RodB

Hi LumenLux , you need too look at like this , if you have an image you got of the web , chances are it is highly compressed and not much good for print , no matter how good you are in photoshop , you cannot make pixels out of nothing and get a good result , its the same with video , only instead of one still picture you have lots of them , 25 per sec for pal format ,29 for ntsc format . Having a highly compressed small avi file cannot be made into a good quality mpeg as it will already be compressed hard and then to compress it again into mpeg , your quality can only stay the same at best , your file size will be slightly smaller for the same quality , so its really not worth doing unless you particulary want an mpeg , same as for still images , bad in gets bad out . To get the best quality mpegs , l generally build my video in After Effects or Premiere and export in Quicktime animation format , this is a lossless format with great quality but much smaller in end file size than using uncompressed output . Then l encode and convert from .mov into mpeg1 using a program called TMPGEnc , it used to be free , its an excellent encoder one of the very best . http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html For decent fullscreen quality you need to encode at about 1500kbs minimum , that works out at about 90mg file size per minute of video , this should run ok from a cdrom , you can go higher with the bitrate if the video is running from your HD as data transfer is much quicker from there , higher bitrate , better the quality , for short intros of only 10 to 30 seconds , you can get top quality , without resorting to Divx etc that will give you better quality video , but nightmares for codecs and users compatability to see your better quality divx video . As for an intro player im trying to get to work , lm not happy with the lag in closing the mpeg and starting the slideshow , your idea of having an image on screen that the pte show bursts through has got me thinking of another way of doing this . Will get back to you on it , between Boxig and myself we should come up with something thats real easy to add video intros to slideshows , sounds like Boxigs utility is working great . Regards Rod

Hello LumenLux I recieved your email asking for Gspot , your private email address is not there , could you mail me again and include a link to your address and l,ll send it of to you . Regarding your questions , Your avi video will play ONLY on machines that have the same codec that you used to encode the video in the first place , so its best to stick with only what is supported by Windows Media Player , this will make your video playable on just about everything . For cdrom playback it best to use mpeg1 , it will give very good results (better than avi) and has been fully supported by Media Player since version 6.4 , it will give you the best quality and compatablity across the board for cdrom playback . Regards Rod

Hello Bob You dont say if Media player will play the video in question , if it doesnt , then its more than likely a codec problem for sure . l would say that Irfanview is useing Media Player to play its video files by implementing internal mci commands , it must be , as the size of Irfanview program could not also have its own video player inbuilt , not a good one anyway . l can mail you a small utility called Gspot , that will tell you what codecs you have installed on your machine and lots of information about any video file , like codec bit rate etc . It runs standalone and dont need to be installed and is very small . Let me know ? Rod

Boxig , A movie originally made at mpeg defaults for web stream is 320x240 , if you compile a movie at this size and have the bit rate around 1500kbs , it will look ok fullscreen , it will look very good at 2000+ . The quality of a movie is not related to its dimension but in its bit rate . Most people that make there own intros can control the bit rate an in doing so can make a video at small dimension with a high bit rate that will look great fullscreen up to a screen res of 800x600 which is what the vast majority of monitors are set up at . I think a very small movie like your example, (200x200) as an intro would look like a postage stamp and a bit silly to be used as an intro for a fullscreen slideshow , l really dont see the point of an intro that is run smaller that what your slideshow is run at . Rod

Hi If you have any trouble boxig , l could make a container that will play an avi or mpeg fullscreen no matter what size it is going in . All that would be needed is for somebody to place the utility exe in the same directory as the mpeg or avi and also have your pte show in the same directory also . You will only have to name your files and have them in the same directory as the utility autorun.exe - this is the utility IntoM.mpeg - for your mpeg file IntroA.avi - for your avi file Slideshow.exe - for your PTE show It will play a fullscreen movie on all Windows systems , let me know if anybody wants it , as it will only take about 10 minutes to make . Regards Rod PS Just had a look and it is easy to get it to play autorun fullscreen and close when the video has played , the trouble lm having is , by not knowing the length of your movie , and getting the movie to trigger the action to play your PTE show is not quite so easy . Im am comunicating to media player using mci commands , if l new the length of your movie its real easy to do , but not knowing is going to take some fancy scripting . If it can be done with scripting , the whole job is only a copy paste , and can be built in minutes . Because its built in MMB it will run on all systems and will be about 400kb in size .

