Lin Evans

Hi Jeff, Maybe I can answer some of your concerns. If you perform a "clone" of the SSD to a new larger SSD then it will be virtually identical to the original when cloned with the proper software except it will have additional space available for writing. In this sense, it will boot just as it did from the original and nothing will seem a bit different except you will have more sectors available for use on the new and larger SSD. The cloning must be done when new application software is added, or you must install to both drives because the registry must be identical on the two drives. Nearly all software today writes to the registry and records the presence of the unlock key. Without this, your software applicaton will not run on the new drive unless you install the new software there. Just copying the application as installed will not suffice, it must be registered to work. Imaging and mirroring are essentially the same in function. These processes preserve the integrity of all the data and appllication files by duplicating them on each drive but they do not write to the registry AFAIK. In general, the registry and boot sectors are only written to with a true clone operation. The value of mirroring or imaging is that should a file or files become corrupted on one drive, you can copy them the mirror drive or imaged drive assuming that the corruption has not been written to the opposite drive as well. Think of mirroring as real-time backup opposed to off-line backup when you decide it's time. Think of cloning as an off-line duplication of your entire system on a second drive. I do not know whether it would be possible to install a new SSD or hard disk and install the OS then copy from the mirrored drive to the new drive and have everything work properly. I've not tried this, but my understanding is that mirroring is essentially a level zero RAID operation. RAID allows rebuilding corrupted or lost files from partial data striped across two or more hard disks. Best regards, Lin

Symantec was really stubborn even after I pointed out to their vice president of engineering a few years ago that there were software packages with serious markets such those products produced by Wnsoft, Photodex, AV Stumpfl, etc., which created executable code as a product in refusing to deal with fixing the Norton false positives. They had the audacity to suggest putting each executable into a folder excluded from testing by Norton. It took a long, long time for them to fix their over zealous detection scheme so that it wasn't flagging our executable files as threats and actually deleting them! Numerous calls finalliy resulted in success but the damage returned as quickly as it was "fixed." When developers are simply pig headed about refusing to work with other companies, it's time for affected users to drop their products like a hot potato. I suggested to all my clients that they seriously consider other anti-malware products. Personally, I wouldn't touch Norton Utilities myself. It had a good reputation until Peter sold it to Symantec then, over the years, it became the problem in my opinion. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Absolutely, you want to resize the images to no larger than necessary to conserve resources for your show. The bottom line is that the "only" time you need an image larger than the display device resolution which the image will be shown on is when you are doing a deep zoom in on a feature in that specific image. There is absolutely zero advantage in your images being larger than the display. For example, if you assume that the vast majority of users will have displays with an HD resolution of 1920x1080, then only use larger images for those few (if any) instances where you intend to zoom in. If you need to do a close in zoom on a particular image, then make that image large enough to not lose sharpness when you zoom in. As an example, I have a number of different digital cameras ranging from 10 megapixel to 40 megapixel image sizes. I downsample all these images to about two megapixel size for the vast majority of my shows. Things will run much smoother when your images are reasonably sized and for an executable show which give you the very best quality, you don't want to exceed the capabilities of the least common denominator in the chain of possible computer systems that the show will run on. Also there is a limit of about 2 gigabytes for a single executable file. This limitation is imposed by 32 bit software which will play on virtually all systems. So the easiest way to do this is use something like Irfanview or Fastone to resample all images to a standardized size in one dimension. Assuming your kids used cameras, phone cameras, etc., then probably see what the least resolution is, and if it's close to HD, just resample everything to 1080 pixels on the short side. Since there are a number of aspect ratios with different cameras, you can't always assume wide-angle or such. Most consumer cameras shoot in either 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio. Some of the newer ones also shoot in 16:9. If you just consentrate on the vertical height, then you will have sufficient width so that you can either crop or expand individual images to fit your desired display matrix. If you stay with reasonable jpg compression - say the equivalent of Photoshop six to eight, you should get excellent results. Best regards, Lin

