Barry Beckham

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

Perhaps this thread is suffering the same as a large slide show Howevre, nobody has confirmed my earlier statement that I would like confirmed as true or false. Currently when we create a DVD through PTE, as a part of that change all the images will be reduced to 720*576 for the DVD. I assume there is some variation to allow for format issues, but generally the images we create will be reduced to 720 by whatever. So, it doesn't matter in DVD terms whether we start with a file size of 1920*1080 or 1024*768. Is that because members are not sure either or the thread was missed.

Eric Barry imagine the ordinary man in the street buying a DVD, would you not agree he would be upset if it ran for only six minutes? The 600 plus pic jobby I am in the middle of is a documentary about Leyburn, where I live, covering as many commercial and social aspects that go on in the town. It's for a specific audience. The intention is to have a premier in one of the local halls, split the show into two halves, with a couple of complimentary shorts to pad out an hour and a half. The aim is to pander to people's vanity in wanting to see if they are included. Yes, if you buying a bag of do-nuts you expect to get 6 and would be annoyed if you only got two, but its not the same thing. I presnt many hours of video broken down into subjects. If I put 5 hours of solid video on each DVD that would he horrendous. No,one would sit through that lot. Slide shows are the same. If you have a lot of ground to cover with your AV break it down into those bite sized peices and people will watch it. Present it in one lump and if the viewer has any control they won't watch it all. Most people when cornered are too polite and worry about causing offence to the author. They will sit through a long presentation, but in their own homes, they would be hitting the stop button way before you are 25% in. One of the things I learned in my early days with AV, film and disolve units is that if you present 12 & 5 minute sequences on different subjects with different music and a different mood, you will be asked back to the club again and again. Present a 60 minute travelogue and you will get one visit only. You will not be invited back next season. Its common sence and doing it for charity makes no difference whatsoever. Your good intentions and well meaning with not make a 60 minute slide show any more watchable.

Ron I never originally raised the jpeg compression issue, I only responded to someone else and stated what I had been doing. I have saved the images for the PTE shows I have made since I have been in Australia and since I started using the larger monitors at 1920*1200 at level 6 However, based on my demo slide show a day or so ago, in future I think I may create my images at full resolution and save them at level 6 just as I did with the high resolution demo, but to be honest, its likely to be a while before we need to seriously consider resolutions above 1920*1200 (famous last words, these could be) so I think my advice to anyone who asked the question what sized images do I need it would be this Create your shows at 1920*1200 or 1920*1080 despite the fact that you may well be using 1024*768 or 1280*1024 screen resolution now. Then to address Eric's point, what if they are using an old PC that struggles to cope with the larger files. Don't worry about it. Create the show at that size anyway, make a backup in zip and re-size the backup to meet the needs of your PC. Keep the original, which is effectively your raw file. You can go back to the high res original at any time and create what ever format you want and should you find yourself using a large monitor 3 years down the line, all the shows made in that time will fit your new screen.

