Do you want ?

[Marcovelo]

Do you want to display 3D text effects on your slide ?

Do you want to pan, zoom in and out on your image ?

Do you want to rotate your image ?

Do you want to display animations in your show ?

Coming soon, a new PTE Demo show by Marco and Granot...

[Marcovelo]

If you're interested in adding 3D text effects, Pan and Zoom on image, or fullscreen animation in PTE show, download and try FlashPTE demo on BeechBrook Cottage site (http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/).

It uses Flash and Granot's utility FlashMe (donationware: http://www.thailandphotoalbum.com/#programs).

Granot and me are really interested in your comments.

Marco

[alrobin]

Hi, Marco,

Thanks very much for doing this. Your demo illustrates very well some of the many possibilities with Granot's Flash utility.

You asked for feedback, so I'll give you my personal views on this. Approx. three years ago I was exploring the use of Flash to make slide shows (before I found PTE). While I found you can produce some really nifty graphic effects, my results in achieving smooth dissolves, and smooth movement of images on screen were very disappointing. I should explain that I was mainly interested in super-quality full-screen images with smooth fades and dissolves between images. But Flash, being primarily a small-image, web-based application, doesn't quite fit the bill.

However, this new utility brings us one step closer to that goal - through PTE we have the ability to use high-quality large-screen images with excellent transitions between them, and now with the adjunct of Flash, we can incorporate some pretty impressive graphics. The pans and zooms, however, are still not quite good enough for my needs as they depend on the use of fairly highly-compressed images in order to achieve smoothness of operation.

Even PTE, with all its fantastic capabilities, suffers from an inherent limitation in effecting smooth transitions, particularly where fading from dark to light images is involved. Igor has indicated that he plans to improve this capability by as much as a factor of two in the next release, which should allow PTE to dissolve smoothly between images as large as 1600 x 1200 pixels, provided one has the video and microprocessor hardware to match. Maybe Flash will also someday also improve its ability to handle larger images.

Could you please explain in more detail how some of the special effects were accomplished so that we will know which effects are implemented in Flash, which ones are achieved through the special utilities, and which parts are created in PTE, itself.

One limitation in using Flash overlays is the lack of a true transparency. It is great if, as you demonstrated, you have the luxury of a black or white background over which to superimpose the Flash movie, but I have an application where I would like to be able to superimpose it over an ordinary background image. However, in the situation presented in your demo, it was very effective.

Thanks again for all the effort you (and Granot) put into this capability, and also the demo. I am sure that I will find a use for it, particularly in adding a new "twist" to my titles.

[Ronniebootwest]

It has to be said that this demo quite clearly shows that a slide show need not be boring. I am a new boy to all of this and I want to offer my congratulations to both authors of this demonstration. It must have taken some time to produce (not to mention the skill levels required). I have read two follow up comments so far, and both must have been written by 'Techies' of quite high standards because they were critical rather than complimentary. From a mere amateur point of view, I was very impressed by the visual impact of using Flash and am inspired to have a go myself. If only just to produce the same stunning title effects. Well done to both of you, I feel sure that members of this forum will make good use of the work that you are giving us. Thank you very much for your time and effort.

If you are able to provide a more simplified set of notes on just how you did that moving titles (Star Wars style) I would very much welcome an email from you.

Ron West

[alrobin]

Ron,

Maybe I should add a comment here about my previous post. I wasn't meaning to be critical of the fantastic job done by Granot in designing the utility or of Marco for all the work he put into his demo.

My main criticism has to do with Flash - it was designed many years ago, and it's slide-show capabilities haven't been improved much over the years. It was designed to be a web authoring tool, and for that it is great, albeit still limited in terms of smoothness. Granot and Marco have put it to the best use they could.

I didn't think Robert's comments in the other thread were critical - merely responding to Marco's request for feedback, and indicating his own preferences for his own slide shows. And he pointed out a genuine glitch that Granot or Marco can probably respond to, and maybe even correct.

I don't consider myself a "techie", but I do have high standards. However, probably not as high as a few other Forum members and PTE users.

I'm looking forward to seeing your Flash-enhanced shows!

[Marcovelo]

Al, Ron,

Thank you for testing and for your feedback.

Be sure I don't take any feedback and reply from this forum as negative criticals. There is no problem at all for me, and I totally agree with Robert (I will reply soon, sorry) and Al about their comments.

Of course, I understand very well that using Flash in PTE raise many questions, problems, and comments.

And I'm not to promote in using Flash, and not saying everything is perfect.

Ron,

I had never created a Flash movie before Granot released its first version of its utility.

