boxig's video utility

[LumenLux]

Ok, Granot - your video utility tests out fine for me, and has already shown great utility to me.

Unimportantly, for my own use I refer to your utility as "Vidstart"

Now I have a question and a request/suggestion - as you suggested/requested:

If I use your utility to incorportate with a PTE show, is the playback of the avi file dependent on the PC of the recipient of the show? Will the success of the avi portion depend on what avi "viewer" is on the playback PC?

The way I am using your utility right now is as follows. I have a one-slide PTE show with two button objects. The one object 's action is to open and run your "Vidstart" utility. The other button object has "exit" actiion.

So the PTE oneslide show blanks my screen to black for the avi show to run. Your utility runs my avi and then follows with my PTE slide portion of the show. At the conclusion of the show, the original one-slide show is still on black screen for the user to select to "End Presentation" (exit) or to select the button to run (again) your utility and the whole show.

My suggestion concerns the screen appearance at the moment the avi finishes and the PTE show begins. As I now have it, the avi ends, the black screen is vacant briefly while the PTE show starts. Can you modify your utility to hold the final frame of the avi on screen until the PTE show's first slide is on the screen? Maybe it would be necessary to have the avi final frame remain on screen during the entire PTE show, but that might not matter as long as the PTE slides are all larger than the avi dimensions.

This feature would allow me to have the first slide "grow" out of the final frame of the avi and thus make the presentation more nearly seamless. What do you think?

[boxig]

Thanks to Guido who run quick check on this utility and if I may, some of his teaching remarks:

Video Intro: It is necessary to pay attention to AVI file type. Unluckily this extension means (almost) all and nothing, because there are tens of different AVI codec, not all compatible. Also several DivX files have .avi extension!

I checked with about 10 AVI types. 9 work well.

Bob, as I understood you are using it backwards - use PTE to open Avi which will open a second PTE. A one slide PTE opens the movie through the utility and then you like your second (main ?) show to grow out from the movie. And for his you suggest bigger screen.

As I wrote in other topic, the avi will show on top-left corner of the utility window. If the avi dimentions are small, the rest of the window will be tranparent so you will have the avi ob top-left. I can make any window size and suggest we see which size members need. Anyway, I can make your size and send you.

Another possibility is to make it show the Avi in full screen, but as I checked, small dimentioned avi don't look so good.

As for last frame stay on screen. I will have to check if I know how to do it.

So I will make today a full screen show and send you on to anyone who wants by mail. Please give me email where to send (about 500 kb).

If I miss something in your suggestion please exlplain again.

Granot

[RodB]

Hello LumenLux

I recieved your email asking for Gspot , your private email address is not there , could you mail me again and include a link to your address and l,ll send it of to you .

Regarding your questions , Your avi video will play ONLY on machines that have the same codec that you used to encode the video in the first place , so its best to stick with only what is supported by Windows Media Player , this will make your video playable on just about everything .

For cdrom playback it best to use mpeg1 , it will give very good results (better than avi) and has been fully supported by Media Player since version 6.4 , it will give you the best quality and compatablity across the board for cdrom playback .

Regards Rod

[LumenLux]

Onward boxig, but you know we do feel some guilt of you working all day at your computer. But also understand the stimulation and satisfaction .

As for my using your video utility "backwards" - I think you are somewhat right. But I am doing it for a reason. Of course maybe there is a better way which would invalidate my reason. By using your utility from my one-slide PTE show, the small window of the avi plays on a chosen black screen. When I simply used your utility as the starting point, the small avi window does not show well on whatever else is open on my monitor. Is there a way to use only your utility to blank the screen except for the avi window?

My idea to have the last frame remain on screen so the PTE slide show can grow out of it, is my attempt to transition from the tiny avi dimensions to my normally full-screen slide show.

[LumenLux]

Rod,

The avi produced by this tiny digital still camera is only 320x240. When I watch it at normal (native?) size, the quality is quite good. When I view the same file at 2x, the quality is not nearly the quality that the PTE slides are. When I view the same avi at full screen, the quality is bad. Where the avi is only 320x240, the bit rate is unknown to me, but probably not very high - judging from the quality of larger view - Are there ways to convert or resize to achieve a higher quality AND larger picture? Question part 2: Is there a way to convert the avi to mpeg# and achieve a better quality larger image? Would an mpeg video work with a utility like boxig has constructed on within a container like you offered? Also, my test/learning examples have been run only from my hard drive. If running avi/pte or mpeg/pte from a CD going to shift judgement as to what method is best to accomplish what we are trying.

[LumenLux]

Rod,

The avi produced by this tiny digital still camera is only 320x240. When I watch it at normal (native?) size, the quality is quite good. When I view the same file at 2x, the quality is not nearly the quality that the PTE slides are. When I view the same avi at full screen, the quality is bad. Where the avi is only 320x240, the bit rate is unknown to me, but probably not very high - judging from the quality of larger view - Are there ways to convert or resize to achieve a higher quality AND larger picture? Question part 2: Is there a way to convert the avi to mpeg# and achieve a better quality larger image? Would an mpeg video work with a utility like boxig has constructed on within a container like you offered? Also, my test/learning examples have been run only from my hard drive. If running avi/pte or mpeg/pte from a CD going to shift judgement as to what method is best to accomplish what we are trying.

