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Hello Igor NS FRIENDS ... SUGGESTIONS RE ANIMATION IN PTE This suggestion was put forward in February 2010. It received a very enthusiastic response from Peter (fh1805), but not a comment from anyone else. If I have not explained my thoughts well, then I should re-work the item. Trouble is, it will be even longer than now! = = = = = I am now using PTE 7.5 (was 6.02 back then). I think PTE is a wonderful program, and in general the animation features are implemented brilliantly. However, I gather from some recent discussion on the forum (both then and now) that some users do not find those features as exciting as I do. I have only one complaint, and that concerns the way keypoints are relocated when the duration of a slide is changed. Here are my suggestions as to how things might be enhanced. Specification of Keypoint Location I note that keypoint objects in a PTE file have their locations defined by the Origin= parameter and the Time= parameter. Origin can be SlideBegin, PrevEffectEnd, NextEffectBegin or SlideEnd (Let us call those the four “special points”). Time is a number of millseconds relative to the specified Origin. For keypoints that do not lie at one of those special points, the PTE user interface appears always to generate a time relative to SlideBegin. However, I have successfully edited PTE files to have keypoint locations specified relative to the other special points, and both positive and negative time values appear to work. However, if I subsequently move the keypoint (in Objects and Animation), its Origin reverts to SlideBegin (with the Time value suitably adjusted). The present behaviour has some unfortunate effects. For example: (1) if a slide’s duration is reduced, and “Scale keypoints” is unchecked, keypoints that were within the main viewing time of the slide (between transitions) can end up in the next transition; (2) if a slide’s duration is increased or reduced, and if “Scale keypoints” is checked, keypoints that were placed at PrevEffectEnd or NextEffectBegin are no longer located at those special points; (3) keypoints can get out of sequence, when those at the special points remain there, while others move past them. I suggest a change to the PTE program could free us users from these problems. It would be better if each keypoint had its Origin set to the nearest one of the four special keypoints, and its Time value as a positive or negative offset from its Origin. This should apply both to the initial creation of the keypoint, and to its new position after a move. This way, we would get the following benefits: (1) keypoints that are placed at one of the four special points would remain there, (2) keypoints that are supposed to be within a transition would remain within that transition, (3) keypoints that are supposed to be between the transitions would remain there. All these are true whether “Scale keypoints” is in effect or not. Scale Keypoints It remains useful to keep the option “Scale Keypoints”. Scaling should be applied within the range of adjacent special points, not across the whole range from SlideBegin to SlideEnd. In other words, scaling should apply to keypoints within a transition when the transition duration changes. Keypoints between PrevEffectEnd and NextEffectBegin should be scaled within that range only. If the user wants to adjust the duration of a slide, by extending or reducing the main viewing time (between transitions), but wants to keep the timing of the animations near the start and near the end, then Scale Keypoints would be unchecked. If the aim is to adjust the duration of a slide and the animations within the main viewing time, then Scale Keypoints would be checked. In neither case is any animation within a transition affected. On the other hand, if there is animation within a transition, then its keypoints should be adjusted when the transition duration is changed. This would have no effect on animation within the main view time. Potential Problems A reduction in slide duration, without keypoint scaling, could cause keypoints to “collide” or cross over in the centre. This should provoke a message to the user, with the option to cancel the change or drop the keypoints. Removing a transition should cause any keypoints within the transition to be dropped. Possible extensions It might be worthwhile to allow a right-click option on keypoints to enable them to be “anchored” to any one of the four special points. Different colours could be used to give visual feedback. It might be beneficial to have one more special point: Centre - Half way between PrevEffectEnd and NextEffectBegin. Thank you, Igor, for giving this your consideration. If anyone else has read this far, I say THANK YOU! APLman (Ken Travers) - Moss Vale NSW Australia

