Lin Evans

All working perfectly now on all our machines thanks to Igor's help. I had a bad file in my driver set for my Radeon 9800 Pro card - a new driver set and some diagnostics and it's now working perfectly. This is heads and shoulders above anything out there for smoothness and power folks. I've used them all including ProShow Gold and Producer and they can't hold a candle to what can be done here!! Great big C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S to Igor and the development team - this was indeed worth waiting for!! Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, It works perfectly on all of my systems except one. On my 3.2 GHz Intel Perntium 4 with Hyper Threading and using an 800 MHz Front Side Bus and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro neither show will load. I suspect it's something with this system so I'm going to try running it from the safe mode and will get back. On all our other six systems it runs perfectly. The pans and zooms are SOOOOO much BETTER than the competition there is no comparison!! Congrautlation!!! Best regards, Lin

O.K., here's the link to the html pages which will demonstrate how to make a permanent AVI file with P2E. This one isn't a temporary "template" which will be erased when you exit P2E but rather a regular AVI file which you can use with any DVD burning software to create a DVD. http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/makeavi/index.html Best regards, Lin

It occurs to me that because there seems to be so much confusion over how to do this, that there must be something which is being overlooked by the majority - I believe I know what it is and I'm preparing a detailed instruction guide. I'll make this available as an HTML page later today. Right now I'm making screen captures of each step so ANYONE can easily duplicate this process. Lin

Think of a codec as you would a "program". There is no conflict with having multiple "codecs" reside simultaneously on your computer. These (the relevant ones) are programs which are used to encode, decode (CoDec) and compress mpeg data into AVI files. With ACE you can install as few or as many different codecs as you desire. The codecs you have installed will show up when you choose the "Custom AVI" feature with PicturesToExe. The only one you really need to burn a DVD with the "Create a Custom AVI" choice on P2E is the mpeg 4 codec because it is compatible with all current DVD burning and authoring software, but there is no "penalty" or "conflict" for having numerous different codecs reside on your computer. If you have both Nero and Roxio software on your computer and you "don't" have issues, you are very lucky. For the vast majority they are incompatible when simultaneously installed on the same computer. As I remember, there are caveats in the installation instructions which warn of this. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jerry, The issue is that there are a great number of users who have zero problems - you don't hear from them because virtually no one who has zero problems comes to a forum and posts a comment saying so. In a large percentage of cases when people are having difficulty burning DVD's it's because they either don't have the proper software or they have previously installed Roxio and then installed Nero or vice versa. Because these two are incompatible and because they do not fully uninstall (vestige information is still in the registry) no matter which software is being used to attempt to burn DVD's there are going to be problems. The number of problems and complaints on the ProShow forums about this issue is huge. PhotoDex and some other companies have elected to include their own burning software in their packages. When it works correctly it's fantastic. You just click on the DVD choice, load your blank in the drive and wait until the process has ended. But, and this is a very large issue, when it DOESN'T work properly because of various issues such as the aforementioned Roxio/Nero install or the presence of other software which also burns DVD's and is incompatible with the PhotoDex burning engine, the user is stuck big time with no alternatives. They do not provide an alternative way of burning a DVD if their internal engine fails for any reason. The authors of P2E elected to do it another way by providing an AVI template which works with several leading DVD authoring programs and IN ADDITION provided a means of creating an AVI using the codec of your choice from the ones available on your computer or from ones you elect to install on your computer. By not FORCING you to use the ptec codec, they have made it possible for virtually all to be able to burn DVD's. If you have problems one way, you can always use alternate ways. What these complaints seem to boil down to is that Fonz and you would prefer P2E to have an internal DVD burning engine so you don't need to rely on other software. That's fine and it may indeed be something Igor decides to implement in the next version. But even if he does this, it will not obviate the issue of NEEDING an alternative. The issue is that it's exceedingly simple to use the PicturesToExe alternative and burn an AVI which is compatible with virtually every burning engine in every piece of stand-alone software. Ken and I have linked numerous times to the free ACE Codec pack which contains, among dozens of others, the MPEG 4 codec which is perhaps the best, if not one of the best codec available for producing superior quality AVI files which can then be burned with virtually any stand-alone package such as Nero or Roxio or authoring packages such as Vegas Video, Ulead Movie Factory, etc. I'm perplexed as to why anyone who has read the instructions would have any problems at all brining an AVI which can then easily be made into a DVD. I can understand complaints about not having an internal DVD burning engine in P2E - but that's another issue entirely. What I can't understand is the reluctance to take the very simple step of ensuring that you have the MPEG 4 codec on your computer then choosing this from the list and creating your AVI file...... Lin

