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Days Won
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Everything posted by Barry Beckham
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Dom It all worked fine on my Dell 1920*1200 screen and as Lumenlux says, nice images too. If your going to demonstrate anything it's always great to see images with quality and appeal.
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You will be pleased to hear that I have been for treatment and I am completely cured The doctor made me aware that while many people may offer slide shows for 'comment', what they are really asking for is approval. So, now I know this I can avoid causing any upset in future, you will see a new me Only wonderful glowing comments and if you believe that, you will believe anything
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Gilio You do not appear to be getting a great deal of feedback and I am sure I am not the only one to watch your new show. This sort of engineering project would inspire anyone, but I wonder if there is enough variety in the show for it to have a wider appeal. I could not help thinking that you have presented a documentary sort of subject in a pictorial way and I am not sure it is quite coming together. Perhaps the approach here would be better staying with the documentary angle and adding some commentary. While I watched I thought where exactly is this? why is it being built? when will it be finished? A few facts and figures would have helped enormously I am surprised no-one has commented yet and perhaps that is because they don't quite know what to say.
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Igor I have created a few Mac shows and all the feedback is good apart from any thin lines applied. which seem to be lost along the bottom edge only This has now happened on a number of different Mac's, is that something that needs a look?
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Lin As far as I am aware my Canon is equipped with auto sensor cleaning and has the filter, but I stll see plenty of dust, so theory and practice not quite coming together perhaps. I tried the mapping too and that didn't completely eradicate dust. I don't find it a problem on still images and was just wondering how 5d owners coped
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Eic In photography as in life there are rights and wrongs, but many things are just personal preference. However, looking at the format of a 1280*1024 image is not very good. Its a terrible shape for composition, it just isn't a comfortable shape to our eyes. You will be using widescreen at some stage, so you might as well bite the bullet and do it now, later you will be glad you did. From what I see here, you would be hard pressed to get a 4:3 or 5:4 monitor anyway. I bet you are a really nice guy, but if I talked to your family I bet they would stay you are a stubborn so and so too. Which one of the two attached image formats are best? It really is no contest and if you have some verticals that won't fit, dump them. Its not compulsory to use them and you can often make a show miles better by what you discard
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Eric Then use Picture In Picture techniques, animating a portrait format image isn't very appealing is it When your shooting images directly for AV as you are, then you should try and remain with a landscape format wherever possibe
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Eric Just try once and make a test show of a dozen images that you shoot at the Steam fair. Dump your 1024*768 and your 1280*1024. Make your slide show 1920*1080 Save your images at Jpeg level 6, which will save a bit of strain on your PC. It will play on your PC with a black band top and bottom, but so what. At least you retain a far better format than 5:4. 16:9 is far far better on the eye than the near square 1280*1024 It will play perfectly OK on your projector, I did a demo the night before last and showed two shows made at 1920*1200, both played perfectly through a 1024*768 projector It will also convert to a DVD and on most flat screen TV's will play filling the screen, edge to edge and top to bottom Then you will not be loosing any quality when you view the shows and others will also see it just as you intended. What more could you possibly want
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My Avatar was taken in 2007 at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta, doesn't need updating for at least 10 years
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Integrating MAC file for use in Keynote
Barry Beckham replied to Lmoreels's topic in General Discussion
Ptigui If the key sent to you was the same that was sent to me, all you have to do is unzip the file. Save the file from the email and then right click the zipped file and choose extract all. Follow the wizard to complete the unzipping. You will notice that the zipped folder will remain, but another standard folder of the same name appears. Once you have a second folder unzipped you will find a product key inside. Double click that product key and install it to your PC registry, which amounts to following the on screen instructions You should find you are then set up with the new key. Hope that helps -
Eric You need to run that filter a few more times yet Anyway, what are you doing playing around with software like this, Arn't you one of the PTE forum folk who like to see their images true to life.