Suggestions for improvements: 1-Autosave Notice. I was playing around with a slideshow, experimenting with various different menu items. I didn't want to actually save anything. I was just testing different menu items to see what would happen. After a long session I closed the slideshow (without saving). I noticed that some of the last changes, in fact, had been saved to the slideshow. It was fortunate that I did not make too many drastic changes and I was able to get the slideshow back to its original state. I had forgotten that the Autosave had been selected in the Settings/Preferences menu. My suggestion is that, when the Autosave has been selected, a notification warning will pop up in the main screen, perhaps to the left of the Comment window. It can be very dangerous to forget the Autosave has been selected if you make changes that you don't really want to save. A notification in the main screen might help to avoid a potential problem. 2- Relative Keyframes. I have noticed that keyframes do not adjust in a relative fashion when the slide's duration is changed. When a slide's duration is changed, the keyframes remain in their absolute positions. I suggest that there be a way, when you increase or decrease the duration of a slide or group of slides, that the keyframes will adjust in a relative way to the total change. This would be helpful, for example, when you need to increase/decrease the duration of a group of the slides to match up with the audio's length. Currently, if you increase/decrease the duration of a group of slides, you have to go back into each slide that has multiple keyframes and readjust them. If we could have the choice to have the keyframes readjust relative to the increase/decrease in a change in the slides' duration, it would help to maintain the keyframes' relative positions. 3- Latch audio files in Timeline. It would be helpful to have the ability to temporarily latch adjacent audio files together. This would allow the shifting of a group of audio files together, without disrupting any crossfading you have already carefully set. Using the Ctrl key to select the audio files would be intuitive. 4- Latch keyframes together. It would be helpful to have the ability to temporarily latch adjacent keyframes together. This would allow the shifting of a group of keyframes without losing their relative positions. Using the Ctrl key to select the keyframes would be intuitive. 5- Allow the expansion of the O&A's keyframe timeline. It would be very helpful to be able to expand the O&A's keyframe timeline when you are working with multiple keyframes that are very close together, similar to how the Timeline can be expanded. Gary

My #1 Suggestion would be to make picstoexe compatible with Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray burners. Most of my clients who purchase slideshows from us are now using Blu-Ray format. I mean i can have the program create an .iso file and use imageburn to create the disk but it would be nice and much easier to have the burning feature within the program.

My target : produce a manually controlled show where defined audio-titles will start at defined slides . As a solution in PTE 7.5.3 , I run several concatenated shows which start with these slides and the wanted audio-titles . Draw-Back : as I can't predict the current audio-title (manual control) there will be an angry 'break' in the music performance when changing to the next show which allows to fade-in the first title. Proposal : during the display of the last slide of a show allow for a defined fade-out of the current audio-title. This could be related to a button which when activated initiates the fade-out . For me a fixed / standard fade-out time would be sufficient . Regards - Paul

Hi! I have tried to drag sounds in Timeline, its works very well but I would like to adjust times by steps of 0.5 seconds (for example). I think this is only possible in Project options panel, by changing the times by hand. I suggest to define a grid or a time step, then when I'll drag sounds in Timeline it will be possible to snap to this grid by holding Shift or Ctrl key for exemple. What do you think about it?

I recently dipped my toe into the screen capture software fountain. I have tried 3 versions, Camtasia 8 came out head & shoulders above the three I tried. Unfortunately PTE's video conversion system (7.07) will not accept any of those I have tried without upsetting the original video to the extent that it becomes unusable without running the video through a third party software. So what I'm asking for is for PTE to increase the range of video codecs it accepts & to include videos from video capture software. Camtasia now records at 30FPS giving a much clearer picture than the others I have seen, I believe the codec is TSC2. Yachtsman1

Igor said (09 JAN 2013): The idea is really interesting, but I can't answer now. Please create a new topic for image stabilization in "Ideas and suggestions for next versions". The suggestion is to introduce in PTE (video section) an image stabilyzer. Almost all video editors have this feature. My experience shows that SONY VEGAS stabilizer is far better than any other, it has 3 stabilization degrees and it is very much effective in each degree. For people including videos in PTE projects, this feature in PTE would avoid at least 1 video conversion and consequent quality loss, because, as Igor says, stabilized image should be the original one, and after zoomings, fades, etc., it would be rendered only once (on the PTE converted video file), or so I understood. Jose