It does it both ways - can make a permanent AVI or use the AVI template which translated by Ulead, etc., results in the DVD. That's why I asked what codecs you see when you click on the "custom AVI". Usually you will have a number of codecs already on your computer from different installs. There are free codecs available in a single group which you can install one or a hundered different ones incuding Microsoft's mpeg 4 which is recognized by almost all software. You are not using "custom codecs" - that's misleading, what you are doing is "choosing" a codec which is widely recognized. The ptev codec is not widely recognized but works well with the Ulead and other programs on the list. If you want to create an AVI using mpeg 4 then you simply need to have the mpeg 4 codec installed on your computer. Go here and download the free package and you will have the opportunity to create using about every imaginable codec available. I suggest mpeg 4 for video simply because it's a very good codec and widely recognized by burning software. http://www.free-codecs.com/download/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack.htm The simple answer to your question is that you "can" do exactly what you want to do by choosing the "custom AVI" selection then choosing a codec, bitrate, etc., which will make you a permanent AVI file which you can do whatever with. Best regards, Lin

You have your slideshow created then you click on "Video" at the bottom of your screen on the tab between Project Options and Timeline. A popup box will appear. Click in the top choice "Create Custom AVI Video File" then click in the "Video Codec" box and another popup window will appear which is named "Video Compression". Under the word "Compressor" in this box, click on the checkmark in the small blue box to the right of whatever is written beside the checkmark and a drop-down "picklist" with the available codecs will appear. I suspect you do not have the necessary codec to encode or decode the video for the AVI. Please report back the list of available codecs and we can go from there. Lin

Are you watching the AVI after conversion to DVD on a PAL television or are you watching the AVI file only on your computer? The reason I ask is that there are changes on a television because it can't display the same number of colors as your computer and some codecs allow decreasing the brightness by some amount to compensate for the differences between a television and the computer. If the brightness levels are not decreased for the conversion to DVD then the colors will appear washed out or less intense on the TV. I "think" what your translator is calling "material acceleration" is what is known as "hardware acceleration" on the Windows setup for any particular graphics card. I can't think of any good reason why hardware acceleration would affect the color, but this is a question better answered by Igor. If you could link to a sample of the AVI as well as original jpg's used to create the AVI perhaps others can see the differences and maybe offer suggestions. Best regards, Lin

+Vegas Movie Studio 6 comes with DVD Architect Studio which lets you do this... Very nice and powerful package $89 http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/shopping/...gory.asp?id=109 Lin

Hi Ken, First - happy Easter - thanks for ringing this out, I know it was a long one! Hey tell my wife I've got some talent - LOL, she's convinced I should have continued in academics which bored me to death! HA! Actually, I would probably have made more money had I still been teaching Anthro or Physics than I've ever made as a photographer but it's been much more fun with the camera all these years... Best regards, Lin

Yes, thanks for the feedback! I'm wondering if this may be related to a particular video card or combination since you had difficulty and had to uninstall the earlier Flash version to get Flash 8 to work. The pixel 'twinkle" about every three seconds is normal and corresponds to keyframes but the "blotch" isn't and "shouldn't" be there. Flash 8 isn't nearly as good as viewing an mpg or even a good AVI for sure, but I'm suspecting that there may be some interaction perhaps between the LCD monitor which tends to reveal more issues because of the difference in the way video is displayed (versus CRT where there is phosphor persistence) and perhaps your particular video card. It would be helpful if you could tell me which particular card you have and how much RAM is installed. When I get some more feedback from other viewers perhaps we can put it all together and make sense of whatever individual differences we see from system to system. Unfortunately, there isn't any perfect or even near perfect "solution" for cross-platform presentations via web. I've pretty well run into a stone wall with Java and HTML which both work very well as long as there is no subject "movement" (video frames) and QuickTime is way too large to implement decent sized slideshows. Earlier Flash iterations don't have the compression range of Flash 8 and require much higher bitrates to get similar (to Flash 8) image quality so the downloads for streaming must be appropriately longer which make them fine for smaller slideshows, but for a behemoth like this one they run the meter to exhaustion on server resources. I had high hopes for divx but it doesn't look like that will pan out either so for now Flash 8 seems to still be the best compromise even though, as said, it has its share of problems. I would love to see some affordable technology which could spool a simple AVI. Of course the AVI would still be huge compared to the compression levels of Flash 8 - and that may indeed be part of the problem you experience. Best regards, Lin