A while back I had the C: drive fail on one of my systems shortly after doing a complete backup of data and application programs to a new1TB external USB Seagate drive. I went to the Seagate and it was as dead as a door nail. The drive simply was not spinning! I called Seagate explained the flashing light codes and they sent me a new bottom end which consisted of the power supply for the drive. It didn't help, still dead. Seagate offered to send me a new replacement drive, but the small cost of the drive was inconsequential, the problem was that all my data from the crashed drive was on this backup. Seagate also offered to "try" to recover the data for $1500.00 !! I wrapped the drive in Ceran Wrap plastic and froze it for about 24 hours then took it out and hooked it up. It still wouldn't spin. I was ticked off and I slammed the drive down on my sturdy desk. It started running just fine and it's been working perfectly since and that was over three years ago. Go figure..I was able to copy all the data from it without a single error and I still use it but of course I wouldn't trust if for anything other than just a redundant backup. Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, I don't think programs like Acronis True Image can be of much help if the C: drive is already trashed. Their advantage is in preventive care so you have insurance after the fact. In my case, an old friend many years ago when I got the XP system showed me how to set up a redundant boot sector with XP. This person made his living recovering data from dead drives and told me that Windows NT version 3.xx file system keeps a duplicate copy of the NTFS boot sector at the logical center of the volume, and Windows NT version 4.0 keeps a duplicate copy at the end of the partition. Since XP was derived from NT, they share certain characteristics which can be used to circumvent a dead boot sector. I've long since forgotten how this was accomplished, but it's what was happening to my C: drive. When my drive booted, I always saw a choice of two options for loading Windows. I've always chosen the first of these. Suddenly I got an error message stating that the boot sector was not found and the drive wouldn't load Windows at all. I chose the second choice and though I had to "press F1 to continue" it successfully loaded Windows XP. That's when I cloned the drive. It still gives me the same message with the new drive (I suppose the trashed boot sector was cloned as well) but by pressing F1 I'm able to load the new drive and everything works perfectly. I'm fairly confident that it would be possible to write a good boot to the old location on the new drive, but as long as it keeps working I'll just muddle along... Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, I agree and originally, when I first purchased Acronis True Image, I was totally baffled at all the necessary work to clone a drive. In those days one either had to purchase an enclosure with power supply to house the drive to be cloned, or install it in the system and it had to be the exact same drive as the one being cloned. Today, it's actually a pretty painless operation and the newer software can clone to a larger drive without problems. All you have to do is put the new drive in the system, hook up the power and data cables, install the clone software on the original drive and press a couple keys and everything is taken care of. After the clone process is finished which could take anywhere from a couple hours to overnight, you can either leave the cloned drive in or take it out and put it in a storage box in case the original fails at which time you simply "replace it" with the cloned one from the box. Then just restore the incremental backups since the date you cloned the drive and you're off and running as if nothing had happened. Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, That's "essentially" what is being done, but on a sector by sector basis because a copy requires sufficient RAM to hold the data and even the consumer systems with maximum amounts RAM rarely exceed 32 gb. Here's some of the current software and as you can see, the majority do sector copies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_cloning_software Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, I think the primary reason for cloning is to preserve the application software codes from the registry. Obviously, whether your software is installed in the default c: Windows "Program Files" folder, or whether you installed it on a partition or even a second drive where possible, the issue remains that if you loose the drive with the registry, all your software will have to have the unlock codes replaced when the applications are reinstalled or pulled off the backups. To prevent that, one needs the registry just as it existed on the crashed drive. Many times over the years I've had to perform a low level format on a drive which wiped out the registry. I realize that there are applications which can backup the registry, but even then reinstalling application software can be a major issue if you have a lot of it. In my case, I have literally hundreds of application software titles on my development system. It would take days to rebuild if I totally lost it and I might not even be able to find the unlock codes for many of my older programs which I still use on a regular basis. That's my main reason for using clone software. In the event that my drive with the registry fails, I can, in a few short moments remove two screws, plug in a data cable and a power cable hanging in easy reach of the clone disk and with a quick BIOS change be back up and running in about 45 seconds. Yes, I would have to retrieve my backups since the clone, but the vast majority of my work would be nearly instantly available. Even better would be a mirrored clone so that all I would need to do would be disconnect the power from the crashed drive, and make a BIOS change and I would have the mirrored drive up an going in short order. I suppose lots depends on how many applications one runs, but it would be a total nightmare for me to try to reinstall hundreds of applications even from a backup and then try to re-enter all the unlock codes. Maybe I'm missing something??? Best regards, Lin