[boxig]

Bob,

I got your email.

I will make full screen and MPG instead of avi.

So I will send you probably 2 files soon.

Granot

[RodB]

Hi

LumenLux , you need too look at like this , if you have an image you got of the web , chances are it is highly compressed and not much good for print , no matter how good you are in photoshop , you cannot make pixels out of nothing and get a good result , its the same with video , only instead of one still picture you have lots of them , 25 per sec for pal format ,29 for ntsc format .

Having a highly compressed small avi file cannot be made into a good quality mpeg as it will already be compressed hard and then to compress it again into mpeg , your quality can only stay the same at best , your file size will be slightly smaller for the same quality , so its really not worth doing unless you particulary want an mpeg , same as for still images , bad in gets bad out .

To get the best quality mpegs , l generally build my video in After Effects or Premiere and export in Quicktime animation format , this is a lossless format with great quality but much smaller in end file size than using uncompressed output .

Then l encode and convert from .mov into mpeg1 using a program called TMPGEnc , it used to be free , its an excellent encoder one of the very best .

http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

For decent fullscreen quality you need to encode at about 1500kbs minimum , that works out at about 90mg file size per minute of video , this should run ok from a cdrom , you can go higher with the bitrate if the video is running from your HD as data transfer is much quicker from there , higher bitrate , better the quality , for short intros of only 10 to 30 seconds , you can get top quality , without resorting to Divx etc that will give you better quality video , but nightmares for codecs and users compatability to see your better quality divx video .

As for an intro player im trying to get to work , lm not happy with the lag in closing the mpeg and starting the slideshow , your idea of having an image on screen that the pte show bursts through has got me thinking of another way of doing this .

Will get back to you on it , between Boxig and myself we should come up with something thats real easy to add video intros to slideshows , sounds like Boxigs utility is working great .

Regards Rod

[boxig]

Rod,

I read your answer to Bob. What you are actually sayin is that the video utility should stay as it is with medium size AVI. I never used ant AVI or MPG so my knowledge is zero on these.

[RodB]

Hi

Yes m8 , if you avi is small such as Bobs and your bitrate is low , it is no advantage to convert it to mpg .

but if you are starting from scatch and making your video file , export it from your video program as an uncompressed file (huge size ) or a quictime animation file , if you dont have quicktime animation export option just go wth what you have but export it with a least compression as room you can spare for the file then use this file and convert it to mpg in TMPGenc .

This will give you the best video quality .

l sent Bob and Guru a small mpg intro player , if they check there mail .

Can you guys let me know how it goes .

The trouble is that PTE wants to run on top as soon as it is executed and so you still got to wait while it loads , if it had an option to not run on top , you can have a last frame image on top while its loading underneath and then close the app (image) on top at a set time (pte load time ) , this way it would burst out kinda of thing , or if PTE had an option to place an image on screen straight away while it loaded everything else , l will feel silly if pte already supports these things , l havent had it on this machine for a while now and kinda forget its runtime routines .

Regards Rod

[LumenLux]

Rod & Granot, I have received all your files. Now my challenge is to try them as soon as possible. Like many of us, I guess, my spurts of time devoted to PTE can not be sustained. Thank you very much for the quick response on your end.

[LumenLux]

I could not resist trying your good work, so I am back already.

Rod -

That Gspot utility is great. Simple and informative. In just a few minutes it enabled me to get a better appreciation of different avi characteristics and the visual differences on screen. The digital camera avi I was working with had 15 fps and avg bitrate 860 kb/s. A avi which I had captured from my analog video camera had 14.979 fps but avg bitrate of 9827 kb/s. And a avi captured direct from my TV tuner card was 29.9 fps and 15,741 kb/s! I was then able to run these various avi's with boxig's utility and observe visually what a difference the above stats make.

As for your mpg intro utility - I have not been able to get it to work. I may well be doing something wrong - although your instructions seemed clear and simple enough. After setting up the files as you indicated, I tried it on my HD. When I run the autorun.exe, my screen is black and it appears the program is "running" but my mpg does not show up. Then after a few moments (maybe the length of the mpg which I am not seeing) the PTE slideshow does indeed appear and run correctly. I did move all the files to my root directory and the result was the same. My mpg file, which I renamed "introM.mpg" does play in Media Player. It does NOT play in Irfanview. So, as I am writing this, I am thinking maybe I have Irfanview as the associated viewer for mpg files and that I need to undo that association and try again? I will do that and let you know if that works. Or if you have any other thoughts?

