness you experienced. It plays smoothly on all of our systems, but they all have fairly good video cards with lots of RAM. Best regards, Lin Hi Al, Thanks much for the feedback! I'm sure the reflection effect can and "will" be overdone in the weeks to come, much as it was on the web in the Java "Lake" applet when that became available. One of the ongoing issues with creating slideshows is the attempt to determine how many and what type transitions and effects create the most pleasing aesthetic. Even with refinement, the final product will please some and not others so there really is never a true "right or wrong" but we can all agree that it's very easy to over use effects. Personally I like simple fades for the majority of my transitions but sometimes throw in a "gratuitous" page turn or other - perhaps out of boredom - LOL.. Best regards, Lin

Yep, something wrong on the net tonight, perhaps my server is acting up. I can't ftp or even reach the site via ftp so will find out and correct it tomorrow hopefully. Sorry.... I just uploaded it from another system under a new link and updated the original message with the new link. It "should" be O.K. now - don't know what was going on.... ----------------------------- O.K., link seems to be good now, I just downloaded it and tested it.... ----------------------------- Lin

Can "Reflections" be used effectively in a slideshow lead in? Well, just for fun I tossed one in for this less than five minute show (about 43 megabyte zipped executable download so broadband needed). You judge. Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park scenery and critters...... Soft music... http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/rmnpreflect.zip Lin

Hi Louie, Go to Project Options, Music Tab, Put your songs in there then uncheck "Repeat Music After Playing". Take out any music you may have entered on individual slides through the "Customize Slide" function and it should work perfectly. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jean Pierre, Yes, the possiblities are endless and limited only by one's imagination. Indeed I did both a 20 and 30 piece puzzle - the samples for the Video Test are 32 layers on the puzzle. As you say, it's not something we would normally do in a real slideshow, but your 565 piece puzzle and being able to accomplish this without a huge RAM overhead shows the tremendous possibilities for P2E. Best regards, Lin

Hi Louie, Are you running the release version or the Beta 5 version? The sound on the Beta 5 is not yet set up to stop after the last slide, but on the release version 4.xx the sound should work perfectly, even on the trial. Are you using mp3 or something else? Are you putting in the sound via the Project Option are trying to use background voice over for an individual slide and inserted via the "Customize Slide" feature? A little more background will help us sort out what's going on. Best regards, Lin

Hi David, What you are dealing with is called the parent/child relationship. There are several ways to get objects on the identical level without any "indent". The easiest way for me is to zoom the image to about 10% then right click way away from the green bounding rectangle in the grey area of the Objects and Animation screen. If you click "on" an object name then right click and "Add" a new object (image), you will end up with this: OBJECT 1 ----OBJECT 2 This is the parent/child relationship you would also get if you used the "rectangle" to bound the two in the visual view. To prevent this, you click away from the word object on the object list or do it as suggested above and use the zoom feature (to the right of Paste on the tool bar on top) to click far away from any rectangle. Then you should see this: OBJECT 1 OBJECT 2 Once you have the objects in the object list, go to the Properties tab and click on the "Transparent to Selection" box so there is a checkmark in it. This way when you actually click on an object in the object list, you will see only the rectangle which bounds that object. Now click on the object in the object list then right click the mouse and choose order. You can then move any object forward or backward by one step or all the way to front or back. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Good idea, thanks! Lin

I have placed a number of links to my executable slideshows and demos in one location to facilitate finding them not only for my own use but for any new visitors who want to see some of the features of PicturesToExe in action. I have a link from my website at: http://www.lin-evans.net And you can reach the demo download page directly by clicking on or entering this link in your browser: http://www.lin-evans.net/demo/index.html Some of my shows as well as those of other members are located also on Dom's very informative site at: http://thefreedom.free.fr/share/index.php?subcat=6 Best regards, Lin