Could you give a little more information. Were these MP4 h.264 encoded and burned with PTE, or were they executable files? Executable files can be burned to a dvd but will never play on a DVD player because they require a computer. If you can give details about how you created the DVD's perhaps one of us can help sort it out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, AFAIK Imaging is generally done via a compressed and stored volume rather than incremental mirroring - see this article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2029832/backing-up-your-entire-drive-cloning-vs-imaging.html I agree that having your data on a different drive or partition is probably a great idea especially if using SSD rather than a hard disk. I generally do put data on my C: partition but agree that it's not the best practice. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, What you are doing falls under the umbrella of off-line "mirroring" I suspect. I'm not keeping both drives operational so don't use the mirroring feature of FarStone's product. The important thing is that there are numerous products out there and it's not a bad idea for users to either clone a drive for backup or clone then use mirroring to provide redundancy. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I've so far used Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image and FarStone DriveClone 10. Of these I really like the FarStone product for two reasons. 1. It's incredibly EASY to use and isn't cluttered with backup features though they have another product which includes backup features as well. 2. It gets rid of unnecessary file and clutter. There are a number of excellent products out there - some rated higher on Top 10 Reviews (the one you use has exactly the same rating as FarStone's product) and cheaper to boot, but after trying to get information from the various product web sites, the "only" one who quickly answered my questions was FarStone. The Top Ten Reviews wasn't impressed with FarStone's support so maybe they are trying harder now. Of course Top Ten Reviews is definitely NOT the end word in anything - they rank Proshow Gold over PTE primarily because it has "more transitions" LOL. I actually wrote them and explained that PTE has "unlimited" transitions because users can create their own. These review sites such as Top Ten don't have either the staff or expertise to really dig deep and truly understand the products they review, it's pretty superficial so I take their ratings with a grain of salt. My guess is that users would not go wrong with any of the current products, but ease of use is probably paramount, especially for those inexperienced with the nomenclature and process of cloning. Best regards, Lin

I spent most of the day yesterday tending to a failing hard disk. My old XP development system has a 500 GB SATA disk drive which has been somewhat problematic and lately began showing signs of failing. I decided to clone it to an updated Seagate Barracuda 1TB drive. I have Acronis sofware but it has always been a major pain in the behind to use so I began evaluating alternatives. I finally settled on FarStone DriveClone 10 and I'm happy to say that it was a painless and surprisingly simple process. This software not only allows cloning to a larger drive but also one can clone to/from an SSD, etc. The software performs defragging the old disk before the clone and also removes garbage such as Windows Temp Files, etc. You can even continue using your system while the process is working. All I had to do when it was finished was reassign my cascading drive designators for USB external drives, correct the BIOS to the new drive and everything works perfectly and I have 600 gb free on my drive now. I just left the old drive in the system and disconnected the power and data cables at the drive so if I ever need to do this again, I can simply reconnect and be operational instantly. Here's a link to the FarStone product for anyone interested: http://www.farstone.com/software/Drive-Clone.php Best regards, Lin

Hi Paul, The only way to control an animated gif is with opacity, keyframes and the provisions of Adjust Image and Border. Unlike a video, there are no tools to control, start time, etc., but you can adjust the offset in ms, so that would be the way you could control the start time of the GIF. So use the Animation Tab on the Adjust Image and Border (from Properties Tab in Objects and Animations Screen) to control start time of gif. 1000 ms per second.... Best regards, Lin

