Lin Evans

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

Hi Eric, The Navigation Bar only appears when you "preview" in either version and from the main screen or from the O&A screen. It's the same in 7.x and 7.5, but, you can press the "Pause" button, then drag the navigation cursor to the point in your video where you want the still slide to appear. Note the "time" displayed and then set the opacity fade in to that time. Best regards, Lin

Eric, Enable the video (default) Navigation Bar then simply drag the cursor to that point in the video as displayed on your screen and fine tune the appearance via the opacity of your still frame accordingly. Best regards, Lin

Some time ago, one of our forum members asked about a "similar" phenomenon when he saw a slideshow on YouTube done with PTE by a person from China. It seems one of our French PTE users, Marcel, had discussed a technique for doing something like this (not really a logarithmic path, but a similar effect to what you describe) with this person and had explained how to do it with PTE. Some discussion ensued and several of us played around with this idea. I made this silly little YouTube show as a joke for a friend, but it demonstrates something like I "think" you are discussing. You can see it here: (turn your sound down low - it's obnoxious) If this is something you would like to experiment with - here's a link to my tutorials - the one for this is # 36 Tutorials Link Click on "Tutorials" then scroll down past the red descriptives to the actual llnks below. Best regards. Lin

Hi Scott, You can use the "File" "Create Backup in Zip" feature to quickly and automatically assemble all files necessary for proper PTE function. Then just extract the files from the zipped archive anywhere you wish and everything will then work perfectly from the new location. Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, Wonderful imagery and a heartfelt tribute to those who served in the great wars! Thanks for the chance to see this again - I haven't been to Perth for a decade... Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, The animation features of PTE are extremely sophisticated - it's indeed possible to create amazing animations with PTE. There are myriad examples of this around - I have a few which you might enjoy seeing and there are some mind-blowing ones created by several of our French users of PTE such as Jean Cyprien and the late Jean-Pierre Dollangere (JPD). Here are links to a couple you might enjoy. These were done entirely with PTE. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/exceptional/jpd.zip http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/exceptional/jcyprien2.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, There is no way to do this.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, There is no easy way to do such a thing. It's "possible" but requires using two or more PTE executable files. For example, you have the option of running an "external" application at the end of a slide. That "application" could be another PTE executable show which simply begins at the slide where you wish to "jump." Then, if you wanted to get really tricky, you "could" place a "run external application" call in that second PTE executable show to go to yet another pte executable which would do likewise in a "chain" type of sequence. The real "power" of PTE is that by using the mouse click, you can assign multiple commands to do things like "jump" to another slide, run a slideshow and return, etc., and assign that mouse click to not only a "button" but to an invisible area on your screen - a sort of "hot spot" done by placing a "frame" object (invisible rectangle) anywhere and of any size you deem proper. Then when the mouse cursor is moved to that relative position and clicked, the action will happen. I use this feature, for example, to pop up the names of people in group photos when someone clicks on their faces. There is no present way to actuate other than the "run external application" without the mouse click. Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, It's actually the level of jpg compression which has the most effect on executable output size. Images or videos which are repeated in the executable Windows or MacIntosh output do not add to the exe file size. That is if you use the same slide five times or one time, the "hit" on size does not really change. So in answer to your question, yes, the file size rather than pixel dimensions is most important in determining output exe file size. Slightly compressed jpgs or bmp files will cause the exe size to increase proportionally. Highly compressed jpgs will result in smaller executable file sizes. A PhotoShop jpg compression level of around six to eight will result in smaller exe sizes without undue compromise in image quality. As for audio, the best compromise would depend a bit on whether you are doing voice-overs or presenting music backgrounds. For voice quality, there is usually no real need for stereo output and lower kHz can generally be used without undue compromise in tonal quality. For stereo music with its generally much wider frequency range than the spoken voice, an MP3 with 44,100 should provide a very satisfactory result. Best regards, Lin

As Girard says, you can make the increments on the scale closer together or further apart with Ctrl F11 and Ctrl F12, but you can't actually change the "scale" or zoom the appearance of the slide thumbnails. Best regards, Lin Correction - my error: If I keep pressing or use the Mouse Thumbwheel as Gary suggests - the scale does actually get finer. A little different than with Audacity or other audio editor, but definitely it does scale the increments. It's nice to learn this...