Lin Evans

Hi Erik, Excellent - I watched it also the first time you presented it. Excellent photography and the vertical pans work very well. The voice-over is very well done and the poetry was read with conviction and feeling well projected. Now that we have video available, why don't you go back and shoot the gulls and the gently rolling waves and substitute the animation with video? I think it would work better. No matter how we "try" to animate birds in flight, it won't seem natural unless we limit the number of them greatly. It is possible to convert special video frames to animated gif but only a very few frames are amenable and it's a "lot" of work. Video is simply so much easier for things like rolling waves and birds in flight that I think it would be worth the effort to re-shoot those frames and substitute. In all, an excellent presentation with music and synchronization and choice all nicely blending for me. Thanks for the remake! Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, If you set up a test like this: Set display time to 8 seconds and put a keyframe at four seconds. Now leave the option unchecked and change the display time to 16 seconds. The keyframe stays at four seconds. Change the display time back to 8 seconds and the keyframe remains fixed at four seconds. Now check the option and change the display from 8 seconds to 16 seconds. The keyframe now goes to 8 seconds. So the "relative" position is maintained. I haven't done extensive tests to see what happens with multiple keyframes but you could try to place one keyframe at two seconds and one at four and see if the result is four and eight. This would be how I suppose it "should" work with the option checked. Yes, there is no "global" change option. It's just slide by slide; that is, if one changes the gobal option for display times on slides the individual settings per slide do not (I think) respond to the option for scale keyframes. There is always room for improvements. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, It's not a workaround - just pointing out that we can move "all" keyframes in either direction by a specified amount of time with the Ctrl E feature and that when we change the display time for a slide we have the choice of leaving keyframes in their "absolute" position or moving them relative to the time change. The way I read Gary's message it seemed that he wasn't aware of these features. It would be ideal to have a "master/slave" type control by selective click and perhaps in a later version Igor may find a way to do this. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, A couple things you may want to explore. Keyframes can have either relative or absolute positions now. On the "customize slide" "Main" tab, check beside "Scale Keyframes in Objects". You can do "part" of what you are asking in terms of moving keyframes together. If you press CTRL E you can move "all" keyframes simultaneously in either direction by the amount you enter into the value. Lin ]

Hey Eric, That wouldn't be too hard to do except it would take some time. There are two ways to approach it, but the easiest way would be to make a mask and just "sweep it across the screen. The "best," but more involved way, would be to make a matrix "mask," set the individual screens each in its own mask and keyframe the individual start times. Probably more work than it's worth unless one were doing if for a major motion picture where they can spend a couple weeks and thousands of dollars for a single effect. There are 128 individual displays on each wall so it would require 128 masks each with an individual opacity change from zero to 100%. On the "distributed" screen one would need to mask each individual screen. On the individual displays the masks wouldn't be necessary and it would be possible to just turn the opacity off for all to start and sequence the "100 % opacity" with three keyframes for each video. You're coming along well with getting the hang of it so probably after watching the tutorial set could do it without too much difficulty. Best regards, Lin

Lin

Hi Abdol, Thanks!! A Happy New Year to you and your family! Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, The Sony Vegas stabilizer is good, but have a look at Mercalli 2 here: Mercalli 2 (Requires Vista or Higher Win OS) - not for XP Video industry specialists generally think that the image stabilizer in Adobe After Effects CS6 (Warp) is about as good as it gets... Warp Image Stabilization Best regards, Lin

Hi Folks, I've completed three in a series of four tutorials on creating the 3D Video wall and using that creation to create a 3D Video Room. The entire Video Wall and Video Room can be created in PicturesToExe without use of a third party software. However, to create a "curved" video wall, it's necessary to use an image editor which allows Transform Warp. This can be done with Photoshop and I show how to do so in the second tutorial. There will be a fourth tutorial up later today or tomorrow which shows how to "capture" your creation of the gridwork in PTE and use Photoshop to create a transparent PNG file so that one can use the gridwork to overlay the video wall creations. Below are links to the YouTube Tutorials: 1. Creating the Video Wall in PicturesToExe 2. Using my provided 6x6 Gridwork to overlay your own 6x6 video wall creation, etc. 3. Creating the Video Room using your created Video Wall 4. Gridwork png component files for you to use Link To Zipped Gridwork Component Files to Use Above also all posted on the Tutorials Link to my tutorials above as well as here: Link To Learn PicturesToExe site

Hi Colin, Have you been able to get them to work and such? Forbes says it's not correct here - that it is a misunderstanding.... http://www.forbes.co...tions-for-free/ Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, Welcome back from your holiday! I think you will be very happy with the RX100. It has perhaps the best overall video of all small cameras. The overall image stabilization is exceptionally good on this camera - much better than the lens stabilization available to dSLR's on external lenses by Canon and Nikon from results of testing by major reviewers. Looking forward to your first videos when you receive it! Best regards, Lin

