markoc398

Hi Lin, thanks for the info and the link. I'll download it and see if it gets the process done faster for me. Mark

Hi Lin, Yes, the issue I had with PSG has cleared up with newer computers. The old addage of "The cart before the horse" comes to mind in this computing world. A question though. You mentioned using the GPU in the video card to render the exe and the dvd of shows. Does that mean that if I upgrade my pic2exe version to the one that creates dvds, that the dvd will burn faster than what I am experiencing now using Nero? That would be great if it did since it takes quite a while to render a 50 slide show now. Tom95521 came up with a random slide generator that is somewhat of a workaround to get some basic pan/zoom effects into the slideshow. Although it takes a few more steps to use it, it's a start. I'm gonna time using the generator vs doing it manually and see what the difference is. I'll practice in hopes of getting better at creating a show faster. Thanks for the tips on adding the effects in. Right now I was using the buttons on the interface. Mark

Lin, Ok, you've made some valid points about what's possible with pix2exe. My reply to you came from some things I wrote that were quoted by you ( been using for 5 years, etc), so that's why I thought you meant me. Anyway, I know how hard Igor and his team has worked to impliment features, and how the whole program was basically re-written. I only spoke about making the program more automated since I thought the reason of creating a great slideshow program was to sell it to as many people as possible. When someone compares features, the lacking of some automation to a program can be a deciding factor on its purchase. Many of the portrait/wedding photographers I speak with use pan/zoom as part of their slide show presentation. Creating this effect on each slide is, as I say again, way too much work with pic2exe. Granted, the final show is better than you can get with proshow, but not many buyers would know that. "Why didn't the automated pans and zooms in PSG work for you? My guess is that automated pans and zooms either or all done the same way as with some of Microsoft's freeware products or they would have to be randomized" My problem with proshow gold was that the slide show with music would stutter during the presentation. This was a few years ago, and PSG's advice was to get a bigger computer with a high end graphics card. I would have a hard time telling my client to do that. Pic2exe ran smooth as silk on pretty much every computer I put the show on. That's why I use it instead. So, I respect your knowledge about the program, and all you have contributed to it. You will forever know more about the ins and outs of it, than I ever will. I am just asking to respect my requests for features that will make it better and more usable to others. Mark

Lin, I have been pleased using pte for 5 years and have always hoped that it would incorporate simple pan/zoom features since its inception. Through all the upgrades this was never added. If I wanted this effect I had to use proshow gold. You are right though that it didn't work as well when incorporating those effects, so I stuck with pic2exe and just did fade in and fade out effects. The other effects in my opinion are for amatures. When ver 5 was in beta I tried using it a few times but it was just impossible to do anything with it because many of the features were disabled. I have better things to do than to sit at the computer being a tester. That doesn't put food on the table for me. Also, you seem to feel that if I want something automated to present my clients, that this is not professional and not giving my clients the best. Let's get real here. How many portrait clients would know the difference? If I feel that I need to customize these effects, then I will. But manually setting each slide is time consuming and not cost effective. If you read many of the posts on this forum you will see that many want these effects, so I am definitely not alone. Some of these were posted two years ago, and Igor responded that he chose not to pursue it. That's not listing to your customers requests, but instead putting things into a program for personal desires. That's good if you are making this for yourself, bad if you intend to sell something to others. Pretty much all of the slideshow generators incorporate these effects. They learned what the public wants and provided it. Oh, I have made many suggestions over the years for pte. Many of them were implimented. So I am not a lurker here. I come here when I want to learn something new from contributors like yourself, and contribute when I can. But as I said, I want a life too. Be well, Mark

Mr Echols, Thanks for your contribution. Many of us are doing the same thing. We want some effects to our slide shows, yet I see no need to customize each slide for each show. It just takes too long. Proshow gold and producer have been offering these effects for years now. To stay in this market, you have to have similar features or something better. As a professional I am gonna use products that do the job. Pic2exe in its basic form is very fast in creating multiple, similar designed shows using templates, or the last show created format. Unfortunately, creating a template of a show with pans and zooms doesn't work. None of the effects are applied to the replacement slides. When I need just plain fade in and fade out effects I'll use pic2exe. Other than that I have to go elsewhere if I intend to have a life away from the computer.