Hi Its nice to have different opinions without any flaming , I should change my boring slideshow statement to , after seeing as many as l have , slideshows in general have become boring to me , and as Anthrodoc has said its really a matter of in context . l didnt mean a particular slideshow after a few showings , l ment in general , as the market is full of slideshow programs that apart from one being better to work with than the other , they spit out the same thing , transition pic transition . Mike , you are right , but you are referring to one slideshow , l am talking about slideshows and the concept in general , to put your excellant slideshow into a appropriate well designed container , can only make it better , and this my point . Anthrodoc , l beleve the problems with Swish are related mainly to security as they have changed some key routines to stop piracy , the app its self is ok apart from that and has been in version 2 for a year now , version 3 is in beta testing at the moment . Frank , if you have any problems with MMB feel free to mail me , l will gladly get you going , with it you can run fullscreen video and any number of PTE shows totally automatic , all you need to do is know the times your shows run for and set actions that execute at set times by your system clock . Have a nice day guys Rod

Hi Boxig you have raised some very true facts about the different needs of PTE users , and yes its simplicity is a very attractive feature and you are right in much of what you say , but l must disagree on 2 points , one in choosing Swish 1.5 over version 2 , there are huge improvements in the latest version , and version 3 is just around the corner and from reports it will rock , Swish is a great program , you can build very impressive flash content without touching scripting , as its point and click object based stuff with a great load of presets , Swish is a very easy program to get into to produce excellant results , and the other point l carnt agree with is that MMB is a hard program to use , for what you can do with it compared to the likes of Director its dead easy , just give it a little more time than a brush over . With MMB is easy to get good results straight from the go of , the most used actions are presets that you just select and the scripts are generated by the program , you really dont need to write a single script to do most of the most used actions , and like Swish , MMB has heaps of presets . Now the good news is that you can make good intros very easily and quickly with either program , from within a day or two of starting for the first time , once you start to get the idea you will see that the learning curve for both apps is very short , you will be flying in no time . Now the great news is that once you start to see that scripting is really only copy and paste and you start to have a play with a few of the many plugins and addons out there , then you will begin to see the power these apps have built in, MMB is sooooo powerfull once you get into it , for less that $50 a piece they are two of the best multimedia apps in the world , for multimedia presentations , there really is not much you cannot do with them . Most of my work is building presentations for place,s like Holiday Resorts and small business , they need to have a more lasting appeal and hold much more varied content that a slideshow alone can convey , so l guess this is where l am coming from , l get a real kick out combining the output of many different apps to make a presentations that to the viewer looks like it was made in one and all seamless . But anyway if you like to create full blown presentations or just a 10 second intro for your PTE shows for friends or business or just your own plain enjoyment , give them a try , they are both worth ten times what they will cost you . Regard Rod

Hi l drop by here on and off and have seem many posts over the time asking about PTE supporting video , animation, flash etc , people wanting to have an intro to there slideshow and the like . After you have seen a few slideshows , they become very boring , the same ol music and revolving slides with some transitions , much more can be built into your presentations , that entertain your audience because they dont know whats coming next , your show is alive ! 2 essential programs that are sub $50 (amazing for what they do ) and they mesh so seamless with PTE that the viewer would think it was all built in a high end multimedia app like "Director" . The apps im talking about are Multimedia Builder and Swish . With these you can have all the interaction you can imagine from buttons to rollovers to timed actions to full autorun , you can play fullscreen video as an intro , you can have flash content as your intro or a combination of video and flash rolled into one , you can play any sounds or music , have web links , create playlists etc etc , there is really no limit to what you can do here , and both will run another exe (PTE) seamless . eg cd is inserted into drive . Autorun . Fullscreen video expodes onto the screen setting the scene for your slideshow . Video has finished and a flash text animation with all the bells and whistles that Flash is capable of plays in a smooth play on from the video , here you could have a menu where you could select any one of any amount of PTE shows to play , you click a button and play a PTE show , that when finished it closes and you are back at the menu to select another one , or if you like you can run the whole lot automaticly by using MMBs script timers that run from your system clock , and believe me its easy to set this up . The power of this is only limited by your design imagination , and general skills in image editing , video and flash animation design , the sky really is the limit here ,anything is possible ! PTE is a very good at what it is designed to do , slideshows , for entertaining a generall audience , on there own , become soooooo boring quickly ! To create something special with so much more impact you need to combine PTE with other more capable apps instead of the same ol fade next slide . Just a thought Regards Rod

Hi Nice work Rudi , but l feel you used the wrong program to create it , with the elements all edited and ready to use , an app like Multimedia builder could put it together with much more interactivity if you wanted , in just a few hrs , once the interface graphic is made the tunes buttons are just typed links to pages based on a masterpage background with some other elements that are scripted hide and show , it took 350 hrs to make because you used Pte to make it . Pte is a good slideshow program but as far as interactivity goes it cannot touch an app that supports scripting like MMB . Very nice work Rudi but it was kinda like making a 10 minute video out frame by frame giff animation software , can be done but boy its taking the long route to do it , l hope you dont take this post the wrong way Regards Rod