I wonder if the behaviour that I am experiencing when switching between the Slides view and the Timeline view is the most appropriate. Consider the following two sequences of actions: Sequence of actions 1: I am working in the normal Slides view I use the "triangle" icon to switch to Fullscreen mode of the Slides view I switch to the Timeline view Sequence of actions 2: I am working in the normal Timeline view I use the "triangle" icon to switch to Fullscreen mode of the Timeline view I switch to the Slides view In both cases, the final action reverts to normal mode on the selected view; it does not preserve the fact that I am working in Fullscreen mode. The question I am asking myself is: should it preserve the Fullscreen mode? I've started this topic to see what thoughts others have on this subject. regards, Peter

Slideshows that contain static images would benefit from variable frame rate video export. File size should be smaller than fixed frame rate video. Wiki Variable frame rate MPEG-4 Allows variable frame rate Thanks, Tom

The standard time that the clone of a keyframe advances in O/A appears to be 0.500 seconds. I want to clone keyframes numerous times by the same amount to match the beat of music. Is it possible the set the clone keyframe advance time to a different value other than 0.500? I know there are a few ways of repositioning the individual keyframes with Keyframe time, Shift keyframe, etc but they are very time consuming if a lot of cloning is required with a fixed advance. If there is no easy way in any "settings", can the advance value be changed in the PTE programme? Roger

Igor I would like to ask you to re-think your decision to hide the icon away that will easily start a slide show from any highlighted image. I have been making a couple of slide shows recently so I have been putting 7.5 to a good test. As usual I find myself wishing to do a full screen preview from a cetain image dozens, if not a hundred times during the production. Am I unique in doing this? I doubt it, but the button to allow that does not even show untill you access the options to display it. Yes, I appreciate Ctrl+R does the same thing, but I make this point for others, not me or the faithful. Although, having said that, when you work with a graphics tablet rather than a mouse. A button to tap is sometimes more convenient than Ctrl+R In my view, that button to start a slide show from a select image should be big and bold and up front where even the most innexperineced user will see it. Our main working area is along the bottom third of the screen and that is where it should be along with the main preview button. IMHO of course :rolleyes:/>/> PS. there still seesm to be a visual issue with the mouse pointer in the Objects and animation screen. There has been little mention of this so I am unsure if it is work in progress or it's been missed. I have recreated it on 3 separrate PC's and reported it in another thread.

It would be great if PTE had a circle geometric primitive. I can simulate a circle by rotating object rotated 1 degree, then copying object, and pasting 180 times. It is a very accurate circle but PTE must rotate 180 objects to create. Zoom effect slower due to large number of objects that must be scaled and transformed instead of 1 object. Other method might be with use of circular mask but it would still be nice to have a simple circle object with lower computing requirements. Test circle created by rectangle rotation. Thanks, Tom

Greetings, Maybe it can be done now, but I can not see how. I have 3 audio tracks that I have positioned just right, except that I want to nudge them slightly, as a group, without interupting the careful crossfading and customization that I have made to all of the audio tracks. So my suggestion is to be able to highlight the audio tracks (as we can do with files) and then use the mouse or arrow keys to move them all together as one track. Perhaps there could be an specific amount of time that can be selected to move the selected tracks per left/right arrow click. Gary

In making these suggestions, I am assuming 7.5 is the same as 7.07 in what I'm suggesting. Last night I used the Publish for IPhone/IPad function. In view of the proliferation of such devices, should this function now be re-named Publish for Smart Phone & Tablet? The last couple of shows I've made I've been trying to improve my knowledge of the functions in the O&A screen, in the Properties tab the directional arrows for the pan controls are not logically arranged & because of unfamiliarity with them invariably press the wrong arrow for the direction I want to move, if they can be moved to the left & right <> orientation & the pan up & pan down reversed, I'm sure it would help new & confused users. Yachtsman1

Sometimes i need to adjust objects parameters to accomodate the final result of very complex slides. I feel the need to place the time cursor before or after the key point and still being able to edit key point attributes. I currently need to select the key point, blindly change parameters values then move the time cursor in the interested location. And iterate more and more until good result is reached. With complex structures it's really annoying. Maybe something like CTRL+click over a key point to enable a "sticky editor" mode and being able to see how my edits reflect on the time point i'm currently on? Umberto

I feel that a "slide description" tag would be useful in the slide caption text. Sometimes i don't have the correct description in the image metadata and don't want to insert it for various reasons. Greetings! Umberto

