cgbraggjr

Let me add best wishes to both of you. I hope there is some comfort in knowing that we all are thinking of you, hoping that the best is yet to come.

Lin wrote, "If you can link me to the jpg "without" the flames I'll give it a try." Do you mean the one with the guy with an eyepatch? It's not really important - I just chose one at random. But if you want it, I've uploaded a copy.

Barry, you seem to be a tad curmudgeonly about this. You'd better be careful or I'm going to get out those DVDs I got from you and draw mustaches on them. I'll grant that the flames as they exist are unreal and somewhat crude. OTOH, even that might work for a specific purpose. In my case I am trying to imitate stage flames which are themselves not only artificial, but sometimes extremely and arbitrarily unreal, all in the service of the higher arts . I mean, when they cook on stage you have a red light and a fan blowing tethered paper up in the air (if you have a big budget....). If I wanted realistic and beautiful moving fire, then I wouldn't even try to do it in PTE. I wouldn't even try to do it in animated video - only a cinematic video would do, and even then, it's a 2-dimensional image blah blah blah. For my purposes, this is an avenue worth pursuing. IMHO, naturally.

OK, I downloaded the 1024x768 test show and it ran without problems on my setup. I fed the projector a native 800x600 resolution and a 1024x768 resolution which it downsized, and I used the CRT only and the CRT-with-LCD outputs, and at all times the P&Zs were smooth. In the past I have been unable to run old DOS programs on my Windoze computers and it seems to be because my newer hardware was too fast!! A clue???

I'm inclined to believe that frame rates are the problem, but if so, how do we find out and/or control those rates on our computers? Can they be controlled, or are we at the mercy of the mfrs, particularly for laptops where we can't change the video cards? BTW, although I have not downloaded the problem files, I have no problem panning and zooming an image that resides, in toto, inside and outside of the frame, and I'm using an ACER eeePC and an Optoma EP716 (800x600 native) projector. Large slides and complicated animation do cause the computer to choke, but basically if it plays on the computer it also plays on the projector. This equipment is definitely low-end, but hey, it works.

A while back I asked if anyone had animated flame, as one of our resident geniuses had animated a snow globe. Since then, it occurred to me that the new mask feature might be a key, and I have made a crude first attempt at animating flames. I borrowed one of JPD's gifs from his mask demo, Layer60, which is an image of horizontal black and white stripes. I copied it and stacked the copy on top, making it twice as tall. Then I opened it as a mask and simply made it move from bottom to top. I created a pastiche of an ordinary photo, in this case Wotan and Fricka (WAF), with a photo of fire on top. I copied it with the title "flame-left.jpg". Next, back in Photoshop, I moved the fire photo three nudges to the right with the right arrow key. I then copied that version and named it "flame-right.jpg". Now when the mask moves vertically, it alternately exposes the two jpgs, but the only things that appears to move are the flames, because in the two photos WAF are identical, but the flames are slightly offset. It's not like real flames, but as Magritte said, This Is Not A Fire. I'm sure that the experts with PTE will be able to refine this idea and come up with something spectacular. I've uploaded the ZIP file of this test, but have no clue where it ended up. It's called FlameTest.zip - you can find it at my website too: http://home.att.net/~cgbraggjr/PTE/FlameTest.zip FlameTest.zip

Peter, that does seem to work. All my slides are set to hold until a mouse click. A 7 second track on a 4 second slide plays to the end with that box checked. Thanks!

OK, Xaver, I think I see what I'm doing. If I add a new keyframe to the original image, adjust opacity, and then add a second image to the slide, the second image's keyframe is not highlighted. Therefore, no positioning or sizing data. There may be other ways to "fool" the keyframe selector, but that's how I did it. If I take the extra step of highlighting its keyframe, then I get the data. If I simply create a new slide and don't mess with its timeline, and then add an image to it, the keyframe for the new image is highlighted. Weird. Thanks for pointing me to the answer. Time for a beer! - Argo