Al, thanks for taking the time to post a workaround. I've printed it out and will give it a try. Mark

Peter, thank you for the support of my case. The pan/zoom effect is probably why many "newbies" buy one slideshow program over another. It's so commonplace on slideshow programs, and it's implimentation is easy on them. Why PTE chose to make its use completely manual, with no initial setting that can be added to a bulk of images, than tweaked if desired, is a bit puzzling. I still believe that PTE is a well designed program in many aspects. Unfortunately, many of the competitors are more "polished", and that appeal untimately leads to more profitable sales of those programs. My goal is to encourage the developers of PTE to make their program more "user friendly", and to recommend it to my associates when I lecture about photography, and presentation software.

Lin, thanks for letting me know that these effects are not available with PTE. Although I have really enjoyed using the program for quite a few years, I am quite surprised that including some basic pans or zooms does not fall under the philosophy of the authors. Being that there had seemed to be an unending slew of forum threads concerning if the rollup/rolldown shade effects, or the endless swipe effects worked as designed, I wonder if these were of much value to the professional caliber PTE user as some here may believe. I think if one were to look at the actual client base for this program, you will find many professional wedding and portrait photographers are among them. I will bet you that they really do not want to create a pan/zoom effect on each and every one of their 700+ slides for a show to present to the bride and groom. Granted, if your making a tiny slide show of 30-40 images and have all day to do it, then doing it manually is where pte is fine. If I want a life away from the computer, then I guess I have to turn to Proshow, or Show it on the web, which had had this effect for many years now. I had waited through the countless PTE betas to find out that the end product is more complicated and not as intuiative as hoped for. Considering that the user manual is like 130 pages, that's surprising in this day and age of programs. I even thought that if I at least created one show manually and made a template out of it, then I could replace the images and still have the effects. unfortunately that doesn't work, so I guess the templates only apply to the vanilla version of pte. I really do hope Igor and his team will consider adding some simplicity a really great program. Mark

Hi Peter, On custom shows I can see editing each slide for the effect desired. However, I want to quickly create a slideshow of portrait images to present clients of their portrait session. I just spent almost an hour adding a pan/zoom effect to about 75 slides. Not really making good use of my time. Multiply that with a couple hundred sessions that we need slideshows for. You get the picture. I thought I could create one, then make that a template, then just replace the images, but that doesn't seem to work. Any ideas anyone?

I'm just starting to work with ver 5.1 and am wondering if there are any automated features to make a quick show with pans and zooms? For example, in proshow gold I can select a bunch of slides and apply random zooms and pans to the images, then save and run the show. From what I can tell so far in pte is that I have to manually create each pan or zoom, etc. for each slide. I want to get some shows going quickly in pte. Is there an easier way?

Brian, nope, not edited or anything. The music plays fine all by itself as we use the same song in our presentation projection program. It has a slideshow feature. Just not in P2e. I had it happen a few years back with a song. Replaced it with a different song and it cleared up. Go figure.

Hi Brian, Not getting the exception violation anymore. Was having a problem of one song cutting out in the middle, but it seems to be that particular song. I've change it and now seems to work fine. Will do more testing to see if it occurs again. Thanks Windows XP Pro 3gb Ram MP3

Dang, guess I spoke too soon. The show worked in the project window but the music stops earlier than before when I play the .exe file back. This is frustrating. So I played the .exe show and the first song cuts out about a minute into it, then I guess at the end of the first song which I can't hear, the second song starts to now play. What the heck is going on?

A Senior Moment that lasts 3 days.... Thanks all that gave me options to try, but Ken solved it for me indirectly. As soon as he mentioned to replace the show with 2 or 3 new songs it hit me that I only had one song that was 5 minutes long and there were 116 slides. That's less than 2.5 sec/slide, not counting fades. Adding a second song solved the problem. Most of my shows are under 80 images so I never even thought of the additional slides in this show. What a place your have here. Help is just a few keystrokes away. THanks again!

Jfa, thanks. I checked the timeline and the auto spread setting is already set. The music is still stops on slide 45, but the slides keep going. Not sure what to do other than find a replacement for p2exe, which I hat to do but I need something that works now. anyone else have a fix for this? Thanks