It's a learning process about the best way and proper place to post shows, demos, tutorials and how-to's. In the past Beechbrook only hosted slideshows and the PTE forum hosted slidshows and demos and how-to's and frequently asked questions and links to a variety of things. To streamline and take the financial stress of of Bill for maintaining the Beechbrook site for PTE shows, I think Igor thought a more or less official site would be helpful. Now that it's up and running, and links have been placed both on the PTE forum to the Slideshow Club site and conversely, there is no need for the duplication of a place for tutorials, utilities and such. Slideshows can be somewhat better organized on the SC site than they are on the PTE site because there is no associated "forum" and questions, answers, discussions, etc., and visitors would naturally expect to find help, tutorials and such on the PTE forum rather than on a slideshow and demo site. I suspect it's all a matter of getting things sorted so that they are most efficient and to minimize the amount of work for the administrator of the SC site. It can become a huge time sink taking care of sorting, arranging, moving and such and there really is no good reason to maintain more than is now there. Best regards, Lin

That last idea is a good one Dave. I've a similar approach at times to some of my animations. The only down side is that there will be no way to alter the individual components once they are made into the twin videos, but I'm reasonably certain that this would still be by far the most efficient way to proceed. Best regards. Lin

Hi Eric, My understanding is that tutorials and utilities will no longer be available via Slideshow Club but now it will be just slideshows and shows which are demo's of various PTE features. Tutorials will be housed as they always have been here on the PTE forum. A tutorial is not a demo show so you won't be able to upload tutorials to the demo section. Demos are essentially slidshows which are not designed as conventional shows with photos, synchronized music and the ordinary type shows as seen at photo clubs and in competitions, etc. Instead, demos are shows which demonstrate use of specific features of PTE which show innovative ways the program has been used to create and manipulate objects, animations and effects. As always, the administrator of Slideshow Club will approve uploads and make decisions of suitability for the two specific categories housed there. Best regards, Lin

In addition to what David had explained, there will be no need to synchronize the separate images because they will share the identical slide time and each, as separate objects in the same frame, are automatically assigned a start time which corresponds. Though each object has its own "timeline" they (the timelines) are not visible simultaneously, but become visible for each object when you click on the specific object. I believe that doing as david suggests by adding all photos from the first view by sequential selection (click on the first, hold down the keyboard shift key and click on the last and drag the set) is the ideal way to proceed. Then go to the Objects and Animations screen and select the first image which has been loaded to the slide list, right click and add the first image of the second set. This makes the second view image a "child" of the first view. This way when you get the first set of images adjusted to the desired position on the screen you can use the pan and zoom numbers associated with it to copy and paste for all subsequent sets. Also should you decide to later adjust the size or position, the second image of the pair will always be subservient to and linked to the first and will move or resize in concert with the master image. Continue as above until each of the second set is loaded. Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, One of the things many people have asked about for an extended period is the ability to move keypoints in concert for a specified distance on the timeline. Whether doing animations or precise matching of an object to the audio, some time's it's very useful to be able to move selected keyframes simultaneously. OAK allows this and is a valuable tool for doing precise control such as Charlie did in his show "Jazz." It's quite popular in France and the instructions in the form of a PDF are available in both French and English. It's something Igor is very interested in vis his comments when it was introduced. I doubt that you can assume because it's not widely used in the UK that it has little utillity for most. That's a pretty ethnocentric viewpoint. I would say the the reason it's not commonly known in the UK is because most UK users don't speak French and don't frequent the French PTE forums. It's very popular among our French PTE users. By the way, what's the "UK Forum?" Best regards, Lin

Barry, (OAK - Objects, Animation - Keypoints) it's a very nice program by Jean-Claude Senechal which works with PTE to allow many things You can read all about it on the French forum. Best regards, Lin