Text effect like "Star Wars" is very easy to build (5 minutes with Swish).

I'm not sure this forum is the one to discuss on Flash creation, so I will send you an email.

Thanks again for your feedback.

I hope we will see your creation.

Al,

I agree with you on almost all points, and you raise important questions.

I will try to answer and apologize for my bad english or if I'm not clear (please tell me).

Distinction between "Transition" and "Animation":

Well, I was also in the same process than you when looking for a Slideshow program: I choose PTE because it provides the best dissolve (fade) transition I ever seen, and it is the most important point for me (with also audio synchronization and the ability to produce 1 exe file that runs on almost all PC, even old/small configurations).

PTE is the best for all of us, and it is getting better day after day, and I will use it for all my shows.

But I was also curious to find a way to add some animations (not many, just 1 or 2...) in my show, sometimes (and not always), especially a "panorama effect" or "zoom". PTE does not offer such possibilties today, because it cannot move objects or image (and I hope it will do it one day).

That's the reason why I tried to check if it was possible to use Flash animations in PTE, but only for small animations, not for transitions.

I thought I can:

- use PTE for what is doing best: transitions, nice dissolve, audio sync, handling hundreds of slides in one show, etc, etc...

- use Flash for what is doing best: animation of objects, specific text effect.

Thanks to Granot's utility, it was possible to use both simultaneously.

But, (and this is important to say), there are many limitations in using Flash, for example:

- animations can be really demanding in CPU power (depending of complexity/size/weight of your movie)

- rendering frame rate is not guaranteed on every computer (so final result can differ from on PC to another)

- optimizing the movie in order to not overload the CPU is not so easy and requires to be a Flash "expert"

- there is no communication between PTE and Flash

- we cannot seriously use Flash in synchronized PTE shows.

- and many other things...

And also really important: I think animations are not really necessary in our show, and even can make us to wander off the subject. But it can be funny to explore this way too, I think it's open...

Pan and Zoom:

"The pans and zooms, however, are still not quite good enough for my needs as they depend on the use of fairly highly-compressed images in order to achieve smoothness of operation."

This is a very important point. But did you make your own tests with your images ?

In my demo, I have to say I used bad quality images because I haven't high quality images !

I'm a bad photographer (I ensure you !), have only a modest compact camera, a flatbed scanner to scan slides (with blur !), and I'm not expert in Photoshop too (anyway, my photos will stay bad because I had to use a much better camera).

About compression: you're right too, but...: I think (I hope) other users should try to play with Flash and build new tests with:

1) better images (like yours), and less compression

2) test on recent computer (with 1 Ghz and higher). Mine is only 350Mhz, so I was really carefull and used "high" compression level to allow my demo to be played even on "small configuration". Of course, 350Mhz is not fast enough for nice and smooth animations.

In my demo, I put a 1600x1200 image in a Flash movie (effect Pan & Zoom), compressed in 450 KB (50% in Photoshop), and the motion is quite smooth on my old 350 Mhz. So I can imagine it is possible to use better quality image on better computer.

The idea is to use:

- one image in PTE for the transition (using all your advices to obtain nice dissolve: compression, darkness, etc...)

- another high quality image in Flash (can be the same photo than the one already displayed by PTE), if your CPU can handle smooth motion on it (should be tested, I have no idea about the limits).

It would be great if you build a small test on this point (if you have a better computer than mine).

Transparency:

"One limitation in using Flash overlays is the lack of a true transparency"

Yes, FlashMe does not support transparent background. But you can simulate it by using the same background image in both PTE and Flash movie, like in my demo.

However, if you need real transparency, some commercial products (Flash projector's builders) allow transparent background, and even semi-transparency (only for W2000 and XP). They also compile the .swf file in an independant .exe that can be also launched from PTE. They also provide a preview of final transparent movie in W98 and Win2000/XP modes (W95/98 does not support semi tranparency at system level). These softwares are very exepensive, and I think we are then far from PTE.

I think we can do some very interesting effects using FlashMe, even if we have to say: "this show requires 1 Ghz CPU minimum".

More details on effects on the demo:

May be the easiest way to understand is to try to play directly the animations with FlashMe in stadalone: go to each subfolders of the demo, and simply run FlashMe.exe (without starting the demo itself). You will see the animation on your desktop, the image background, etc... So all other effects are done by PTE.

FlashMe does not create effects (except its ability to scroll itself, demonstrated only once in Animation/Scrolling), as it is a Flash player.

All effects were down in Flash using Swish, and PTE was used to display menu, and for each effect, PTE displays first slide (with dissolve), launch FlashMe, wait, and then displays last slide (with eventually a fade transition too).

