Marcovelo

I use "Comodo Firewall". Marco

Hi Ken, Lin and all! Thanks for your help! I finally found the problem, and I should have found it easily by myself without asking here, sorry. The issue was not linked to a lack of free disk space, but... to my firewall !!! During the HD AVC encoding, VideoBuilder calls several external programs (OpenSource applications): - x264.exe: H.264 video encoder - faac.exe: HE-AAC audio encoder - MP4Box.exe: MP4 multiplexer (creates the MPEG4 file container with video + audio tracks) The problem was that only MP4Box.exe was not authorized to be run from another application (Videobuilder) on my PC by my Firewall (reinstalled recently), and this program is called at the end of the process (after hours of encoding, when I'm not in front of my screen). So a pop-up window of my Firewall asked me to authorized Videobuilder to run MP4Box.exe, with a time-out, and as nobody present to answer "yes", so MP4box was refused automatically after the time-out... After I built a short 4 slides show and encoded it in HD AVC (thanks to Lin for the idea!), I realized the problem… Thanks for your help, Marco PS: I want to congratulate very strongly all the WnSoft team and developers for the outstanding work put in this VideoBuilder part of PTE, this is a very very good job! (and not easy, I know it!). This is the first time I use VideoBuilder and I very appreciate it. Big thanks and congratulation Igor and all! Happy new year to everybody

Many thanks Lin for your advices. I will do some testing and make sure to have more free space available. I let you know the result, anyway. Thanks Marco

Hi Lin, Thanks for your help ! I have tried your idea (with 4 slides PTE 6.0.1, same HD mp4 settings) and it works... The MP4 file is created and correct. My original slideshow includes 234 slides for a duration of 17"34' My PC is a Dell Dimension 8400 with 3 GB RAM, Pentium 4 3.2Ghz, Windows XP. I think I have enough available disk space for temporary files... Well, I will try with 100 slides... Very strange problem... Marco

hello , I have wasted more than 24 hours of encoding in HD AVC for my PTE show using official and latest PictuesToExe version (including 6.0.0 and 6.0.1...) without any success... I have already paid for this feature... Any help avalaible ? Where is the Technical Support ? Igor ? Happy new years to all Marco

Hello all, A long time since I haven't posted here ( I apologize)... This time I need your help: I have problem to encode a PTE show in HD AVC (Menu Create/Video for PC and Mac). I have tried with PTE 6.0.0 and 6.0.1 without any success (see screenshots). I have attempted several settings: all 1920x1080 25fps, with standard setting or customs (1 or 2 passes, “Pan and scan “enable" or "disable" …) without any success. My PTE show (17m30s) works pefecteky in .EXE and DVD, AVI, mpg, etc... My license Deluxe is OK, all my HD disks have enough free space ( > 50GB, all NTFS formatted), so I don't understand where is the problem ... The audio and video encoding seems to be Ok without any problem, no error message (Faac.exe and x264.exe working OK during hours and hours …), but the final expected MP4 file is... 0 byte ! -> this does not work ! Sorry if I have missed the right tread with the solution to this problem. If someone can help me, I would be very very grateful.... Merry Christmas and happy new year to every body ! Marco

I'm a little bit late on this issue, sorry . (Please Dominique feel free to send me a MP or email in such case ...) Your were right, HideTaskBar.exe version 2.0 was not working with PTE version 5.6 and later, sorry for the inconvenience. I have fixed the problem and released a new version 2.1 of HideTaskBar.exe (compatible PTE 4.x, 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7 beta 9 as far as I know). You can download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e68f1c7db3910a036b21be4093fab7ace04e75f6e8ebb871 Dominique, you can also share this PTE utility via your web site for downloads (it is released on freeware license). Cheers, Marco Warning: please note that it seems there is a recurrent bug in PTE 5.6 and 5.7 beta X with the option "Run external application" which does not work at all on first slide (Slide #1: you can try with calc.exe). Check this reported issue on this thread: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10379&st=20&p=66105&hl=\run%20external%20application&092;&entry66105. A workaround can be to insert a "dummy" slide #1 (a copy of your original Slide#1 with a duration of 200ms for example) in order to skip the slide#1 bug.

Yep, the link given by xahu34 is the good one for HideTaskBar compatible with PTE 5. Thanks to TheDom ! I'm glad if this small tool can help. Marco

You' re welcome Dominique . Thank you for your feed-back about HideTaskBar, and for your contributions on this forum. Cheers Marco

Dominique, Please find attached the updated version of my HideTaskBar utility. It should work with both PTE v4 and PTE v5 (although it has not been not heavily tested , and only on Win XP). Hope it can help ! Marco HideTaskBar_v2.zip

Hey !!!! What a slidewhow! it's wonderfull! really very very good! I love it. Congratulation Stéphane! Hey! sounds like a "newbye" to PTE (and coming from Proshow) is able to build a great creative Slideshow (and not only a demo) with PTE 5 beta ! I can't even imagine what you can do with the "coming soon" release version. Thank you for sharing your show with us, I think this is very good for PTE too. Hope Igor appreciates. Your show is better than any "demo" I ever seen. I like it. Fantastic Stephane! Congratulation. Marco

Yes ! definitely !!!! Thank you Igor.

