Bert

Bob, Thanks for your comments, I will give it a try in B&W and see how that looks, I have tried it with the pictures less saturated, but it became to dull I found.

Barry, Thanks for your comments. The few close-ups I had made did not look good in HDR (to much grain and noise) and I decided not to use them. The white line I got was a template on your CD , but I should have made it grey. My friend and I have decided not to go there again as we feel we pressed our luck. Some parts are very dark and with holes in the floor and hanging ceilings you never know when something falls. Our main concern however was the police, they patrol a lot there and it would be a little embarrassing for two guys in there mid sixties to be arrested for trespassing. But if you come up here of cource I will go in there with you. You have to hurry up however, because the latest news is that the town of Millbrook wants to tear it finally down this spring to build condominiums on the property

Hi Jose, Thanks for your nice comments. To comment on the points you make. I have tried to synchronize the images with the music, but I must admit, I have kind of a tin ear and may not have been that successful. What I did was, first made sure all the images were on the screen long enough to get a good view of them. After that I looked where they were on the timeline and tried to make the dissolves when it looked right in the wave form. Sometimes there were no high points in the wave form and I had to rely on my (tin) ear. For making dramatic zoom-ins and maybe some hard dissolves, I tried a view of them and was not happy with it. I can see from your show that you have experience as a film maker and make your comments from that point of view I think. Thanks for taking the time to make your points, everything helps me to make better shows in the future. Bert

Hi Mary, Thanks for your nice comments, To answer your question, I used Photomatix 3 for the HDR images. By researching the building for this show, I fond a few websites with some old pictures from when it was an all girls school and also with an more extensive write up. http://www.opacity.us/site11_bennett_school_for_girls.htm

Hi Jose, With apprehension I downloaded your show, expecting that it would be too long to hold my attention. How wrong I was. The moving train, the nostalgic pictures, the music and the diverse sounds made for a great ride thru memory lane. Thanks for making it public.

Halcyon Hall, This more than 100 year old building is located in Millbrook NY. The outside looks like something out of a movie. Recently my friend and I went to see what it looked inside, knowing it has been abandoned for 33 years. Shaky wooden floors, ceilings on the verge of collapse and police patrolling regularly outside made for an adventurous photo shoot. All the inside pictures are done in HDR to get the look we liked for this show. You can down load it from the Beechbrook site. (thanks Bill. http://beechbrook.com/pte/downloadfile.asp?id=1923 Comments welcome. 1920x1200 6min. 40.9MB

Malcolm Great subjects and the quality of your pictures is superb, in your first show you wrote that all your pictures were taken with 1600 ISO, and a am amazed by the quality you get (no noise). I liked the way you structured the show with the frame, and a brief description of the cities. Music sounded just right for me. Thanks for showing. Bert

Daniel, A very enjoyable show and your pictures captured the festival perfectly. I saw on your end credit that you used 3 pieces of music and maybe one of those pieces could have been of some faster tempo music, reflecting the dancing the people did. I had no difficulty with the length. Thanks for showing it. Bert

Barry I have seen the old and new show and like this latest one better. Your pictures are as always outstanding and the dissolves and animations work perfect (on my computer). The music is an improvement over the piano music of the first show, but for me it still misses something of the atmosphere that should go with your pictures of the Rain Forest. Just my two cents. Bert

Jean Thank you very much for making and showing this magical show. Having a replica of a zoetrope myself, I enjoyed very much seeing come to live all the different ways the illusion of movement was created more than 100 years ago. A great christmas present. Bert

Daniel, I really enjoyed your show, good photography and nice choice of transitions. The third image with the girl on the balcony and the boy looking up, worked very well. The music gave it the right atmosphere. Thanks for showing.

Malcolm, I just looked at your China show and the pictures, quality and subjects are fantastic. I enjoy travel shows and your pictures are all interesting. I look forward to seeing your "big" show in the future. Thanks for showing this.

Malcolm, very need idea to use one picture this way for a show. Using the spoken text made it work great together with the jigsaw pieces. Finaly seeing the whole picture at the end made for a perfect show. Thanks for showing it.

Malcolm, thanks for your comments, we were lucky to be in Tarragona the day this procession was held. (Good Friday). You will find lots of photo opportunities when you visit Spain, we liked Barcelona very much. I have made some shows for friends and family over the years but did not do much of animation as I did not know it to well. The animations DVD from Barry Beckham thought me a lot, and I thought this was the right show to put on the web. I had some difficulty downloading your show, but finally saw it. I comment on your site.

Thanks for responding, Ken and Mickp. With the pans and zooms,I tried to convey a feeling as if your were standing there watching the procession go by, maybe I overdid it.

In April we were in Spain and saw this procession on Good Friday. You can download it on www.beechbrook.com 1920x1200 4.45mins 40.5MB This is my first public show, and comments and suggestions to improve it are appreciated

I thought the photography was excelent and the music well chosen. I don't agree with most of the transitions. The transitions were and needed to be slow given the subject and music, but the lack of a third image however made "for me" the slow disolves not nice to watch. The transitions where you used the slow wipes or the center transition you used for the round window worked better for me. Just my two cents

Charlie, I have seen your web-site and most of your other shows on it, they are fantastic, especially "colors of the Earth" This time with "Jazz" you have created a master piece of a show. It is a joy to watch not only for its content, but also to look at the different PTE techniques you applied. Unfortunately I don't read any French, otherwise I could buy your book to learn your secrets . Regards, Bert

Ray, As somebody who has still a lot to learn about PTE, this would be an interesting read for me.

Under the objects and animation, under the tab animation, "keyframes" are mentioned. In the help files there is talk about "keypoints" are they the same? And if so could they be called with one name for consistency. Thanks, Bert

Great pictures Mark, thanks for posting these. Bert

Nobeefstu, Thanks for your explanetion, I know I did not move or rename the files. The only thing what could have happend is that by making a DVD for the first time, something went wrong even as the DVD came out O.K. I have in the "recent projects" now 2 files with the same name, but one has a 4 digit number attached. The one with the number attached must be the unzipped one and opens in PTE and I can use that now. Bert

Thanks Nobeefstu, That worked and I have my project back when I go in tru it that way. Still would like to know why I did and still get the same error message "pictures not found" when I try to open it in PTE"s "Open recent projects". Bert

I have made a PTE show in 6.24 Beta and have the following problem. When I open the file “last recent project” I get a message “Errors Found” within that box also “Pictures not found” and also “Music not found” even as it list the music file.. When I click O.K. PTE opens and all the pictures are in the slide list just as I arranged them in the project. When I click on preview the same error message appears and I cannot play the show. I have made an EXE file of this show already, but just want to change some things now. I have downloaded the final release of PTE 6 and tried if that worked. When I click on the icon to open PTE 6, before it opens I get the same “Errors Found” box and then it opens and shows all the pictures and times in the slide list. Still when I click on preview it shows the “Error pictures not found box”. I had also saved everything as a Zip file within PTE, but when I open the zip file and open the project the same thing happens. I think this all happened after I made the EXE file and then a few days later I made a DVD. When I made the DVD in PTE 6.24 beta, it told me that it had expired. I put in my old DVD deluxe code and could make a DVD but it had a rolling screen with on the bottom text “that it was made with a trial version. How do I get my project back? 100 slides 11 minutes, only 2 slides with minor zooms. Windows XP, 3G of ram, Thanks, Bert

[Thanks Thom for pointing that out to me. It is a litle hard for people like me who use PTE now and then, to keep up with the changes in the lay-out with each new upgrade. Bert