Eric I suppose a wedding DVD could be an exception to the rule as they generally do have many more images than a pictorial AV. However, they have a limited appeal only to the close family. I would have little or no interest in someone elses wedding DVD unless they were a part of my family and even then I am not sure I could sit through 300 wedding images. In actual fact I did make a slide show resently that had 180 images and ran for 36 minutes. I agreed to put together a slide show for an aquaintance in Australia, but didn't appreciate at the start how many images he had shot and wanted me to use. I did suggest alternatives to using so many images in one go, but that was what he wanted. It combined two visits to the East, one was India and the other Tibet. I think that if you had a greater than average interest in Tibet and India, then you could probably sit through the sequence once, but I had to do it to check the slide show I had made worked OK and that was difficult enough. With the greatest respect to him the slide show was too long, with insufficient variety, or quality in the images to help sustain a show of that length. In truth it is as boring as hell. In these circumstances you can advise, but the paying customer gets what they want in the end. For those of us putting together shows to primarily entertain, long shows are a disaster in my view. I think all AV enthusiasts fall into this trap at some stage or another, where their creative juices overpower good sence and it is only much later that the penny drops. I know I have, probably still do from time to time. It is probably better to break large slide shows down into more manageable sections. The images can still be used, but perhaps instead of a 36 minute sequence we could have produced 4 or 5 shorter sequences covering Tibet, the temples, the mountain people, then India and its various parts. Not difficult to do that and present the whole thing, but in bite size chunks. Now, you stand more chance of people watching it as they can do so over time and when they want to. To be plonked down in front of a TV for a 60 minute AV, that you can't eject or escape from.................torture! I am not sure what you mean regarding "what I have encountered in the production of your commercial instructional dvds" In what respect, length of the PTE demos and slide shows, length of the videos.? I also am not sure that picture size has a great bearing on the final DVD size, but I am not sure about that, see my post above that no-one has confirmed or put me right on yet. I thought Lin or the Dom would be able to tell me if my assumption is right or wrong. I make very few DVD's. Having said that, is a 300+ slide show the norm? Probably not, so the obvious thing to do is to make the show larger for PC use and then reduce size for your DVD, but I say again. This isn't a command from on high, just a suggestion that technology has now given us options we didn't have a short while ago. Ron I have always saved images at level 6 as you probably know. You have seen lots of my slide shows and demos. Are there a quality issue in them caused by my save methods? Sometimes some aspects of these debates border on the ridiculous, here we are debating whether level 6 or 12 should be used when we have one member making a show smaller than the screen its shown on. More quality will be lost that way than in any other aspect of image production. Quality is not all about pixel count or compression when saving. They play there part, but not the be all and end all. Quality is achieved from a multitude of photographic and post production techniques and you can often get better results by getting the Photoshop work right than any save issues.

Eric Two things. 1. The suggestion wasn't seriously suggested for those of you who want to use 620 images in one slide show, lasting an hour. I would suggest that this isn't what the average PTE users does and whatever suggestion you make in life there will always be extremes where it doesn't apply. 2. Don't do it if you think its a daft idea, It's not compulsory, just something to consider. However, here is a question for those more technically minded than me. Let me put this statement forward and see if I have this right, I am not sure to be honest, because the last DVD I made was such good quality on the 60 in plasma that I wondered how that could be from images only 720 pixels in length. I have only ever made one DVD for a real project, all others have been for demo purposes or just to judge the quality and format issues. Currently when we create a DVD through PTE, as a part of that change all the images will be reduced to 720*576 for the DVD. I assume there is some variation to allow for format issues, but generally the images we create will be reduced to 720 by whatever. So, it doesn't matter in DVD terms whether we start with a file size of 1920*1080 or 1024*768. Am I right or wrong here?

Dave You will always recieve different opinions on saving images and jpeg compression. I have always saved at level 6 as that seems to me a nice balance between size and quality, but don't forget that creating images at HD size still throws away millions of pixels from most images these days. In that case a slight touch of unsharp mask may be called for to give back a little of crispness lost. Care needs to be taken if you intend to animate the image as too much sharpness can increase the Moire effect. Of course things are not always equal and quality doesn't just come from the pixel count, although that helps. I have been saving images at level 6 for years in slide shows and quality has never been an issue with me, but to be sure, why not make your next a slide show and use jpeg quality 12 then see how the runs. If it works well, then great, if it creates any issues all you need to do is save the images again and change the save quality. If you are a Photoshop user you can always use the automatic Image Processor to do this automatically for you, but perhaps its best to always create these derivitives on a copy of your slide show. If we make our shows at higher resolutions and save them at level 12 we could think of that slide show like we do raw files. From that one high resolution show we can make any number of derivitives quicky and easily, even DVD's now or in the future as technology changes. Large Shows Well, I think they need to be avoided like the plague, but that is just my view. I have been asked many times if PTE can cope with many different pieces of music and 300+ slides and I always say yes it can, but your audience won't. If your making a show that looks like it may be a large one, then in my view it needs splitting into appropriate sections so that the viewer has a choice of which part to watch and when. If I put 300+ of my best images together from the last 20 years, could you realistically sit down and watch the lot and enjoy it one go, maybe sitting there for 50 minutes or more. I would suggest that most people would be reaching for the escape key before you are a quarter of the way in. We can take a few liberties with images for a slide show that we would never take with images destined for printing or storage for possible printing. Adding increased sharpness is probably the best example. Animation aside we can apply more sharpness than we would for hi-res prints, if we need to. The reasons are that our images for a slide show are never going to be printed, they certainly will never be enlarged and they are only on screen (generally) for a few seconds at most. So images that have that instant impact an appeal often work well in a slide show even though you may not be able to put the image on the wall and live with it for a year or two. Having said all that, if your large show will not fit on a DVD, then just re-save the images and make a slight compromise on what quality/size you would like to save at, as opposed to what you can realistically achieve.