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Integrating MAC file for use in Keynote
Barry Beckham replied to Lmoreels's topic in General Discussion
The missing line must be an issue with PTE as it is fine on the PC version -
Integrating MAC file for use in Keynote
Barry Beckham replied to Lmoreels's topic in General Discussion
Peter The filter effect originated from the Alien Skin Snap Art range, but I don't use the filters straight out of the box so to speak. Every image was individually worked through using a blend of the filters and original unfiltered images in Photoshop layers. I probably started off with Alien Skin Coloured Pencil and went from there. For the commentary I needed someone with an North of England accent to add some charm to the whole AV, so I put out a request from my own website forum and got a response from Roger Walton. I wrote the words I wanted recorded and Roger did a superb job for me. It could be yesterday is actually a remake of one of my most popular AV's from quite a few years ago called The Black Country. The original was created at 1024*768, which is a bit small now, so I remade another version at a much higher resolution. The imputus for this was to create a higher resolution slide show, but also to prepare it for an AV competition here in Australia. I am pleased the Mac version worked well, which is all down to the great work by the wnsoft team. -
Gardens of England - New Slideshow
Barry Beckham replied to Nikonos's topic in Slideshows & AV Shows
Malcolm You have put quite a lot of time and effort into this show and the result is a good one (Other AV workers please note) There is plenty of varienty and good quality photography included and some nice techniques too. I like to see full screen animation continuing to move as the image appears and leaves the screen, but that is a personal taste, not a right or wrong Some animations were a bit fast for me too, but generally the slide show was a very good one. Flowers and plants have the ability in the wrong hands to bore the pants off us. This didn't do that or come anywhere near that. A great slide show, which I enjoyed. -
Rick As Dave says you don't ned to go that high in resolution if you don't want to and 1920*1200 04 1920*1080 is a good next step for you to take. I don't make many DVD's so I stay with 1920*1200 If I made lots of DVD's I may choose 1920*1080, but if I find a show anytime that I want to make a DVD from and I really am fussy about filling my TV screen all I have to do is recrop the images and take 120 pixels from the height. 60 pixels top and bottom is no gret problem. Set your crop to whatever res you want and the PPI will take care of itself.
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Well, no matter how long you were there the images are great. I have no problem with you giving a credit to our site, but to be honest it doesn't really belong on the end of your show. Save that and pass it on by word of mouth. Keep the end credits to you the author and the music. With regard size, you have one show made at 1024*768, why not try the next at a size that will fill your monitor screen. The good part about that is the result will still play perfectly OK on your other monitor too Our website isn't a .com though www.beckhamdigital.co.uk or www.beckhamdigital.com.au
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Rick If those images were taken on one African Safari Holiday, then you had a belter of a time. A fabulous show which includes some stunning individual images. I have a number of comments I would like to make on your sequence, but I make them from the standpoint that this is a great show just as it is, but with a few changes, I think you could elevate this to outstanding. Firstly the music was absolutely perfect in my view, it did what music is supposed to do in a slide sequence like this, add to the mood and the feel of the show and you did capture a mood here. The quality of the images was stunning with a few exceptions. There was one transition where you used the page curl and one where you used the mosaic. I think you should lose those two transitions and stay with what you used throughout the remainder of the show.They were out of keeping with the rest of the transitions in my view. There was a panned image that appeared to me to be going the wrong way with animals going backwards, it felt a little awkward to me and I would lose the pan or reverse it. There was another where the quaility wasn't good, that has to go. I think it was cats on that distance marker The inset images worked pretty well, but I think they can work much better. Slow the animation down so that they come to a gentle stop rather than an ubrupt stop. I don't think the rotation of some of the insets was in keeping with the style of the show and in my view you should remain with a more gentle animation. You should also make a derivitive of your show with static Picture in Picture rather than animated and see what you think after watching that variation a few times.. There are a few images that you need to remove, the first being that elephant image that appears to have a green cast, it doesn't fit in with your others and they are much stronger. There are also one or two images where the quality doesn't match the majority. Remove them as your show has enough stunning images to be able to lose them easily. The show isn't short so the loss of 6 images isn't going to do you any harm at all. In fact the removal of a weaker image will enhance the overall show. This sounds like I am being really critical, but if you did nothing your show is still a great one I don't know if you have been following the thread on image size, but another thought came to me while watching it. This is a great sequence and I wonder if a year or so when and if you get a larger monitor that you will not regret making it larger and staying with an oblong format rather than 1024*768. One or two animals were jammed into the frame a little tight. If you told me you had spent 6 months in Africa getting these images together it wouldn't suprise me. Lastly have you thought of adding just a little commentary? The reason for the burning tusks is pretty obvious, but I wonder if limited commentary would really work a treat here. I wished I had been with you on that safari and this is one of the best sequences I have seen for a while. It ticked all the boxes for me.
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When the Canon 5D Mk2 was launched and I saw the HD video capabilities I sat up and took note. My thoughts were that if I could add video to a slide show, which was the same quality as the stills I would be very interested to see where this could lead. Later, I had some doubts about video and DSLR cameras. As you know, if you change lenses often enough and no matter how carefull you are dust will settle on the chip. Now this has never been a concern to me with stills because it is so easy to deal with, but how would we deal with that ugly spot or hair on the amount of frames we need for HD video. Has anyone with a 5D Mk2 experienced this yet?
