Lin Evans

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

LOL - great resource! If you can't find a codec in that collection you probably don't need it - HA! Best regards, Lin

Just a little to add to what Ken said. Zipping doesn't reduce the file size very much in most cases (with a P2E executable). The problem is that emailing a large file depends a great deal on your email provider as well as that of the person you plan to send it to. If you have a web site, you can zip the file and post a link to it. This way the receipient can choose when and if to download it. A very large email can really mess up someone's day, especially if it takes a long time to download. Lin

Hi Ken, You can download most if not all Microft codecs here: http://www.wmplugins.com/ItemList.aspx?typeid=8 Lin

This may have already been covered but just in case - One of the reasons that ProShow Gold DVD's look better than most AVI conversions is that there is a provision for adjusting what PhotoDex calls "saturation" before the creation of the AVI. This is necessary because the brightness levels are different on the television than on a computer monitor. If the gamma/saturation/brightness are not corrected before burning a DVD then colors look wrong. Light greens turn yellowish, images can look washed out, etc. I was just wondering if it were possible to add a feature which allowed the user to designate a percentage of change in saturation prior to creating the AVI? Lin

There are numberous reasons why this may be. First, ProShow Gold has provisions for optimizing the DVD burn and I'm not familiar with Ulead's ability to do this or not. One of the issues is that the brightness levels for DVD need to be about 13% lower than for the computer. So any AVI file which looks great on the computer will be somewhat washed out on a television unles the gamma is corrected before the burn. Second, there are a variety of "options" which can greatly affect DVD quality. These option can be set with "most" DVD burn software, but if you just use the "defaults" you are likely to end up with less than an optimal solution. Please go to the following link and read it carefully - even print it out - because you need to be aware of the things which affect the quality of the the final product. PicturesToExe produces a stellar AVI file but to maintain that quality for DVD distribution you definitely need to set the proper parameters. This link will give you lots of information which can help you produce the best quality DVD possible assuming that the software used to actually burn the DVD has provisions for doing this. After reading the information in this link you will have a much better handle on how to get the best performance from your DVD burning software. http://www.signvideo.com/d-athr_pt1.htm Also read this: http://www.svconline.com/mag/avinstall_gam...look/index.html Best regards, Lin

Hey Mike, I didn't. The company in NY which was advertising it is either out of business and still collecting money for products they can't deliver or they are just another web rip-off. As suspected, I had to dispute the charges on my credit card. Their main telephone number has been disconnected and no longer in service and their alternate number returns a "mailbox full" message. They don't answer their emails so I'm guessing they are gonzo... It could be that it's an honest mistake, that they simply didn't bother to take down their site and that the automated web processing is just continuing to submit charges (how convenient is that - LOL) but I'm guessing that some people will just pay their credit card bill and get nothing for their efforts except a lesson about web purchases - HA! Best regards, Lin

Essentially you need software to intercept the sound at the sound card. There are severa programs out there which do this but this is the one I use: http://www.mp3-recorder.biz/ Lin

Hi Mike, I'm starting to believe that the company which I provided the link for is also out of business or a scam. I tried to purchase the software (X-Show) via the web and after taking my credit card number an error was returned saying "No Serial Number Could be Found for This Product" - please contact the "webmaster"... I called the number at the top right of their screen and it had been disconnected and no longer in service. I checked their "contact" number and called it and received a "mailbox full" message. I emailed them and received no reply as of yet. I contacted my credit card company and they had received the order for $39 so I suspect after the five day wait period I'll have to dispute the charges but a big CAUTION to anyone else about this company and the link below for reference..... http://www.nycsoftware.com/DVDxCopy/products.htm Best regards, Lin

As Ken says, just ignore warnings for XP - there's no reason at all why you can't rename the executable files by dropping the extension. Lin

As Ken says, you need to convert a P2E AVI output to FLV flash to "stream" it - I too use Riva Producer Lite for that purpose. The best way I know of to be certain that a zipped file containing an executable slideshow gets through the email scanners is to rename it to something else. So a file such as "myslideshow.exe" could be renamed to "myslideshow" (with no extension). Then when zipped the email scanner which looks for the .exe extension ignores it. Send instructions for the recipient to simply rename the file adding the .exe extension before trying to run it. Lin

Brian, That's 1181 x 1181 pixels.... Lin

So is it Audacity which says the combined mp3 is shorter than the time P2E calculates for it? How about the actual running time in p2e? Does the sound quit before the images finish or do they synchronize properly? If you place the mp3 into a different slideshow with all defaults enabled and choose auto sync to music does is play for the proper time and does the last slide end with the sound? Trying it in a different show could thow some light on the issue. If it works exactly the same then I would suspect there is still some hidden code in the MP3 which "should" be seen as a flat "tail" on the end of the visual in Audacity (assuming there is no dead space in the beginning). Otherwise I'm perplexed because I've always found P2E to register exactly the same time for my MP3's as Audacity. Strange indeed.... Lin

Hi Gilbert, I suspect that there is some "dead time" either at the front or back of your song. If you download the freeware "Audacity" program and import your mp3 into it you can see visually what's actually there. You can also trim the leading or trailing edges of dead time and fine tune it to your liking. Here's a link for Audacity in case you don't have it: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Lin

Hi Igor, Words such a "Incredible, breathtaking, magnificent and Fantastic" are insufficient to describe the beauty presented in this slideshow. Congratulations on a thoroughly enchanting view of worlds we never knew existed! Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Words like "breathtaking, fantastic, unbelievable" are insufficient to describe this beautifully orchestrated and presented slideshow. Congratulations on not only your most excellent presentation but also on you choice of images showing worlds we never knew existed! Best regards, Lin

Craig, you do it with screen capture utilities. One of the best by one of our P2E users - go here: http://www.thailandphotoalbum.com/ Lin

Reading between the lines :-) This means 5.0 is getting very, very close because Igor is always extremely quick to correct minor bugs. I'm getting ready to - C E L E B R A T E - Lin

Hi Geoff, It doesn't actually "bypass" copy protection, but simply renders ALL DVD and all AUDIO CD copies void of encription. Read the entire information on the AnyDVD site. You really don't need Windows Media Player at all. Anything Windows Media Player can do can be done with alternatives which have no such limitations. Programs such as Audio Grabber and Audio MP3 Recorder which intercept signals from the audio card directly are one way of avoiding these issues, but not necessarily the easiest or best. Best regards, Lin