Lin Evans

Hi Jim, I'm glad it finally came through! Not sure what the problem was but the very "quick" download from Mediafire may have not been a good one.. it "should" have worked with the password. There are lots of issues with web downloads which we have little control over with so many intermediary connects, etc. Best regards, Lin

Try this again - no capital letters, all lower case - tommyeee I just tested it and it works for me... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim, Hard to say what the problem might be so I uploaded it to MediaFire for you. You will need this password to play it after downloading "tommyeee" The name of the file is tom.zip.... Here's the link: My link Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, I believe the confusion is that the meaning of "replace it" is that the developer intended this to mean "use" this one instead of "that one" in your show - not "overwrite" it... Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, That's a "safety" feature. Let me try to explain. You have created an AVI file and you then modify it and what you "intend" is for the modified version to overwrite the original. But PTE is very careful to not overwrite anything so it creates your "modified" version with a similar file name and adds the "2" or "3" to the name so you know there is a difference. The word "replace" is confusing here because it is generally used when you "substitute" one file or image for another. That's where my confusion came from. I suspect perhaps a different word might be used in the menu to avoid wrong expectations. PTE will "never" overwrite one of your files - that has been discussed many times in the past. It will overwrite the PTE file if you choose to use the same name, but it doesn't overwrite data files such as images, video's etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, Could you explain a bit further. It's not clear to me what the problem actually is. Are you saying that you have an AVI file - regardless of where it came from (the confusion here is "when you publish/AVI File") then you want to change that AVI file in a slideshow to a "different" AVI file? Is this an operating system issue you are talking about? What isn't clear is what you mean by "replace it." Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, I'm going to try doing that one of these days - it would be fun to really have a place like that - Hey, we can all dream!! We get so much snow here where I live that I get a lot of practice trying to make it look real LOL Best regards, Lin

Hey Jeff, The cabin is mine, in my dreams - LOL. I'll tell you it takes a lot of fish to train a pet eagle to fly by on cue! They don't like flying in snow either - HA! It's great to have a faster connection. I wish one were available here. Mine is not nearly as fast as cable like Comcast, but it's better than dial-up - just a fairly slow DSL. Bryce was a great time but Honey, the old lady (she's about 11 now) and I froze our butts off at the Bryce Canyon Campground. We didn't take the toy hauler - just a tent and we had to share the campground with a Cougar the first night. Stayed up until about 2:00 am with my camera trying to get a shot, but she was too stealthy. We took my little Subaru WRX to save money on fuel. It worked out pretty well except for the cold temperatures. I live between Longmont and Loveland in northern Colorado in a little town called Berthoud. We used to have a pretty good sized ranch about eight miles from here but lost it to foreclosure just before Sherry (my late wife) passed away, so the dogs and I moved into a little house at the edge of town. My old pit dog passed away too so now it's just me and my last dog Honey. Sammy would probably love it here, it's still nice and cool. This year we can't seem to get spring to happen. We just had another storm and super cold weather - dropped another four inches of snow on us day before yesterday, but today it was warm and sunny. We've had 27 inches in the last 9 days so I would love to see spring happen pretty soon - LOL. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to take another trip to New Mexico later in the summer - I have a friend who is really anxious to make the trip and she's been dropping hints so I guess I'll have to consider it if I can afford the fuel.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jack, You can't really "create" a button or feature which copies a particular image in your slideshow using PicturesToExe. The way you have to proceed is to create your slideshow with manual advance and then use a screen capture software to capture the image and save it to a file. Thought there are a number of screen capture software programs, some free, actually perhaps the best one was created by a former PTE forum member named Granot. This is a very tiny executable file which allows you to simply press a keystroke and it captures and saves the image currently displayed on screen. I can't tell you exactly how to use it - I believe it is pretty much self-explanatory, but here is a link to the zipped exe file. Granot named it RestorePTE. Link To RestorePTE I'm not certain if this version linked above will work with the latest versions of PTE. The issue is how to get the control box on top of the PTE show if the show isn't running in a window.... Perhaps someone else has a better and newer solution for you. You also may want to look here: Free Screen Capture Tools Link If you do a search on the PTE forums for "restorePTE" you will find discussions about this. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jorg, I'm confused. First you say you want this to appear on "each slide" then you say not on "all slides." "because it is not meant to be in **all** slides." "I am doing another one, but wanted to have the flight path as a video displayed in the top-right corner of each slide". What Dave has told you is correct. Perhaps you are confusing the term "slide?" You have to copy and paste the "video" in the first slide on the Objects and Animations screen as the "Master." Size and position it, pay attention to the numbers for zoom and pan. Then on the second slide make the same "video" link to the master in the Properties Tab. Put in the same values in the Pan and Zoom blocks for this video. Now copy and paste this video from the second slide which is linked to the Master, to each successive slide in the Objects List on the Objects and Animations screen where you want it to appear. The pan and zoom values which position and size the slide will be transferred to each successive slide that way. The "sound" for this video will continue to play if you "skip" copying it to one or more slides. The only way to stop the sound is to "Mute" the audio of the video (do this before you copy and paste), then add the video as an audio, then control it via the waveform for those slides you don't want the sound on. What you are trying to do is complex and you may have to spend a bit of time learning how this all works, but it can be done. It would certainly be easier if you just had the video appear sequentially on "each" slide from the time it (the video) starts until it ends. Sorry, there is no way to magically give a single command to make the video appear on all or some of the slides. You must copy and paste it to each slide where you want it to appear - that's the way PTE works. If you use CTRL V to paste it to each slide this can go very fast, but there is no single command you can use to tell the program you want this video (or an image) to appear on every slide in the same place. Best regards, Lin