I thought that huge show would surprise people in how their PC handled it, and so far that seems to be the case. I suppose I came a bit later than some to a larger resolution screen. I had a very old 21 in in the UK and hung onto that even though it has well passed its sell by date. I was reluctant to buy something new that would then have to spend 3-4 months in a container on the high seas travelling to Australia. Had I not done that I may have made the change 2 years ago and in some respects I wish I had. A soon as we arrived in Australia I bought the monitor before a house and car, or much else for that matter. Now that probably says a lot about me , but I soon picked up on the improved size and PTE's ability to handle a bigger size. Why is it then that there is this clinging to 1024*768 as though it is the holy grail? I suppose it is a human thing that if something works, why keep looking for what is better, but modern technology moves so fast that we can often not appreciate it. When I started doing talks in Camera Clubs in the early days, 10-12 years ago or more I always had those hecklers in the audience who kept saying digital was not as good as film etc etc etc. I contacted a lab and to cut a long story short they agreed to print me a large image free of charge, all I had to accept was their logo on the mount. I thought I might me lucky and get an A3, at that time not many A4 printers were around. When I got the image back they had printed it 30*20 Two things happened, firstly I was amazed at the quality as I had no idea I had that quality locked in my then 15 in monitor and files. That print did a lot for me in those early days, but better than that, it left the hecklers speachless. To see them sitting in the audience holding an image so big it was spread over the person sitting next to them, while looking for the pixels they couldn't find.....priceless. To some degree I have been equally amazed at how these huge files in a slide show appear to be working and to all those still clinging to 1024. Ask yourself why?

Eric OK, I take back all I said and apologise to you for giving you any anxiety. Of course your right, its always best to create the images smaller than we need to view them, it makes so much sense.

Thanks Guys I think the point I am trying to make is that (he takes a gulp and waits for the flack) the days of 1024*768 are over and its time we moved on a bit. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of point in me creating shows at 6144*3840, which is more than 3 times larger than my PC screen. I don't think I will be using a screen three times the size of this one in the near future . However, it does demonstrate, I believe, that many who are slogging on with 1024*768 probably have the scope to re-adjust their thinking. What we are seeing with these large files can't be all down to PC power. Igor must have contributed a lot to the engine room of PTE. Whatever he is doing, he is doing it right. I have been showing 1280*1024 pixel shows on my 1024*768 PC projector for years at demos and they play fine. All I did was change the resolution of the PC while I played the 1280*1024 show and changed it back to continue my demo. I suggested PTE forum members might like to do that once, but you would think I had just asked them to join me in mass suicide. Yes, my standard size show is now 1920*1200 and I am not having any difficulties at all with what I do. The shows play great on the Dell flat screen and project perfectly through my 1024*768 PC projector. If I need a DVBD, that size is great for that too. It wasn't many years ago when a show greater than 1024*768 would grind to a stop on all but the latest PC, now look what we can handle. Images at 6144*3840 and animated too. whoda thought