Tell me if you need more details.

I hope it can help, and also I would be very interested if someone want to test and play with FlashMe, especially in building a nice panorama or/and zoom effect, with better image quality than mine.

Sorry to write too much ! And thank you again.

Marco

[alrobin]

The idea is to use:

- one image in PTE for the transition (using all your advices to obtain nice dissolve: compression, darkness, etc...)

- another high quality image in Flash ......

Hi, Marco,

You hit the nail on the head in your replies. I agree with you on all points.

I'm not sure I understand you, though, in the above quote. Do you mean to use this as a means of comparing the two programs for smoothness? Or are you referring to a way to achieve a smoother pan or zoom?

By the way, there's nothing wrong with your English - at least nothing that a nice English girlfriend wouldn't be able to fix!!! It certainly is a lot better than my French!

Keep up the good work! And please entertain us with a slideshow soon based on all your travels!

[Marcovelo]

Hi Al,

I'm not sure I understand you, though, in the above quote. Do you mean to use this as a means of comparing the two programs for smoothness? Or are you referring to a way to achieve a smoother pan or zoom?

No, no, I'm sorry I wasn't clear: I don't want to compare 2 programs (dissolve in Flash is horrible, and PTE is the best).

You talked about quality of image and compression needed.

I give you an example:

Imagine we want to display an image (appearing with a nice fade) and then zoom in it, keeping quality:

1) add on Slide 1 in PTE a 800x600 image (100-200 KB, or like you want to have a nice fade). Transition duration: 2 or 3 seconds for example.

2) copy Slide 1 in Slide 2, no effect (cut), and set "run external application" launching FlashMe. Adjust duration to fit with movie duration.

3) prepare your Flash movie sized to 800x600, zooming on the same photo but in higher resolution and with less compression (for example 1600x1200 or higher). Just set a 50% scale factor in the flash at the beginning to display the whole image, then animate it to reach 100%. You are displaying now a part of your image at maximum quality.

4) Slide 3 in PTE should be the same than last image displayed in the movie (snapshot). Of course this is not a zoomed image of the 800x600 of Slide 1, but a part of the 1600x1200.

It works because the processor has time to uncompress the 1600x1200 image (or higher) while PTE already displays the 800x600 version after the transition effect.

Also, we can use uncompressed images in the movie (like bmp), it has no impact once loaded.

Animating a compressed image in Flash does not take less CPU power than animating an uncompressed image: this is just the time to uncompress a Jpeg when loading it (and quality and file size, of course, but not an issue here as we use only one image).

In this example, I think the problem is not the compression level of the JPEG image, but more likely a "moiré effect" due to the animation itself. It also depends on the type of photo you use (details, contrast, vertical sharped object...).

I know some sofwares are able to limit this problem by adding some small "blur" during the zoom/motion (like Imagematics StillMotion Creator).

I would be very interested if you can create your own test with your high quality image, and probably a faster CPU than mine. And report your exeprience to us (if you are interested too, of course).

Tell me if I missed something or was not really clear in my explanation...

Marco

[paulstaff]

Hi Marco,

I have just checked out the demo and read the comments. The demo is great and I have already downloaded Granots program. All I've got to do now is get a copy of the Flash editor and learn a whole new world. It's certainly interesting and I agree that at pressent it is best used for 'sexing up' the titles and maybe a trick or two in between.

Great work. I'll let you all know when I have got something worth showing

Paul

[alrobin]

Hi, Marco,

I think I understand now. Thanks for being so patient.

My experience in Flash (not very much when it comes to using actual images), is that with large images, the zoom and pan effects have not been very smooth. But I think I may see what I have been doing wrong.

Instead of using the "scale factor", I have always used two images, one normal and the other cropped, and then used a "tween" from one to the other for the zoom transition effect. Your way sounds more effective. I'll give it a try and let you know what I find out. Thanks for the info!

[Ronniebootwest]

Oops! I seem to have said it wrong and I am sorry. I am new to the forum and have no wish to step on toes. I am here to learn from you guys and will appreciate any help you can give. I was not meaning to be critical in any way, just wanted to show that I was impressed with the work done by Marco and Granot on the use of Flash. Having said that, I have recently downloaded the software and I now find that it does have its limitations after all. So you are quite correct Alrobin - there is a long way to go.

I will still be exploring the use of this kind of animation but I will restrict my learning curve to using the SWISH 2 software to liven up my titles a bit. They need it - check out my first slide show on Beechbrook (Medieval Castle in Wales)

Incidently, this topic certainly seems to be raising some interest doesn't it

Ron West