Hi, That's not a feature available in PTE. The assumption, and for good reasons I believe, for a slideshow is that each photograph is different and to apply a same pan/zoom to all would simply not work. What works for one may or may not work for another so the pan/zoom/rotate features are done on a per slide basis. There is a work-around if you really want to do it that way. You "could" do it for a single slide when you begin your show, then copy/paste that slide as many times as you have other slides. The copy/paste can be done with Ctrl V which works very fast. Then use the "replace" slide for each of the copy/pasted originals to add your replacement slides. It would, of course, be much slower than adding them all at once, but much faster than setting separate keyframes for each slide once they have been added. A while back one of our forum members, Tom - created a program to apply pan and zoom universally. I don't know the details, but here is a link to where it all started. Perhaps you may find something useful. Link To Forum Discussion Best regards, Lin

Hi Denis, This is one for Igor - looks like "all" your images are sepia on the timeline. There was an experimental feature in version 7 (Ctrl Shift P) which changed an image from normal to monochrome with the first press and then to sepia with the second press and finally back to normal with the third press. This experiment was going to be modified to be keyframe usable but so far has not found its way back into the later versions. Perhaps you have stumbled on a hidden code which has set sepia for all images. Hard to say but Igor can probably quickly sort it out for you. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ray, Just tried this and it works fine with my Win XP system. I'm assuming that you set the "offset" for the second video to the amount of time for the first video to complete and set the slide time long enough for both? Otherwise, there must be something in either the OS or your individual system which is causing this. Best regards, Lin

It would seem to me not to be terribly important which "default" aspect ratio is chosen. There is a natural conflict because display manufacturers seem to be "primarily" fixated on HD which is 16:9 or 1920x1080 for for desktop displays, while notebooks seem to take a different standard. Neither are "correct" for the "majority" of our professional level digital cameras which are generally 3:2 with the exception of Olympus (4/3rd system) which are 4:3. Some of the newer dSLR's give a choice so the user can shoot in wide angle if desired, and most video modes are 16:9. Most of the bridge cameras support several aspect ratios but the actual "sensor" is generally different in native aspect ratio from the typical display. The issue is, that as photographers, we must constantly shoot "wide" or else use one of the alternative aspect ratios when available. Either way, we loose parts of our capture in order to make our images "fit" the display. Lack of standards across industries make it frustrating at times. When we have a zoom lens, it's not so much of a problem, but when we have a prime lens, it can be discouraging to lose important parts of our image to the crop to make it fit the available display device. Bottom line is that most of us will change whatever the "default" is at one time or another so I can't see that it's terribly important to change it from the way it is now... Best regards, Lin

Hi Manuel, Your mind is working just fine! PTE and sudoku seem to be great therapy. I too am 70 years old - it's a good age to be I think! Your English is much better than my Spanish! Keep up the good work and we will look forward to more fun slideshows from you! Best regards, Lin

Hi Douglas, It "sounds" like perhaps your text was not on the layer "above" the video. As David suggests, add the text in the Objects and Animations screen then control it's appearance and timing via keyframed opacity. Best regards, Lin

Hi Manuel, Looks great! These concepts are lots of fun to work and play with. There are myriad constructs which can be created as you have discovered. You might want to experiment with the 3D pan z applied to text on the cube to give it that 3d depth. Also, have a look at this little tutorial for a way to add possible additional dimensions such as for the roof, etc. Scroll down to #35 Link To Tutorials Best regards, Lin

No need for any outside converter, just load the FLV into PTE and do the conversion right there. Best regards, Lin

Hi Paolo, Are you saying that shows which were already created and run in an autoexecuting manner, that is they change after a period of time and have worked normally, suddenly, after you created a single slideshow with "wait for keypress" that the old executable slideshow changed so that now they no longer will autorun? If so, that's not possible. Neither PicturesToExe nor any other slideshow program which creates executable code can not "change" the executable code. It must be done with the calling program which is the dot pte file (filename.pte). It would have to be done one at a time and new executable code created for each show. What you are describing is not possible. If you are not running the exe file, but trying to open PTE and run the shows from the "Preview" mode, then be certain that you have changed the Project Option with the "wait for keypress" unchecked then save the show and preview it again.... Best regards, Lin