Hi Folks, I think we've gotten a bit off track here. I believe the original intent was to find a way to copy one's own exe files when there is no longer a PTE file so that they might be made into a video format and therefore amenable to being posted on Youtube or one's own site to share. The bottom line is that the quality of the screen capture will depend greatly on the "type" of exe show being captured. If it is a simple slideshow with quick or fade transitions and very limited or no animation, then any good screen capture tool which can handle capture at 30fps or so will do an adequate job. If the show has a good deal of animation then I don't believe there is any present software which can do justice to a conversion to video. Actually, if there is sufficient animation, even creating the show in PTE and exporting to an MP4 h.264 will not produce equivalent quality to the executable version in the vast majority of cases. Once the degredation imposed by additional conversions by Youtube, Vimeo, etc., are added, the original exe quality is severely compromised. Virtually the "only" format I've found which can approximate the exe qualiity on a big screen high resolution television when there is serious animation is DivX. I think David I I discussed this once before and he was getting MP4 h.264 to work equally as well, but I've never found it to be nearly as smooth myself. This may be because we are using different settings. Also there appears to be a difference between video captured with a video recorder and displayed and video created by PTE. For reasons unknown to me, video captured with a video recorder as opposed to video created with PTE or Producer or Wings Platinum or m.Objects, is smoother when uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo. But the bottom line is that no present screen capture tool does a decent job of capturing a really heavily animated exe and converting it to video. There are audio capture tools which intercept the sound sent to the sound card and make, for all practical purposes, perfect audio reproductions. To my knowledge, no video screen capture tool works this way and because of this, the video quality is compromised, especially for animated portions. Best regards, Lin

Thanks JT, the two have been also removed from the index... Best regards, Lin

Hi Guys, For those who write a number of articles or tutorials for the forum, if you could please organize them into a compiled list with an index of titles and links it would greatly facilitate not only keeping track but also make it much easier for the forum visitor to find your work. I have created an alphabetic index for the Articles and Tutorials section and when you post a new entry to this forum it will be alphabatized and updated on the master index. If you write a new tutorial it's fine to post the notice of such, but if you have many of them and can organize them into a single entry with an index (doesn't need to be alphabetic) and when you create a new one, add it to your own indexed list with a link, it will help greatly with organization. The new entry will be indexed alphabetically to help the new visitor find what they are looking for and the link associated in the master index will point to your post. Hopefully, the link to the tutorial you provide in your post will then point to your own indexed list. If you have a number of tutorials or articles and create such an indexed list, it can be pinned to avoid being lost in the jumble of new posts as time goes on. The Master Index only points to your post and not to any replies. It would also help if you could use a meaningful descriptive subject name first on your post. For example: Videos, How to Create RGBA alpha channel videos - rather than How to Create RGBA alpha channel videos. This way the indexing will have much more usefulness. I've not followed my own advice in the past, but will make a concerted effort to use this type of naming convention in the future for my own tutorials... Thanks, Lin

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Hi Paul, Looks great! Because you use an animated gif file, you can set the display time on the slide to virtually any length without affecting the appearance of your animation other than the length of the display. If you wanted this slide to run for say 30 seconds just change the slide time. Also, if you click on the gif file in the Objects and Animations screen, then click on the "Properties" tab and then on the "adjust Image and border" button then on the "Animation" tab from the ensuing Adjust Image and Border window, you have further options for adjusting the display of your gif animation. For example, the "intervals" will reflect the default time established by the creating program (SqirlzReflect in this case) and you can change this intervals time to speed up or slow down the ripple effect without making an additional gif with SquirlzReflect. As an example, here's one I made from an internet picture. The default I used in SqurlzReflect was 30 frames or an "interval" of 30ms. I changed it in PTE to 100ms to get a more gentle and slowly rippling effect. http://www.lin-evans.org/demo/tina.zip (about 12 meg) Though you can't keframe changes in real time for these parameters on a single object, by some creative keyframing and the use of the opacity control, you can actually effect a good workaround. For example, you have an animated gif of a bird flying and you want to change the wing action from a flap to a soar as it moves across the screen. You start the animation either way - flapping wings or soaring depending on the settings you give it in the animations parameters. Then you place the identical gif in a second time and set the wing action to the opposite (flap or not) then keyframe the first out of view with a nearly instant change in 100% opacity while simultaneously keyframing the duplicate which has the opposite wing action in. Since they are separate objects (even though the same file) you can adjust the parameters independently. Best regards, Lin