Lin Evans

Eric, You have been told why the posts were removed. There is no "Waffle." You are creating a tempest in a teacup. No one is picking on you. Your post, David's post and my post were all removed to facilitate staying on topic, and you are "still" arguing about it. You began the off-topic discussing earlier versions by commenting that you feared it would "confuse" those using earlier versions and followed this by the off-topic comment about your reluctance to use version 8. No one really cares which version you use, but the new audio features in version 8.0 are the implicit reason Peter made the post and asked for feedback. Rather than post your complaints about moderation in the active forum, if you just take them to the off-topic forum then they will be addressed there as needed and those who simply want to discuss whether or not a separate subject for audio is desired will not be sidetracked, Lin

Hi Eric, The posts were removed because they were going off-topic. I posted a reference in response to a comment by Jill to a popular blog - Cabeza de Coco and you apparently took that as an insult and posted a response addressed to me. David then posted a message saying "live and let live" in French. It's really quite simple - we need to remain on topic and not get sidetracked .... Sorry if you misunderstood, but you should really ask before making unwarranted assumptions. By the way - a forum isn't a government. If it were, it would be much more akin to a benevolent dictatorship than to a democracy. The benevolent dictator is the forum owner. The forum rules are written for all to follow and the purpose for removing off-topic posts it exactly to prevent what you are doing below: Best regards, Lin

Hi Terry, Nice! I would suggest making the double vision transitions "smooth" rather than linear so there isn't an abrupt stop at the culmination. Best regards, Lin

Is there some reason you can't do all this in PTE? Just put both images as two objects in one slide. Set the opacity of each to about 50%, size and position them and just jot down the pan and zoom values for each. Use those values for independent slides and you will have effectively done what is needed without having to use Photoshop or other software??? Best regards, Lin

LOL - I'll have to work on that! Lin

Hey Ken, I think we could arrange a meeting with a shark or two - HA!. About 52 years ago I was SCUBA diving off the coast of California. In those days we made our own neoprene wet-suits out of quarter inch neoprene. I was swimming in a small school of leopard sharks and I grabbed one by the tail and he was towing me along. He was about four feet long or so. Something ticked him off and he twisted around while I still had a good grip on his tail and gashed my wet suit from the shoulder to the wrist. I felt it because of the cold water rushing in. I let the little sucker go immediately and when I got back to the boat the wet suit arm was completely open on the left side from the shoulder to the wrist. I had a slight red mark from his tooth, but no bleeding. I had no idea they could turn nealy 180 degrees while you had them by the tail! I got a new "respect" for sharks that day - never had paid too much attention to them before. Generally they are relatively harmless to SCUBA divers - most attacks are of surfers probably mistaken for a seal. In the immortal words of old Brother Dave Gardner on "sharks" - "mess with em they'll get cha..." LOL Lin

Just trying new things folks - this is a bit different..... Link to Zipped Exe - About 19 Meg Windows Zip MacIntosh Native Exe link Lin

Hi Bert, Yes, I use the normal settings which gives a very nice video. The issue is that the MP4 h.264 is compressed a great deal which requires lots of the exe resources to decompress as well as play. With the conversion, the trade-off is size for smoothness. Since the CPU and GPU do not have to do so much work decompressing the file, they can play it much smoother. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I think you're right - I incorrectly assumed she was using an external video converter. The rest is pretty normal when other software is used to shorten the display time via the regular procedures. I don't usually do my trimming via start and run times in O&A, but rather in the converter so I hadn't noticed that. It indeed seems that if we were "only " dealing with the video that PTE should make the slide duration identical to the video run time as modified in the options. On the other hand, what if there is more to the slide after the video clip has played? Then it gets more convoluted, so I'm not certain how it should be handled. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bert, That sounds pretty much correct - I'm not sure where it is going wrong. What I do is this: I create a show which I then click on Publish and publish as an exe, but the exe does not run smoothly. Next I output as an HD MP4 and if that runs smoothly, then I start a new project. I "convert" the MP4 with PTE and use the converted MP4 which is now usually a "larger" AVI as the "only" slide. I output this as a Widows or Mac Executable. The exe file will be "larger" than the original in most cases, but it always plays smoothly for me. Best regards, Lin

Hi Bert, There is a difference - Igor is aware of the issue. When you play the file as a PTE Preview it plays smoothly, but when made into an EXE file it may be jerky. The work-around I use is to load your converted MP4 of the entire show back in to PTE as a video and then output the EXE from the loaded video. By doing this the EXE will play smoothly. Until another solution is found, it seems to be the only way to get some complex files to play smoothly as exe files. Best regards, Lin

Hi Lilly, Unfortunately, the only way for that to happen is if you regenerate or "render" the movie after making the changes. That's what the convert process in PTE is doing along with changing the compression to make it easier for low resource computers to run video. If you "edit" you clip in a video editor, then render it rather than save it, you will see the true "run time" rather than an incorrect time based on the number of frames times the frame rate.. Some editors do not have the capability of rendering so your movie may come out with exactly the same file size and "length" based on the original number of frames and frame rate rather than the number of frames actually "displayed." When markers for "in" and "out" in video editors are inserted, it just tells the player to ignore or skip everything between the marked frames. It doesn't actually "remove" those frames so they still contribute to the "true" length of the movie. In PTE if you don't convert and you have edited in a video editor without rendering the video afterward, PTE and most video editors will read the number of actual frames times the number of frames per second to calculate the true time rather than the display time. Best regards, Lin

Hi Lilly, David, That happens because with a video editor, unless you render the video again, what happens is that the video editor only puts in "markers" (in and out markers) which internally tells a program to "start here, end there," and so on. To actually shorten a video so that PTE or other video player reveals the actual run length properly it must be rendered again. PTE is correctly revealing the true length rather than the display length of your video. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, Since PTE uses hardware rendering, it "could" be the video card - what kind of video card are you using? Best regards, Lin