Peter - OK, that works! Thanks! But, it doesn't work unless you have a soundtrack added via Project Options, or you have added sound to slides using the "Add Sound" button. Synch is not allowed if you add sounds via the Customize Slide option. The reason I used the Customize Slide option is that it allows any length track to play to the end even if the slide is shorter. I was doing a manual advance show and didn't care how long the slides were so I set the default to 4 seconds. "Add Sound" truncates the track if it's longer than the slide, and doesn't warn you about this when you add the track. Here's my ideal solution to the Catch-22 for sound tracks: (1) drop either the Add Sound or the Customize Slide music option and allow whichever option is kept to allow Synch (is there any benefit to Not Synching except preventing program logic conflicts?); (2) whichever option remains should either allow a long track to play even if the slide length is shorter, or give the user the warning/option to lengthen the slide. Easy for me to say, because I don't have to do the programming! In the meantime I guess the workaround is to set the default slide times very high, use the Add Sound option, and check the Synch box.

Thx Stu, that was what I wanted. But if I start a show at a particular slide, the slide appears but the sound track plays from the beginning. That has to be a setup mistake on my part, but where? Argo

I am attaching (uploading? I have never done this before) a zip file (TEST.ZIP) with two jpgs, the test.pte, and a readme with the keystrokes listed. TIA - Argo Test.zip

Igor, I think I just figured it out. I have a soundtrack for the project (as opposed to one attached to a specific slide). When I hit the mouse pause button, the slides stop advancing but the music continues to play. I did not realize the slides had stopped because there is a long interval between them and since the music was still playing, I thought no change had occurred. Is that the way 'pause' is supposed to work, or have I missed a setting that would stop everything when paused? Thx - Argo

This has been answered but I can't find it. How do you start an executable in the middle? What are the command line options? Thx - Argo

Wanted to report this for beta 20, but it also happens in this release. I don't know about earlier releases. I cannot get either a preview or executable to Pause with a mouse click when both mouse buttons are coded to "Pause" when clicked. I've tried enabling and disabling the keyboard and mouse wheel, but no luck. I've tried setting mouse buttons to Next and Previous, and that works. It's just Pause that doesn't. I'm using a Wacom Tablet and mouse if it matters.

Sorry for the slow reply - been busy. What did happen, but has not happened in the last two days, was when clicking the O&A button nothing happened. As though the button had no function. Now what's happening is that when I'm in the O&A screen and click on the "Size/position in pixels" button, I get an empty small window where the window should have size and position numbers. I can fix this by closing and re-opening the O&A screen. One possibly helpful clue - the problem never happens on the first image. It [nearly] always happens on the second image I work on without closing the O&A window in the meantime. I can't say if this happened in any previous version. Until now I have been making fairly simple and short shows. With ver 5.6 and its linking to executables, I have gone wild with a very complicated show in 18 executable parts (!). Doing it this way was the only way I could keep everything straight, so many many thanks for that. My current problem is easily worked around. My hardware is Pentium IV with 1.5GB memory, 2.4mhz speed, and a Wacom tablet mouse, Samsung Syncmaster 931b, running XP Pro.

Igor, I'm having an intermittent problem with this beta. At some point, while working back and forth between the Animation and main view windows, I am unable to open the Animation window. All other functions (that I have tried) seem OK at that point, but the only way to get back to animation is to close and reopen PTE. I'm not using tons of animation. Typically there are 3-5 images, all quite small, with soundtrack, and most of my activity is adding and adjusting keyframes. I can save my work and reopen, so no harm done. If there is a scientific way I can observe this problem and relay it to you, please tell me how.

Igor, I upgraded to LR 2.2, and now I am able to copy from LR and paste (Ctrl+V) directly into the comments box. I have no idea whether the upgrade is responsible - in the beginning I was able to do this with LR 2.1. In a world where 25% of the time you can solve this kind of problem by rebooting, who really knows why it didn't work then and why it works now? I'll try to make better notes if it happens again.

Hi Igor - Beta 20 solved the display problem, as you said, but I still have the Ctrl+V problem. I can paste text into the Text Box that opens when you click the button next to the Comments field, and when I close the Text Box the text appears on the slide and in the Comments field, but I still cannot paste text directly into the Comments field. (Remember that for a while I did *not* have this problem; now it won't go away.) Small matter, practically speaking, but there you are. I am having an interesting problem with text in Lightroom 2.1 that nobody else seems to have, so it's possible I have a virus or other malware running loose. I'll fumigate the computer and see. Thanks for fixing the display bug.