Hi John, First, I'm assuming you mean h.264 (I haven't a clue what X264 is). There are a few things I would consider. The problem is very likely "not" with PTE. Thousands of people are using it to create mp4's without issue, so the internals of the program are probably not your problem. Adding strange code to the program could have lots of unexpected results, so let's start with a fresh download and install. You didn't say which version you are using, so I would download the latest version. Once you have done that, try it again with a single slide. Just put in a slide and let it run for about 10 seconds and try to create an mp4 h.264 with it. If you have a second system, install on that one and try it. The probability is that it's something in a setting on your computer or an expectation such as the version of Direct X which you have installed. Let's start with a fresh install and go from there and see what we can discover... Best regards, Lin

HI Douglas, First, to control the audio of a video you must first "mute the Video." in Objects and Animations Property Tab. Next go to "Project Options" to the "Audio Tab" and click on "Add Audio File." At the bottom right where it says "Files of Type" click on the little "down arrow" in the small "blue box" and change it to "Video File." Next navigate to your video file and click on it to enter it as the Audio File. Now you have all the same adjustments for the audio of the video as you have for any other audio file - you have the envelope, volume, etc. Just click on "Customize" and all the controls will work for the audio of the video file. You will have to set the "offset" for the proper time for the video to begin playing. Don't confuse it with "start time" - Start time is how far into the sound that you want to begin playing. In this case you want to leave that value alone because you want the audio synced with the video. To turn off a background sound while the video is playing you have a couple things to consider. First, do you want the audio to continue to play silently or do you want it to "stop" and begin where it left off after the video? Assuming you want the audio to stop and start where it left off, you will need to set the "Duration" for the background audio to end at the time the Video begins. Then you will want know how long the video runs. Add this amount of time the video runs plus the amount of time the audio ran before the video began and put your background audio track in as another track. Set the "offset" for this new duplicate track to the amount of time the audio played before the video began plus the time the video ran. Set the start time for this second iteration of the audio to the identical time the first background audio track ended. So for the second iteration of the background audio, you will have values in both the offset and the start time. You may also want to fade out and fade in your video's audio and fade out and fade in your two audio tracks for background.... It sounds complex, but if you think it through, it's really straight-forward. If you want the audio background to continue to run silently then you need to use the "envelope" tool to shut down the volume to zero and bring it back to normal. Best regards, Lin

Hi Landscaper, Unless you are doing deep zooms, the image quality will be no better at the original camera resolution than it will if you downsample each image to the display resolution. There really is no need to keep huge files in your slideshow unless, of course, you are displaying them on a super high resolution display. About the highest common resolution displays used today are essentially four megapixel. A 1080P (1920x1080) is essentially a two megapixel resolution display. It's perfectly O.K. to keep the large originals for any deep zooms and you can mix them with the normal resolution without any problems, but keeping the huge originals will not result in any qualitative differences. The display or projector can only display at its native highest resolution so will downsample the images anyway. PTE will run your images identically whether they are 1024x768 or 3072x2304 etc., as long as they are being displayed on a 1024x768 resolution display. The identical PTE file will run the image names which are saved. The "easy" way to do this is to copy your high resolution files into another folder where you leave the identical names but downsample them. Then just copy the PTE file into the folder with the downsampled images and open it up. Save the exe as a slightly different file name indicative of the lower resolution. For example the high resolution file might be named myshow.exe and the lower resolution myshow1024.exe. The PTE file doesn't care what the image resolution is, it only cares that it has the identical file names. Best regards, Lin

Hi, It seems one must be a "member" to get to the download? Best regards, Lin

Good one Colin!! A spooky place indeed, do you mean that 43 men and one woman were executed on that site, or "on sight" without a trial? Just asking - LOL. I think if I were involved in building that place, I would have looked for a way to perhaps build in an escape route. Maybe instead of mortar between some of the stones, maybe just a thin half inch or so on each side around the edges an set some stones on pebbles so it would be possible to knock a hole through the wall with a little work at night. Terrible place to have to spend a long time incarcerated for sure!! The music was very fitting to the theme! Thanks, Lin

Hi Gary, You are essentially doing it the only way I know. This is just slightly different than your description. The first "two" keyframes need to be zero opacity. The first to start the still image as invisible, the second to "keep" it invisible until you want it displayed. The third to make it 100% (or however much opacity you want) and the fourth to turn it off with zero opacity. If you want it to come on "instantly," then you need to type in a very small increment between the second and third keyframes in the opacity block. You can't do it visually because, as you say, the keyframes might appear almost on top of one another. But you can type any increment into the opacity block. The computer and video card may or may not be able to turn on the opacity within your specified time, but what will happen if you place a value beyond the ability of the system is that it will turn on or off the opacity as quickly as possible for your system. Being able to "spread" the keyframes visually sort of like the CTRL Mouse Scroll Wheel for audio you mentioned in another post might be nice, but really there is nothing to prevent you from simply typing in a small number to the nearest 1000th. For example, you could turn on opacity at 2000 and turn it off at 2001. Your system will "try" to comply. Best regards, Lin