Hi Terry, Nice images! I agree with Eric - I think maybe you should check the settings for "smooth" then separate all keypoints in Setting Up (Objects and Animations screen - Animations Tab). This would make the slides slide "smoothly" into position without the abrupt stop as they settle from their movement. Otherwise a nice show! Thanks for sharing! Best regards, Lin

Hi Joel, You'll have to explain that in more detail. If you copy text as an object and paste it to another slide, it keeps all parameters. Now if you are copying "children" of a text object, it will not and can not necessarily keep the same parameters unless it is assigned to another parent of exactly the same dimensions and position because children of a parent inherit pan/zoom/rotate values from the parent. Powerpoint doesn't have the capabilities of parent/child relationships possible. If your text is not placed as a "child" with a hierarchical relationship, it will copy and paste with exactly the identical performance and parameters. That's the way it has to work. Best regards, Lin

Hi Erno, Could you tell me what software you were using to view the avi tutorials? There is nothing in the tutorials themselves which could in any way affect your ability to see or not see images from PicturesToExe. The tutorials are simply video files in AVI format. The recommendation was to use a media player such as VCL Media Player in case you do not have the necessary codecs. Today I recommend Kantaris Media Player which was built using the VCL codes. It's also a free Media Player. I do not recommend Windows Media Player. I suspect that something else entirely may have caused your problem and the fact that you were watching a tutorial which quit working may have been the result of that other issue. Video can in no way influence other software or cause changes in either the location of files or the link to that location. Something else is going on. More information on the version of PTE you are currently using and where your files were located would be helpful. Were they in a folder on your C: drive or on an external USB drive? Hundreds of people have used the videos without issues so we can assume the problem is elsewhere. The more information you can give us, the easier it may be to troubleshoot for you. Best regards, Lin

Hi Joel, As David says, it can be done with a work-around. You can also create very interesting text effects by duplicating the same text message in another color then overlaying the two or more with slightly different positions. If you create a "Frame" and then make your different colored text children of this frame, you can easily control two, three or more different colored text messages simultaneously. Best regards, Lin

Hi Chuck, Thanks! Actually, it is a Kangaroo Rat - they are pretty common here where I live in Colorado ... In very sharp images, it's nearly impossible to pan or zoom without some shimmer. It is possible to set sharpness in PTE back to minimize this effect, but not really possible to eliminate it entirely. The image from this particular camera (the Sigma DP2 Merrill) is made with a rather special sensor created by Foveon and unique to Sigma cameras. The micro-contrast and pixel level detail is unusual and the optical resolution is approximately what you would get with a 30 megapixel conventional CFA (Color Filter Array) camera without an anti-aliasing filter. Because of this, the shimmer is actually exacerbated. I'm experimenting to see how I might minimize it. If I come up with any concrete and reproducible method, I'll post an explanation here on the forum. Perhaps with the blur feature in the future version 8 of PTE, it may be possible to ameliorate this phenomenon. Best regards, Lin

Hi Da Campos, I wish there were something we could change, but it's a world-wide thing and larger than any of us can imagine... Best regards, Lin

Hi Gilio, Cute little corn thief! Best regards, Lin

Hi Rose, There are several ways you could approach this. The "easiest" way is with keframing where you put both your black and white and your color image in the Objects List rather than as separate slides. This puts them on different layers. Assuming you want to go from the black and white to the color, you place the black and white image on the top layer and copy the first keyframe and drag it to where you want the black and white image to start changing to color. This keyframe holds the image and keeps it from fading out when you place the following one. Put another keyfame at about the mid point for your time to display the two images. Set this keyframe to zero opacity for the black and white image. The black and white image will begin to fade out between the second and last keyframe for this object. What this will do is you will initially see the black and white image then it will fade out while the color image simultaneously fades in. This is because the color image was "hidden" by being on a layer beneath the black and white image. As the black and white image's opacity decreases from the initial 100 percent to zero, the layer under containing the color image gradually appears. By doing it this way, you can place the text and set it to fade in at any point on the timeline. You do not need to use the "captions" feature, but just enter the text as I show in the sample. I made a sample with a PTE file and a compiled executable so you can see how to do it. Actually, it's very easy - harder to explain in writing than to do. Takes about 15 seconds when you get the knack... I have the text fading in as the color is changing, but you can easily set it to come on at the beginning of the black and white slide and just stay on... This method bypasses a "transition" and uses the simple "fade-out, fade-in" which works better when changing a single slide from black and white to color. Check the links below and see if this is what you want to see: http://www.lin-evans...deintextexe.zip (exe example} http://www.lin-evans...deintextpte.zip (pte file) Best regards, Lin

Hi Bert, Thanks! Yes, with the DP2 Merrill... Best regards, Lin

On Saturday, 3 August we had a major storm in northern Colorado. Three inch diameter hail, snows, torrential rains, flooding, six tornadoes (which fortunately did little damage) and high winds rocked our summer. It was 92 degrees fahrenheit and a calm windless day, then unbelievable storm clouds rolled over the Rocky Mountains and we were subjected to hours of lightning, rain, snow, hail, winds, tornadoes and such which are almost never seen this time of year. Fortunately, my little community was relatively untouched while three miles away, people were paddling canoes in the streets from heavy flooding. A 1200 acre cornfield begins about 120 feet from my front door - this is the story of this cornfield and one small inhabitant who survived to tell the story. Just a little fun project folks.... http://www.lin-evans...ple/August3.zip (Windows zipped exe - about 22 meg) http://www.lin-evans.org/sample/August3Mac.zip (MacIntosh native exe - about 22 meg) Lin