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I agree, but the fact that we have a very interesting documentary adds another angle that is generally missing in our slide shows. There's a thought, perhaps we should consider this a bit more often and include more commentary in the form of a Documentary. I am not sure we are comparing apples with apples though. I really think there are no right or wrongs here, or in many other areas of photography come to that. Most is just personal taste and all things being equal to animate or not is a personal thing. The one area that for me I am positive about is that movement does not add impact, appeal or charm to an image. If that image has none of those attributes, it should be edited out. Would we put mediocre, boring or badly played music into our slide show and then add some digital effects to the sound to add interest. No, so why consider that as right for the other 50% orf the slide show
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Dave To be honest I am not generally one who does this sort of testing, but the thread makes you think and I must have time on my hands at the moment . I am not sure that your suggestion would be a great test to be honest. If you can't see a difference between the file sizes I mentioned earlier, then a jpeg compression test is not likely to show much. I think you are far better doing that sort of test on a PC screen, but my gut reaction, (which I will temper a little by saying I stand to be corrected) is that it will not make the slightest visible difference to your slide show. I have been using level 6 for years and I think by now I would have spotted some evidence of a visible difference in quality. I havn't.
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I think I have been able to answer my own question, but once again I stand to be corrected. I have just taken the high resolution show I posted a couple of days ago and made a backup in zip From that bakup I resized two sets of identical images, one set at 1024*576 (16:9 format to fit my 60 in plasma screen edge to edge) The second version was created at 1920*1080. (ALSO 16:9) The 2 DVD's display identical on screen. I have been going back and forth between them and I cannot see a difference. So, perhaps if I resized the images even further down to to 720*405 (also 16:9) before making the show, I should see no difference in that size either. Should have thought of that when I did the original test I suppose. I now have two DVD disks created 1. Contains two idendical shows one started off at 6144*3840 and one at 1024*576 2. The second disk also contains two identical shows one created from 1920*1080 and one at 1024*576 Both DVD's record a total file size of 423 Mb
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Ken I think your missing my point a bit and the lack of response to my question may mean others don't know either. This isn't about resizing images as much as what PTE does to our images when a DVD is created. If a standard DVD resolution is 720*576, what would happen to a show created at 1024*768 and one at 1920*1200 when it goes through the DVD process? Do all the images from both shows start off the same, but get reduced to 720 for the DVD. I am not sure if that is the case or not and I am happy to bow to greater wisdom on this point. BTW Changing image size can have a dramatic affect on sharpness, it all depends on what resolution you are starting with I guess. Photoshop may have a better algorithm when re-sizing than the PTE software. The trouble is we hear all this technical stuff, but how often does it relate to what we actually see with our eyes.
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Ken The statement I made assumes a static show, I just want to know what PTE does to a 1024 pixel image as opposed to a 1920 to prepare it for a DVD Does it, as I suggested reduce them all to 720? I dunno really
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I have always viewed this question differently to you and I suppose it is this variety that makes the work go round. 1. Are my images of enough interest to be presented with animation that would keep the image on screen much longer than a static slide show ? 2. Is movement going to put any appeal or interest back into the image, compensate for it being a little ordinary? 3. Can I try to make something different and original to surprise my audience ? Answer in my view 1. Probably not, so better stay with a shorter show and don't have the image on screen too long 2. Definately not. The worse example I ever saw was from this very forum. An out of focus image on screen for 50 seconds being moved and warped all over the place. (An extreme example I know) 3. Yep fully agree I always find myself uncomfortable with this line, which I have heard many times and would like to put forward another way of looking at this. Unfortunately a very few of us are profesional photographers and have the talent/the subjects to make this kind of pictures 1. Most of the amateurs that I come into contact with would hold their own with many professionals, they certainly do have the talent to produce images worthy of a great slide show, especially from a creative viewpoint. 2. Professional means a person earns their living at it, it doesn't mean they are any good at it. There are many examples of wedding photographers who make a good living without a creative bone in their body. 3. How many of us here are professionals anyway, by that I mean we are commisioned to take pictures. Very few I would guess 4. The line could also be viewed as a cop out too perhaps. Well, I am not professional so I can settle for a much lower standard. Doesn't the amateur usually put more TLC into their work, because they are not chasing the almighty dollar? Having said that Lin makes some good points, look how television uses movement to keep our attention. Sometimes the movement is almost overpowering, but it is obviously done to add interest. I like animation, but I like subtle movement most of the time. I can't quite make up my mind if video/TV is different or not to our still images. I suppose if you animate you please half the people and if you don't, you please the other half. That's life