I decided to take one of my larger slideshows and convert it to Flash 8 FLV to test the efficiency for really large slideshows. This one started as an over one gigabyte mpg converted to Flash 8 FLV with 0n2 Technologies Flix Pro. I'm hoping we get a beta of 5.0 soon so I can duplicate this one with P2E - this one was made with a competitive product (PSG) which I really don't like nearly as much as P2E because I've not had good luck with either support or issues being quickly resolved. It seems every new release brings yet more bugs so I'm anxiously awaiting P2E V. 5.0 beta which I know will knock the socks of of PSG. The original mpg output of +1 gigabyte size was reduced to a 106 megabyte Flash 8 FLV encoding at 640x480 screen display size. It was encoded with 29.970 frames per second and a 512 kbps bitrate. As with my other test show, this requires the Flash 8 player and broadband. If you don't already have the Flash 8 player, clicking on the link below will point your browser at the Adobe (Macromedia) site where you can quickly download and install it (takes only a few seconds). Then click on the link below again and the show will play. For those who already have Flash 8, a preload of 15% was used for the player so that 15% of 106 megabytes or about 15 megabytes must download before the show begins. There is a text "percentage loaded" message which counts from one to fifteen percent. If this one runs well on most broadband systems, then essentially any size slideshow can do likewise. The tradeoff with Flash 8 FLV is compression. Some image quality is sacrificed for the huge amount of compression, but overall I think it's "good enough" and provides cross-platform compatibility (will run equally well on MacIntosh or PC). This show runs about 27 minutes...... http://www.lin-evans.net/ctml/ctml.html Best regards, Lin

Thanks for checking it - see my post on "torture test" for Flash 8.... Lin

I read the link. You know Adobe is as guilty as anyone of propagating false information - LOL - they use the term "resolution' with ppi saying "an image captured at 72 ppi resolution". Digital cameras don't "capture" at any ppi, they capture via X number of horizontal by Y number of vertical photosites (sampling sites) which create some particular file size depending on whether the original processor is a CFA (bayer processed) or Foveon design. The camera captures an image by creating a matrix of the numerical equivalence of so many pixels across by so many down. This has absolutely nothing specifically to do with "resolution" but is only loosely correlated with the number of sampling photosite wells on the processor. This correlation is only good for CFA processors. For example, your Nikon CP990 produces a file with 3.37 million pixels of video information. The measured optical resolution via B&W resolution chart measurement is 800 horizontal by 850 vertical lines per image height. A Sigma SD10 using the Foveon X3 processor produces a file with 3.4 million pixels of video information which is very close to your Nikon CP990. The measured optical resolution via B&W resolution chart measurement is 1550 horizontal by 1550 vertical lines per image height. This is about twice the optical resolution of the CP990. How? Because the Foveon processor uses 9.3 million sampling sites to produce a 3.4 megapixel file size. A bit better than a six megapixel CFA sensor with 3.4 megapixel files. So you can see that there is no "necessary" correlation between pixel count and true optical resolution. Back to Adobe. The EXIF tag 72dpi or 300 dpi simply identifies how closely the print pixels will be grouped (pixel density) or how many per unit of linear measurement in "dots per inch or pixels per inch". To refer to it as "resolution" is highly misleading - shame on Adobe... LOL The important thing is that you have an answer. Best regards, Lin