Hi Bill, You've "definitely" CAPTURED Bermuda in all its beauty and colorful essence. The music lends an air of excitement and the photography is superb! It makes me want to save my spare change and book a flight to escape the Colorado snow and bask in the warmth of the sun drenched beaches. It appears you had a great holiday and by golly have the pictures to prove it!! Thanks for the vicarious trip to the tropics! Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, But that's not what's actually happening. You are not returning "the image," you are zooming out the zoomed-in image until the original (which is the only image actually stored inside the program) is displayed. The image after the zoom in and return to regular 100% size (assuming you began with the original) is the "identical" image you started with. All intermediate images are math computations derived from the original. When the zoom is returned to 100% the original is again displayed. The original is never actually changed in any way. Likewise with Photoshop. Photoshop loads your original and any zooms out or in have no real essence until a save is done. The original remains as you loaded it unless you overwrite. Dave, from a programming perspective inside both PTE and Photoshop and other image editors other than Photoshop are electronic "pointers" referencing the original file. This is how they know where it all starts and/or ends. So when zooms are done and the pixel dimensions reference the original, the actual original is returned as the value. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, Actually, PTE uses the original image to do everything with. If you zoom in from say an original 1024x768 to twice it's original size there will be image degradation, of course. However, if you subsequently zoom back out to the original 1024x768 there will be zero image degradation because the original image is always being used, not the degraded zoom. PTE only keeps the copy of the image you load on your slide. All actions including zoom out, zoom in, etc., are done via this image. The zoom-in image is simply being returned to the original in much the same way it is done in Photoshop. You do not loose any quality by zooming out, zooming in, etc., because it's all being done via the original. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, I don't know if this might be useful to you as a temporary work-around or not. I just made a show which runs 96 different separate videos simultaneously, and duplicates this five times plus a six video rotating, zooming cube all running on a single slide. That's a total of 486 simultaneous videos on a slide. Since your final project will be in a video format, you might proceed like I did. I never added more than 12 videos at a time, then I created a MP4 h.264 video, loaded it as the project and added another dozen videos, and repeated this process until I had the initial "video wall" built. Then I loaded this video wall (as a video) five times to create my Video Room and created yet another MP4 h.264. Then I added that as a project and created my rotating video cube and once again saved as an MP4 h.264. By doing this in increments in an iterative fashion, I was able to avoid out-of-memory issues and the finished show actually runs pretty good as an executable as well as a video. If your project can be created in this fashion, you might get on with it while Wnsoft is working on the errors. Just a thought... Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks - misleading Windows message says "save link as" .... probably should say "save source file as:".. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mary, Can't seem to get the link to work but Happy New Year to you and your family! I'll try back later. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, I did that but the exe was over 500 meg so I went back to the original. It runs fine on my system I have a "decent" video card. It's a long way from being top of line these days (nVidia 8800GT) but the exe's play very smoothly. With less than optimal cards or perhaps with a CPU which is running other code, I guess there isn't enough power to do it justice so an exe with optimized video would be perfect. The only problem is that at 500 meg nobody would probably download it - LOL.. Best regards, Lin

Hi Cici, Thanks! I thought the exe was a bit heavy for most video cards. It seems as we add more and more animation and video to PTE shows, we must gravitate toward a video solution, at least until perhaps a whole new generation of systems are launched with more GPU power. Best regards, Lin

Hi Cici, Welcome back! Great way to usher in the New Year!!! They are among us! Best wishes to you and your family for a fantastic New Year and loved the presentation "and" message! Best regards, Lin

Hey Ken, I'm taking a nap now! Too much excitement for one night. I think I'll listen to the radio later and maybe hear a football game - LOL Thanks for checking them out... Best regards, Lin

Nice one Eric! By cracky I think you've got the synchronisation thing down pat! Great mix of images with music which kept me taping my feat and nice editing! Best regards, Lin

Like Cheech Marin in "Up In Smoke" - My head is like a sieve - LOL - Fixed now! Lin

Here it is 1:05 am and I'm "at it again" - HA! This time a Curved Video Wall with a theme of "Then and Now." Then when times were simple and Blue Christmas was a hit with young and old. Now J' LO Rocks out with special effects and a pulsing beat... Another all day job - actually technically more difficult than the last to synchronize dancers on other videos with the "Then" side - LOL.. Link To Windows Exe (about 87 Meg download) Lin

Hi Andrew, Thanks! Actually you could do it, it's not that difficult - just takes some time. I have one request on YouTube for a tutorial and am thinking about the best way to proceed with perhaps doing one. The primary features of PTE which make this possible are the "parent/child" relationships, the ability to easily and visually move the center of rotation, and the ability to apply 3D transforms with all three (X, Y and Z) axis to all objects including video clips. The most time consuming part is collecting and formatting the over 100 videos used to create the initial wall. Making small FLV videos with a freeware Video to Flash converter and doing some cropping using the freeware version of Video Pad Video Editor greatly facilitated the construction of the screen. The built-in totally adjustable grid in PTE made alignment a breeze and the ability to create and totally manipulate the color and dimensions of "frames" made constructing the dividers very straight-forward. I already have published the template and tutorial for constructing the cube including adding live video to each face so this project can be done in "stages" with the created components assembled and adjusted for the final exe or video output. Best regards, Lin