Lin Evans

Hi Violet, There are a couple possibilities. First you could do as Dominique suggested and use your own logo, etc., as a PNG to lay over that same area. Another way would be to insert a mask and run the same video inside the mask but move it an inch up or down. Assuming there was a suitable area of background within an inch or so of the video, you could make the mask very small - about a quarter inch larger than the text all around and just run the same video both inside and outside the mask, except offset the one inside just enough to hide the text with the surrounding background. In the portion of the video you captured, just moving the inside video far enough that the text was outside the masked area would just show more "ocean" and look fine. On the other hand, if the background area were something with detail, it would look strange. Because you can keframe the video's position inside the mask, you could move it as needed by manually dragging the video navigation bar through the extent of the video and inserting a pair of keyframes as needed to move the video around inside the mask. This would be much more work than just using your own initials or logo, etc., but might be worth doing if it's really important. Without actually having the video to test, it's not easy to say which way would work best. Using your own logo or you own initials, etc., would work but it would be on every frame if that's not a problem. The "easiest" way, if you can do without that small part of the bottom of the video, is to run the video in a mask and just "cut-off" the bottom inch or so. Just use a rectangular mask, run the video inside. Hold the shift key and left click on the small black "square" on the bottom of the mask and "drag" it upward until the bottom of the video with the text is hidden. Best regards, Lin

Hi Violet Put up a screen capture to make it possible to see what you are trying to do. There are multiple possibilities, but without seeing it it would be impossible to give you helpful advice... Lin

Thanks Jim, You mean something like this? Morning Glory Pool link (about 14 meg) Best regards, Lin

Hey Ken, LOL - We're all excited about 8.0 - going to be fun for sure! Best regards, Lin

Hi Guys, Creating this little one minute slide was actually a good deal more complex than it might appear. It begins with rippling water in a lake then near the end, the ripples are gradually stilled. The complexity consists of animating portions of a scene separated by intervening objects such as the large tree. It's complicated by the vegetation in the foreground and around the edge of the lake in several places. I worked out procedures for getting this to look as natural as possible in terms of animating a still image. Obviously, the ideal way to do this type thing would be to set up a tripod and shoot a minute or so of high resolution video, then take a still frame without moving the camera. They it would be as simple as a two slide dissolve transition, but there may be times when that isn't possible, and the effect is still desired. If there is sufficient interest, I'll make a tutorial to show anyone interested how to proceed. It isn't difficult to learn, but it involves learning a few things about some other free software and how to combine the output and that of perhaps Photoshop, (or if you don't have PhotoShop, PixBuilder Studio will do nicely) to render the final slide. It can produce a very nice slide to spice up one or two of your favorite slides for a show.... Link to Autum Lake (about 13 meg) Lin

Hi Andrew - Fifth download was the charm .... worked perfectly with both PKZip and 7-Zip !!! Great job - what an extravaganza! I loved the little gals in "kilts" - that was cute. Were the Indios Aztec? Amazing how this has grown from "closing the beer tap" in the old days..... Loved it - everything works! Best regards, Lin

It's really strange - 7-zip returns this: I've downloaded three times - twice from the original and once from Beechbrook... Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, I can't figure this one out - I downloaded it from Beechbrook and tried both PK Zip and 7-Zip and neither would open the file. I don't know if something on my end is corrupting it or what's going on. I can open all the other zip files fine so it must be getting somehow corrupted in the download. Here is the size of the .rar file per Windows: 177 MB (185,880,637 bytes) Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, I've downloaded it twice, but both times I get errors and it won't open. I've tried PKZip, Windows Zip and a couple others... not sure what's happening... Best regards, Lin

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