I have looked at Picture To Exe and I'm impressed. But it is not what I'm looking for. Like many others I want to be able to put my slide shows on the web - I have hosted space to upload to. I don't want to email them or post a DVD. Far better to make something which only requires the user to click on a link. At the moment I have used Adobe Bridge. The current Adobe Bridge web offerings are still mostly based on Flash, with only a very basic HTML version. As Flash dies out, a good web based HTML5 solution is needed more and more. So you have a marvellous opportunity. All you have to do is write a new back-end that generates HTML5 instead of a .EXE - everything else remains the same. You will have a new product and will be twice as rich. The extraordinary thing is that as far as I can see there is NO competition yet! You could be first. What do you think?

I would like to save the set of properties of objects from "Objects and animation" window as a (custom) style. And then apply the same (or another) saved style to a new object. Like text in editors users can define their own set properties as a style and then reuse it or change the style and all objects with the same style change as well. At the moment the templates feature or simple copy and paste enables to clone the same set of properties and replacing text and/or images applies the same properties to a new object. It would be real benefit being able to edit the style and correspondingly change the properties of all objects with the same style in the same slideshow or (re)use the same styles in another slideshow. For example, I create an educational slideshow with explanatory text appearing on slides. However, after completing the slideshow, It appears, that there is need to change lets say font or fine tune some animations of all text. Or there appears need to fine tune some animation properties of picture (video) objects on several slides. Some of such tasks can be done with editing the pte text file directly. Some changes are difficult of impractical in this way. Having possibility to create, edit and apply styles when seeing it on monitor, would be really helpful.

PTE should take into account MONITOR PROFILES , which have been generated for the monitor by products like Datacolor Spyder , Xrite I1 Display Pro etc. This is required to view the pictures in exactly the way they were overworked in products like Adobe PS CS5 etc. EXE-Files should behave in the same manner - if there are issues with feasibility or performance , a workaround could be to incorporate the Monitor profile during EXE-generation . I am convinced that PTE would benfit a lot from the proposed extensions . Thanks - Paul

will Pictures to Exe ever be available for tablets?

Greetings, I would like to have file extensions of videos (and perhaps still images) to be included in the file names in the Timeline View and the Slides View. I understand it might be a rare circumstance when you would have similar video file (or still image) names with different extensions, but I have run across this possibility. I have attached a screen shot example of this problem in the Timeline View. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to have it as a Preference setting to allow extensions to be shown or not shown. This could be applied to still images, too. Thanks... Gary

I miss a function to easily offset forward/backward all (or single) audio tracks with all the audio clips that they contain. This would allow me to re-accomodate all synchronized audio when i insert a new slide at the beginning of the project. Moreover, it would be cool to offset all audio clips that begin after the moved/inserted slide (maybe with option to deactivate the feature) Umberto

After installing version 7.5 on Windows 8 I have (as expected) a new app (PicturesToExe 7.5) pinned to my Windows 8 start tiles. Because the start tiles are new in Windows 8 the installer must be aware of the version of Windows it is installing to, I would think. But during the installation I see the option not to create a start menu item. This may confuse some users because in Windows 8 there is no start menu any more (OK there are some 3rd-party tools out there to add an "old-style" start menu but the installer shouldn't rely on the user having one of these installed). Wouldn't it be better (if this is possible) to take away that option completely when installing to Windows 8? Please note the issue of terminology difference between Windows 8 and some earlier versions of Windows. Windows 8 does not have a start menu. It does have a "Start Screen" with tiles but this is not the same thing as what Windows users will understand by the term "start menu."

A have projects made and saved in PTE 7.0,with music clips atached to specific images, and now when I opened them in 7.5 beta14, all the clips appear in the timeline and in project options. Miracle? MUR

Igor I have only just started using PTE 7.5 for reasons you know. I felt the need today to be able to nudge a selected wave file a very small amount one way or the other. Picking it up with the cursor to drag and drop it in place had me fiddling one way and then the other. A Ctrl+ Cursor Control Key Arrow would be a godsend. Later, I could have done with the same thing with an image on the timeline Is that something worth considering at some stage. I have that ability in Camtasia and use it a lot.