Hi Derek, Let's start with getting the four pieces into the object box without them having a parent/child relationship. The easiest way to do this is visually. Put in the first object as you have been doing. First go to the Objects and Animation screen an look up at the top bar of tools. Do you see the Copy and Paste tools? Immediately to the right of Paste there is a zoom box which changes the view from Auto to some percentage. Select a very small percentage such as 10% and you will see your object bounded by a green rectangle. Put the mouse cursor far away from the green rectangle on the Grey portion of your screen and right click the mouse. Choose "Add" then "Image" and choose your second object. Repeat this process for the third and fourth pieces of the puzzle. This process puts all four pieces of your puzzle in separate layers and all in the same object list. For the puzzle you don't need the pieces to be separate images in the slide list, just the first piece becomes slide one and the other three are on separate layers. When you click within the green rectangle the program will assign a "child" relationship just as it does when you click on an object in the object list and right click and add that object from that position. When you click on the grey area far away from any bounding rectangle, you will be able to add objects without having any parent/child relationship. You will know this because the objects will appear under one another in the objects list in a straight line rather than having an "inset" as if a tab key had been used on a second line of text in a word processor. Once you have all four objects added, you can begin to manipulate them. Each object will automatically have a keypoint at the start of zero assigned. To be able to manipulate each object you will want to highlight the object in the Objects and Animation screen in the objects list then click on the Properties tab (next to the Animation tab) and put a check next to "Transparent to Selection" by clicking in the square next to that choice. Doing this reveals the green square you see when you click on an image which belongs to that image. To set things to some reasonable time such as 15 seconds click on an object then click on "Customize Slide" and change the time from the default of 4 seconds to 15 seconds (or whatever duration you want for the puzzle. Do this for each piece so they all have a 15 second duration. Next you may want to size the pieces. So click on an object in the object box then drag the rectangle by the corner to make the object larger or smaller. All this applies ONLY to the zero or start keypoint. Since the objects lie on top of each other, you may want to temporarily place a zero in the opacity block for three of them. You can reveal them or hide them or make them semi-transparent by using the opacity numbers from zero to 100%. Once you have them all sized as you would like you can begin to manipulate their actions. Go to the far right on the timeline. Notice that the timeline is two blue long horizontal bars bounded by white on either end. The white signifies the start and end with the white on the left being at zero time and the white on the right being at 15 seconds for this individual example. Place the mouse cursor at about the 15 second point on the "BOTTOM BLUE BAR" and right click then choose ADD KEYPOINT HERE. You have approximated 15 seconds so if you want that keypoint to be precisely 15 seconds change the number in the keypoint box accordingly. Do this for each piece. Now remember you have some position for the start of a piece and you now want a position for the ending. Your start position may be completely outside the black square representing the computer monitor or it may be wherever as well as the size. This is very important - ALL ANIMATION TAKES PLACE BETWEEN KEYPOINTS -. So you MUST click on the end keypoint then move a puzzle piece or resize it or change the rotation, etc. That puzzle piece will take the corresponding actions over the 15 second period. Were you to insert additional keypoints, you must click on the keypoint to make it active (it turns blue) and any change you make in the position, rotation, size, etc., for that object at that keypoint will be reflected in time from the position, rotation, size, etc., held at the previous keypoint. Remember you must actuate a keypoint by clicking on it then make a change in the movement, size, rotation, etc., for that object. You must then click on a different object and do likewise to make it animate. Align your four pieces at the final (15 second) keypoint as you wish the puzzle to appear when assembled. Best regards, Lin

Works flawlessly, Jean Pierre! Great execution and beautiful subject too! Best regards, Lin

That's a very nice model and explanation Jean-Pierre, very similar to the method I used in my "Planets" demonstration, the primary difference being that you are creating a perfect ellipse with the invisible "radius" on the center while I was availing myself of the diameter differential on a planet to seek a non central "anchor" point for the rotating object's (planet's) center. The non-central point allows an eccentric motion in the arc with the planet passing closer on only one side of the arc. The same effect could be created with your model by moving the invisible anchor square in relation to the center of the "atom". In the Planet model, I needed the "electrons" (planets) to also spin on their own axis (with the exception of the Moon) so that's why the duplication of each planet with one being set to zero opacity. I didn't include yet another child relation to a "shadow" to simulate the true effect of the real shadow cast by the light from the Sun on each planet but that would have been easy to achieve. Imagine taking additional children anchored to the existing children in your simulation and the complexity of motion could be virtually endless subject to memory limitations. P2E is definitely a wonderful tool and could be advantageously used in the classroom for simulations in Physics demonstations. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, Use the "zip" feature found under "File" "Create backup in Zip". This feature saves everything except any executable or AVI files you may have created. It zips up all the original jpg., etc. along with the pte file and puts them all together. That's how people have been sharing their work over the web. The program gathers all the files from various folders and puts them all in the zip. The zip has the date and file information written right into the file name. Best regards, Lin

Try the same link again. I changed the display time to 66 ms per image which gives a much better effect and with 1100+ images it lasts for two minutes. This time the first slide will re-appear and you can press ESC at any time to exit. Best regards, Lin

I "tinkered" with the settings for P2E and found that about 15 frames per second works beautifully. That works out to about 66 ms per frame. Set the transitions to "none" then adjust each of the 29 or 30 images to 66 ms with quick, no transition. Select the first image of the set then go to the last (#29 or 30) and hold down the shift key to select the entire group. Right click and copy then go to the bottom and paste. Repeat until you have about 100 then go top and bottom again and copy 100 and paste about five times. The entire show will be under 7 megs and will last about two minutes with 1100 odd images. I mentioned 29 or 30 images because the most Reflections will output is 30 but for whatever reason I only ended up with 29 -probably my error.... I redid the show with the 66 ms timing - I think it's much better now.... http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/reflect.zip Best regards, Lin

LOL - it's probably not "freezing," the reflections only run for four seconds. There is a five second image with text, then the sequence runs for four seconds then the last frame stays until you press ESC. I have it set to stay on last image after show closes. Best regards, Lin