Some of you may know that I recently upgraded to a large flat screen monitor running 1920*1200 pixels. My old monitor (1280*1024) was on its last legs and I decided to dump it before we left the UK for Australia. I have already said that since upgrading to this new monitor and seeing how impressive the slide shows look at a larger size, I regret not seeing the light a bit sooner by making some of my later shows at a higher resolution than 1280*1024. Of course that is easy to say with hindsight, but there have been a number of changes within PTE and the power of our computers for AV workers to perhaps take stock of what they are currently doing. I think we are at the point where current wisdom on image size can be questioned. In fact someone on the PTE forum did say to me once that it was a shame that my Balloon show he had just viewed was not larger. I think my reply at the time was that size doesn't add appeal, impact, or quality to a slide show. Now, looking back, I think he had more of a point then I appreciated at the time. All things being equal a larger show is more impressive and does have more impact. So, I wonder if this test slide show is of interest to anyone. A short while ago I gave PSG another try, but I still cannot get good enough animations at 1024*768 to create demos and I abandoned it, because of that lack of power. Today I have put a demo slide show together with images directly from my camera. I have just taken a slight crop from the top/bottom to retain a 16:10 format to fill my PC screen. The images sizes used in this demo are from a 22 million pixel Digital SLR and the images I used are 6144* 2840 pixels. I used slow transitions to see if PTE coped or there was any evidence of flicker on the transitions, there was none. I animated 2 of the images and apart from a small amount of the moiré effect that I think the anti shimmer filter has stopped, the animation is also smooth as silk. The animations I use are generally slow and delicate and I am sure that is having a positive effect effect, but the slide show ran perfectly on my main PC which has the following spec:- Windows Vista Intel Quad Core 2.66 GHz 4 Gig of Ram Nvidia Gforce 8600GT Dell monitor 1920*1200 I then ran the show on my older PC and that too ran the slide show perfectly:- Windows XP Pentium 4 3.4 GHz 2 Gig of Ram Radeon X1300 IIyama 1024*768 I also had the clubs laptop at home and that played the show perfectly too:- ITC Laptop Processor 2GHz 1 Gig of Ram Nvidia Gforce Go 6800 1024*768 Does this not indicate that those currently running a 1024*768 or 1280*1024 pixel screen may have the ability to increase the size of the shows they are making now? Not necessarily to 6144*3840, but larger than you currently think is the standard or norm. This could build in an option for people to see their current slide shows filling another much larger monitor, which they may purchase in the future, even though they may not be ready to upgrade now. I have made this point before, but, I have never tried images quite this large before and I don't see any of my PC's as state of the art. The youngest of them being almost 2 years old. It might be useful for PTE users, particularly those who feel their PC is low power or not quite up to the job, to see just what it can do. You might be surprised. Our club laptop can't be described as anything but average and it runs this show fine. It is going to depend on the style of your show, those who like a lot of fast animations are not going to achieve them with these sized images, but if your AV style is similar to mine, perhaps this idea is worth some thought. What I suggested before was to make a high resolution show, then use the save to zip option to make any size of format you want from that high resolution original. The demo is 33.4 meg and can be found here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshow/trials/6144_3840.zip Eric. While this demo is over your 25 MB limit, why not give it a try and see how your PC handles it? You never know

Eic Sorry to prolong this, but now you have posted a few images and we can see how they display, the issue is now clear. Your mistaken But before you get upset, please be aware we are only trying to help and give you a heads up You quite clearly have a black band top and bottom of your screen in all those images you posted. This means we have been right all along and that your 1024*768 images ARE being enlarged to fit the 1280 width resolution. You have created images, which are 1024 pixels wide, your screen is 1280 pixels wide. PTE expands your 1024 pixels and spreads them along 1280. In doing this your images meet the edges of your screen first and stop. That is what is causing the black band, but even that is not the issue we have been trying to get across. The black band can be ignored and its not a big issue. Image quality is an issue. You cannot make an image which is 1024 pixels in length and then display it at 1280 without the quality of your image being affected. I am surprised you cannot see any difference in your images. The effect of going from 1024 to 1280 isn't huge, but I, and most others on this forum would spot it every day of the week and twice on Sundays. What your doing is degrading your images. It is the whole reason I originally said, why not tick that box as it has no effect on you at all working with 1024*768 images, but it has an enormous effect on others. You don't even have to create two sequences, just tick the box and all is fine, for us and you. Try this, run your slide show first with the box unticked and then with it ticked and if you tell me you see no difference in the images, then ...................I can't find a better way to say this................. you need better glasses

Daveg If you recall the thread on the other AV Eric posted I could not understand this either. I asked the question previously:- Why make a slide show at 1024*768 and then show it on a 1280*1024 laptop screen so that the images are enlarged as I described earlier. And of course they wouldn't fit the format. All things being equal Eric must be mistaken in thinking the format and quality remains the same from his 1024*768 original to the 1280*1024 screen he is playing the show on. I'm confused too ?