The really strange thing is that you see 300dpi at all unless you have modified the file in PhotoShop. Both your cameras default the exif tag for dpi at 72. As I'm sure you already know, this is simply a "tag" which tells the printer how large the print would be if it were printed at this resolution. Many years ago when PC's had no graphics, the MacIntosh was "graphics central" for imaging. The old MacIntosh monitors were 72 pixel per inch display resolution. In 1990 when PhotoShop was first released they decided to use this as a "default" for their displays so all dimensions in inches or millimeters were based on 72 dpi or 72 ppi - terms which have been traditionally used incorrectly and indiscriminately. Most digital camera makers from years back used 72 dpi (ppi) as their default EXIF tag. Obviously nobody prints at 72dpi so printer drivers automatically set their print density according to the "quality" you have chosen. In the case of most Epson inkjet printers it's 720 dpi and for Hewlett-Packard inkjet printers it's 600 dpi. This really has nothing to do with the number of ink dropletts used which is what makes it even more confusing. The printers may use 2400 or 1200 or even higher numbers of ink dropletts per inch but it often takes many ink dropletts to represent a single pixel. The actual number of "pixels" per inch for the Epson fine quality print on gloss paper is 720. The printer may actually use 2400 tiny drops of ink to produce these 700 pixels of print information. Today there are a few digital camera manufacturers - usually Canon - which "tag" the exif header with 180 ppi rather than 72, but both your cameras use 72 ppi as the native default tag. Perhaps Windows or if you by chance have installed PixVue may be changing this default which has no real meaning except that if the display algorithms in use by the software and video card may display the images at different sizes. In either case whatever you see in PhotoShop is undoubtedly the correct ppi exif tag. No matter what you have it set for, it will be changed to the print density needed when you select the quality and size print you want. It's rather comical listening to all the chatter about whether to "feed" the printer 300 dpi or 180 dpi or whatever. If you are printing on an inkjet, the driver will override whatever you give it unless it happens to be what the printer "requires." For the vast majority of dye sublimation printers including Durst Lambda, Kodak and LightJet this is 300 dpi. For some of the Fuji printers it's 400 dpi and for others it's 300 dpi. For the vast majority of other dye sublimation printers it's 300 dpi. Best regards, Lin

Thanks for checking this for me Ron. I've about decided that that for the present iteration of P2E about the best way to present them over the web is with a straight AVI show and perhaps a message to the viewer that they will need to wait a bit for the download to complete before the slideshow starts. To get streaming one needs to use Flash, but to get the best Flash implementation the new Flash 8 player is needed and of course software to convert the AVI into Flash. The least expensive is still Riva Producer Lite which does a nice job but uses the older Flash implementation which doesn't have nearly the image quality of the original AVI. To get "decent" image quality takes a pretty large file size which is inconvenient even for those with good broadband. The newer products which produce Flash 8 are more expensive but Flash 8 produces excellent quality at very compressed file sizes. What takes 80 megabytes in Riva Producer (high bitrate - tough for even broadband) can be done with a 22 megabyte file in Flash 8 at equal quality, but then most people don't have Flash 8 installed so a "pop-up" file with Flash 8 detection must be used to port the visitor to the Macromedia site where they must then download and install Flash 8 before watching the movie. This "can" be daunting to inexperienced users so even though it's a very viable solution, it's still somewhat cumbersome and fairly expensive and requires a bit of technical skill on the part of the slideshow producer to accomplish. So no "perfect" solution as of yet - hopefully by the time Version 5 is released (not the beta) there will be some good tools to facilitate this... Best regards, Lin

Ken, thanks! Yep old Jalapeno breath and bear scat with juniper berries - what a combination - LOL Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks much for testing this. I've re-encoded the identical show, but added a 10% preload. The time it takes to preload depends on the apprehended connect speed of the user. A message showing percent loaded should come up and when it reaches 10% (in your case probably only a few seconds) the player should appear and the show should play. Hopefully this will eliminate the stall and such at the begining of the show for anyone with a decent broadband connect. If you have the time would you mind clicking on the link below and let me know if it starts properly without the jerkyness associated with the first time you played the original? http://www.lin-evans.net/flixtest/flix.htm Best regards, Lin