Thank you Jean-Claude ! That's good news to read Sy(P) will be compatible (in the future) with PTE 5.xx ! Sy(P) is a very powerfull and usefull companion tool for PTE ! (and it's free !) Thanks Jean-Claude ! Marco

Nice demo, and good idea ! Thanks thedom, for sharing this (and the source project).

Thanks, but the man to congratulate is Cèlou, he is the author of this demo.

Thanks Igor for your explanations and advices. I have tried your solution #1 (Gaussian blur 0.3 with Photoshop) and the final result in rendering is far better. It seems we must take big care about this moire effect, and learn how to control the blur for our pan effects... (not easy). Thanks. Marco

Hi Jill, Please first update to DirectX 9.0c , your DX version is totally outdated ! Also, I'm afraid that your video card is not fast enough to support PTE 5.0 new features. Marco

Hi Al, Thanks for your test and answer. About this slight "flickering" effect, I have tried on my side by replacing with other darker images (and with less contrast on edges), but I still notice this is not 100% smooth (P4 3.2 Ghz,1 GB ram, AT Radeon X800GT). I now think it is linked to the animation itself, which is too demanding for the GPU (moving in 4 opposite direction). I don't know. Perhaps Igor can explain this phenomenon... Marco

Is somebody also experiences flickering on the sequence with 4 images moving from center to corners with this demo ? Do you think this is due to a problem or limitation of the graphic engine in beta #2? Or may be to this kind of animation (4 pictures moving to 4 opposite direction) ?. Any idea ? Igor do you have an explanation for this problem ?

Hi thedom, I think you are trying to open the project with an old version of PTE. Please try again using PTE 5.0 beta #2

Cèlou kindly shares with us the source project of his demo: it's here. Note: on some computers it seems the sequence with the 4 images moving to corners can be slightly jerky (little flickering). We thought first it was linked to the "Edge Antialiasing" option (enabled), but even deactivating this option, there's still a little bit of flickering during this animation (using small images and slow movment). Any idea on this point ?

Our friend Cèlou have made a nice demo using PTE 5.0 beta. You can find it here Interesting effects... I like it !

One suggestion about Visual editor: I feel not really easy once in Visual editor to go back to main UI (main slideshow first dialog/window). It seems the user must click on the top right "red cross" to get back to the main program (and access to the main timeline. This is not the usual way in Windows software (as the top right "red cross" means "cancel" or "abort"). Perhaps I am missing something here, or a button is lacking in Visual editor ? Also, I would appreciate direct access to main synchro timeline from Visual editor. Marco

Congratulation to Aleksey and Pavel, and you Igor. Nice work ! Still a lot of work to stabilize the final release 5.0 version, and re-activate all previous features (video, all previous effects, audio synchro, previous CPU engine, and so on...). Some local tests with Beta 1 DirectX engine show very good result and efficiency (ATI Radeon X800 GT). Good luck and thank you. Marco

Hi everybody, I think Boxig and Al already said everything. This "old" demo was done using Boxig's external Flash player so called "FlashMe" v1.0 (yes Granot, the very first link related to FlashMe on your site). I haven't tried with latest versions #3 or #4. FlashMe is a nice, smart and windowless Flash player that can be called from a particular slide of your PTE show, using "Run external application" option ("cuztomize slide panel / Main tab" in PTE). Then, this will start your Flash movie at your chosen time in your PTE show (.swf file, created with your prefered Flash editor, personally I used SwishMax). The ability to run external programs from within the show is a great feature (and probably unique among serious slideshow softwares) allowed by PicturesToExe. Don't forget also that PTE does not support Flash movie natively, and in this case it just launchs the movie (you have to do the "Flash movie/PTE show" synchro by yourself, by adjusting the right "Display slide" time). By the way, I think using fullscreen Flash movie insertions in PTE can be interesting for special text effects (like intros with special titling...), but for pan and zoom on bitmap images (like demonstrated in FlashPTE demo in fullscreen), I believe that the "coming soon" version 5.0 of PTE will do the job far better and smoother than Flash ! (thanks to Igor ! ) I know I'm a bit late, but I whish an happy New Year to everybody here ! (and special whishes to Al and Granot ) Marco