I'm having some odd trouble with comments in this beta. I can type them in, but if I try to paste (Ctrl+V) in the comment box, there's nothing there. If I call the text box up I can paste into it, but then the comment does not appear on the slide in the timeline view, but it does appear on the slide in preview and in the Objects and Animation view. You can also see part of the text in the comments box at the top of the screen. I was not having this problem for a long time, but then I experimented with inserting a text template, in my case the file name, and that's when this behavior started. Closing the program and restarting does not help, and neither does rebooting the computer. Chuck B

I checked the Civil War bit and no flickering flames - he selectively suppressed color to emphasize the flames when firing guns, and over campfires. Not what I need, unfortunately. I guess I'll have to do some tinkering.

I need to create some Magic Fire for a presentation in 2-3 months. I can't find anything with Search so - has anybody tried this? It seems as if it would be much like little flame images falling up, much as has been done with snow falling. An added complication might be having the fire dissipate instead of completely covering the screen. TIA -

In LR the original is used only to make "preview" copies at different sizes, depending on the way you're editing. After those previews are created, the original is not touched except to update the EXIF and IPTC data, and even that can be assigned to a separate 'sidecar' file if you wish. All edits are overlaid on whichever preview file you are using. Therefore, when you 'open' the file, you're actually opening a copy, and when you 'save' a file, you're only saving the editing instructions. This all works seamlessly so it's just like working on the original - you can't tell. When you need to print or generate a file for PTE, LR exports a copy of the original with the edits incorporated into it, but the original remains unedited, unopened, unsaved, uncompressed, etc etc..

Davegee, to answer your point about not editing the JPG invalidating my ‘results’, good point. I was only trying to see if the actual saving process degraded the photo, and it didn’t (to my eye). The next question would be, *which* edits, if any, cause trouble? What did you do in your example? I’ll try to think of a protocol to do some testing. Xaver, you are correct that editing in Photoshop will change the ‘master’ photo. There are things one cannot do in Lightroom but I find that 90% plus of my photos don’t need more than LR can provide. I edit a TIFF copy of my master shot if I have to go to Photoshop. (I have to point out that your statement, “…keeping raw images plus metadata…” is not how LR works - see my next paragraph.) Davegee, LR is lossless for all formats, not just RAW. In essence, you can work with a JPG just as if it were a RAW image (without the dynamic range, of course). All edits are separate from the original photo; when you view an edited photo you are seeing the original overlaid with editing instructions, not changes to the original. Everything can be undone with no harm to the original. You can export a copy of the original with or without editing changes. It’s the reason I bought LR, saddled as I am with a couple of cameras that don’t shoot RAW.

Using Photoshop CS2, six consecutive "save as" operations: JPG at quality 12, file size increased 5K in a 3MB file; JPG at quality 6, file size decreased 1.2K in a 340K file; BMP files stayed the same size; TIF files (uncompressed) increased in size 36 bytes for a 7MB file. The TIF file change *might* be from changing the non-picture information in the file. Just a thought. I could see little or no difference on my monitor between first and sixth JPG files. In fact, the differences between quality 12 and quality 6 were not significant either (bearing out Barry's advice that anything higher than quality 6 is wasted in a PTE show). So, my free advice is for anyone in doubt to run a similar test to set your mind at ease. But, if you want the best file quality in JPG, then use a lossless editor like Lightroom. The JPG is never changed, no matter what editing you do, so you can always go back and undo some or all of your edits and keep the original's quality intact. When you're happy with the photo, you export a copy for use in PTE. You're never further away in quality from the original than that one copy operation.

FWIW I can play PTE shows on my Asus eeePC, which has nothing like the specs required (apparently) by other laptops. I wouldn't want to create shows on the Asus (tiny keys and screen) but playback - fine. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8431 PS: just tried Jean-Pierre's 556 piece (?) puzzle PTE and it choked the Asus. So, some shows work, even panning large images, and some shows won't.