On the never ending quest for web display options, I'm evaluating Flash 8 as an alternative to Riva Producer Lite. I've used Riva for some time with very good success, but the new Flash 8 brings numerous advantages as well as some disadvantages. First, as an example, I created an MPG sample file with Ken Burns Effects (something coming soon for P2E) which consists of about 6 minutes of still photos with a good smattering of Ken Burns Effects. The MPG file size was about 255 megabytes. I used On2 Technologies Flix Pro double pass compression to create a Flash 8 FLV file. Flash 8 is the newest and perhaps best Flash implementation. The resulting file using maximum quality at 640x480 display size was about 21 megabytes which is a HUGE compression from the original. On2 has a number of products ranging from $39 to about $250 U.S.D. The less expensive products don't have the double pass encoding, but for most slideshows double pass is inconsequential. It's primarily important for movie where there are very quick movements - not something inherent in video slide shows, so it's quite possible to get excellent results even from the least expensive products. I do video movie compressions as well, so I did purchase Flix Pro ($250) but it's certainly not necessary to take advantage of the new Flash 8 technology. The following link is to my demo sample using Flash 8 FLV encoding. For those with broadband who wish to see it, if you don't already have the Flash 8 player, then click on the following link and download and install it first. http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/ Here's the link to my sample. The lack of smoothness in the first scroll of the jewelry piece from the body to the head of the "bear" was there in the original MPG so not an artifact of the Flash. The image quality is considerably better than from my Riva encoder and about 1/4 the size (Riva Producer created about an 80 megabyte Flash versus 21 megabytes from On2) I would appreciate any reports of how this works for forum members. http://www.lin-evans.net/rtest/rtest.htm New link which automatically detects the presence or not of Flash 8 http://www.lin-evans.net/flixtest/flixpopup.html Best regards, Lin

Ken is right - the strange thing is that "normally" you wouldn't have an AVI compressed with the PicturesToExe codec because it's created temporarily and erased when you leave P2E. Perhaps what your friend did was to find the AVI and copy it to another location before exiting P2E thus creating an AVI which would only work if you had P2E installed on your computer. You could certainly purchase P2E, it's very inexpensive and very useful. With P2E installed you would be able to run this AVI but I don't think the codec is available as as stand-alone. As mentioned eleswhere, the MPG4 codec is perhaps the best to use when creating an AVI for distribution. Best regards, Lin

Here: http://www.free-codecs.com/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack_download.htm If it's not in this batch you don't need it - LOL Lin

Thanks for checking this Ken - I suspect that the AVI may be the best way to display a P2E slideshow over the web right now - at least when there are no Ken Burns Effects. Best regards, Lin I suspect what's happening is that the show is being downloaded to a temp folder in Windows then played from there rather than streaming. That's one of the problems when you try to run your own shows - you are never certain from where they are actually being called. The fact that on second click it plays immediately is almost certainly an indication that it's being stored locally just as any jpgs or tiffs you open with an image editor. After a while they get "flushed" from the cache, but Windows is saving them in a temp folder and looks there before runing them from the source or downloading them again. Thanks for testing this for me. Best regards, Lin

For some time we have been searching for ways to play PicturesToExe files over the web and have variously tried Flash SWF, Flash FVL, etc., with the reasoning being having cross-platform compatibility. Recently it's come to my attention that most of the later MacIntosh OS systems will play AVI files which have been encoded with MicroSoft MPG 4 codecs. This brought up the natural question of why not just play the AVI file directly? AVI has much better quality than Flash and the file sizes are usually much smaller. The later Windows Media Players will recognize a link to an AVI file on your website and automatically play the AVI in what seems to me to be sort of a "streaming" effect. In light of this, I thought I would post a link to a test AVI created with PicturesToExe which was used with Riva Producer to create a Flash FLV file. But instead of a link to the Riva html which calls the Riva player, I just linked below to the AVI file itself. On all our systems (PC) Windows Media Player automatically recognizes that the web link is to a playable AVI and plays it. We don't have a MacIntosh to test it with, but would appreciate any of you with PC's and reasonably fast broadband giving it a try and reporting back on the video/audio quality experienced. http://www.lin-evans.net/trevor/rivatest_vid.avi Best regards, Lin