If anyone is thinking of putting a line around images, I feel the best way to now do this is to create a png file that contains just the thin line and a transparent centre. Name this file frame.png or line.png and in the objects and animation screen you can overlay that onto your images. Once to click to add the line/frame to the first slide, highlight and copy the file name from the Objects section and you can quickly paste that onto the rest of your images by skipping from image to image in the objects and animation screen The benefits of doing this, is that if you decide the line is too bright, too thick, white when you want it black. All you have to do is adjust the original png in your image editor and save that over the original one in PTE. As the line/frame has already been applied to all the images, your changes will be instant and not set in stone. Easily changeable later if and when you think it appropriate. DaveG is right that is it FAR more preferable to see a smaller, but sharp image by ticking that box. A black border is not such a problem, but those using larger monitors will see the edge of your images. Dark edged images on a dark background don't look good when you can see that edge, hence the suggestion to add a thin line. You can change the background colour to white, but that will depend on the images you are using and then may require a black line. Its all about presentation, which is at the heart of AV

Thank you Henri I am gradually going through my slide shows and demos and bringing them all up to date. Where it is possible to do so I am creating a Mac version of my shows.

I am getting this issue too and assumed it was all part of the beta and will be ironed out later. When I do select my key again it does allow me to proceed and make a Mac version I have quite a few here if anyone wants to test one or two http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw4.htm

Dave This doesn't make sense because I have produced my Mac shows using PTE Beta 11 and you have downloaded a few of them. It doesn't seem to add up that only one will not play, but it playes for other Mac users OK, well at least 2 I have heard from. If there are any Mac users on or visiting the forum, I have a number of Mac slide shows that could do with a test. As far as I am aware they all play fine. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw4.htm

Has anyone with a Mac computer tried this slide show yet? You can download it from the page below and its called Gateway to Australia http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw4.htm The first person to do so on my own site reports that all he gets is a white screen. It would be helpful to get that confirmed

Supposing I had a value as shown in the attached screen grab, I would like the ability to add that to every slide in the sequence. or If I add a frame over the top of my image, I would like to be able to apply that frame to all images in one go.

Now you have done it !!!

Eric Please don't misunderstand this, but what did your lens struggle to do in the conditions? Do you mean cope with high contrast or the HDR process.

I use the option to skip from one image to another in the objects and Animation screen quite a bit and the buttons at the top right are fine, but slow I would love a key stroke to take me forward and back from image to image while in the Objects and Animation screen I would also like the ability to copy any value in the O&A or even an image (Png etc) and paste it to every image in the sequence.

Dave I am not sure where that font came from, but it's called Eras Light ITC. When I do need a font for a particular job, I usually go to this web site http://www.downloadfreefonts.com/fontfiles/bfonts.htm I probably picked that one up there ages ago, but if you can't find it I can always send it to you, they are free after all. I suppose what we have been doing these past few months is just what you said, exploring and looking around, so I have ended up with a lot of images, but nothing much to do with them. Ron I think your perception of Australia is probably what most people think and in places your mental image is probably right, but we havn't ventured out into those places yet. Queensland is sub-tropical, so from what we have seen so far it is lush and green. The wet season is summertime when the heat makes the weather more volatile and the dry season is winter when the weather is more settled. I guess you have an advantage with a IDs Mark III round your neckbut then I guess you have an advantage with a IDs Mark III round your neck Shame on you, does the photographer get no credit for the images, or is it just the camera. I didn't send the camera out on it's own with a list of pictures to capture ! Not forgetting all that dicking around I do in Photoshop That's cheating really and ought to be banned Moreturn That is the third image that AV enthusiasts search for. When I see a nice one I help it along with.........hang on I need to whisper this .....................Photoshop

Here is a chance for a you to get your own back The sequence I have posted at the link below is really an excuse to show a few images of the place I now live. There really isn't much of a theme, it's just the local area that is so different from what I have been used to in the UK for almost 59 years. The sequence has been made at 1920*1200, but I hope it plays well on other monitor resolutions too. It's not a huge file, about 17mb http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshow/Gateway_to_Australia.zip By the way, this is a first draft, I finished the show this afternoon and I usually play a new show a number of times before I show anyone. I feel that if you can watch your show every day for a week without wanting to make a change, you probably have it about right, but what the hell, here it is.

with all the "background noise" in these type of shows, it would be very difficult to "dick around" each picture with adobe whereas with a landscape scene you experts have a field day so IMHO Eric's shots are "true" I never said they weren'tt true pictures and I never even hinted that you should dick around with Photoshop. It was just a thought I have had for years that it would be NICE if the organisers of these events were tipped off to a few simple things that could make the event better for all. Is it the way I type or something or is it just me who thinks that every word I say seems to be misunderstood. Is my English really that bad?