Granot -

Your full-screen version of your avi start utility works just dandy. However, as Rod has been explaining to us, the quality of a 320 X 240 avi does not have acceptable quality when run at full screen 1024 x768. I have not run it with screen set at 800x600. So, if I want full screen avi intro to PTE, you have done your part, but I would need a higher quality avi if I want it to look decent. Or I could always tout the overblown avi as an "artsy" introduction to the slide show.

Also, even with full screen version, when the avi finishes, there is a brief but disturbing view of whatever else is on the monitor, before the PTE begins. As far as I have figured out, I can only avoid this by having your utility run from an object in a small PTE show.

For now, continued thanks.

[Sterling]

[Frank,

Please try my utility and If it works for you post your remarks and request for size at the topic named "boxig's video utility".

If more members ask for bigger size I'll change the file at http://beechbrook.com/pte/ and if not, I'll make one for you.

Granot ]

Thanks Boxig for writing this utility. I see that I was not the only person who was thinking of something like this. I glad that I posted the initial question. I have recently downloaded the utility and added it to my slideshow. I do however have some questions. My avi file is fullscreen (975 x 600). Is there a way I can continue to run it full screen? Will you be adding a interface so that If I wanted to run in a cetain size window I could change the properties? Will there be features to change the duration of the avi file? I noticed that my avi file did not complete before running my slideshow. I read an earlier message that asked if you could leave the last frame of the avi file displayed until the slideshow starts. This sounds like a great idea. What was the final outcome? Also, the name of my slideshow says a lot about my slideshow, is there a way that I can keep the name of the slideshow and pass the name to the video.exe? Or is there a way that I could create one ".exe" file that incorporates my slideshow and your utility, and I could use your utility for an intro and exit.

Thanks

[boxig]

Sterling, I posted my reply on "Adding and Intro and Outro" topic.

Granot

[LumenLux]

Rod - new information-

Your mpg intro works on a computer here running XP home. I have not been able to make it work on my pc running Win98 SE. It may just be a problem with my graphics card or who knows.

On the XP machine, with 1024x768 screen, the mpg stretches to the full WIDTH of the screen while keeping it's normal vertical size. Looks like a new wide-screen movie format.

Now that your utility runs for me, I can see that there is indeed a serious gap between the end of the mpg and the start of the PTE. The gap reveals whatever screen clutter is going on underneath. So I guess there would need to be further work on the utility or maybe it could be used within a small PTE show as I have with boxig's avi utility.

[RodB]

Hi

It should work on your 98se machine , as thats what it was built on , but it needs Media Player to play it , as you say having Irfanview associated to mpg is prolly the reason it wont work on that machine .

also try with 800x600 screen res .

The lag is a big problem because there is a time needed to close the mpg (windows cause ) , also PTE wants to run on top so Media Player must be closed first or can cause lock up , you then go through the normal PTE loading as its running on top .

If Igor would add the option in PTE where you can select it to not run on top ( easy for him to add ) this would solve many problems , as then PTE could load underneath an image and then you can close the image after PTE is loaded , giving the smooth transition from video to image to PTE .

I must try this MMB launcher with Avi , l think avi is easier to work with than mpg , and for some reason l think avi closes faster .

l am very busy on another job atm , and can only give a few minutes here and there to this , but l think it does show some promise , once l get the scripting and timing right , but like l said PTE needs to be run " not on top " for all this to work smooth with Media Player .

Rod

PS

Have got this working very smooth on my system , the problem is the last frame image , it seems that even though it is loaded from outside of the MMB engine , mmb remembers the picture l had setting this up , so if you rename an image , mmb knows its not the same as before and wont display it , no such problems with the the mpeg only the image . but from closing the mpg to executing PTE there is a lag of a few seconds .

Its easy to set up for myself , but to make it universal is not so easy

lm not trying to out do Boxig with this , he is way better at this sort of thing than me , lm just having some fun and learning some more about MMB and PTE .

[boxig]

Rod,

On the contrary, I'm waiting someone to join and make together a better tool. I am relatively new too MMB and just trying to share with members simple tools I make for myself.

I think we have to check first what users prefer - MPG or AVI. Also to check for which one of the two we can make more effective tool. Since Avi can be run on any windows and Guido already confirmed the 9 types out of 10 worked fine, it seems to me the AVI tool is better. But MPG tool can be a welcomed addition, and maybe in the future we can combine them.

You should send your tool to Guido and ask his professional opinion, since he is the super authority on these matters.

We can cooperate also on other projects and help each other.

My email: mail@thailandphotoalbum.com

Granot

[RodB]

Hi guys

Well it looks like l have got this to work ok , l have mailed a copy to Guido and Bob , if it works out will make it available for all .

It will play an mpg fullscreen and then run your slideshow when the video is finished .

Regards Rod

[LumenLux]

Reporting live here - - Yes, you've got it working just fine. That is the full screen running of the mpg then into the PTE. There is a clean black screen while the pte loads. (That is good that there is no glimpse of whatever else is underneath on the monitor. It might still be nice, in some cases, if the last frame of the mpg could stay on screen until, the pte kicks in - but I understand what you have explained about PTE always taking top position.)

I have not been able to get the mpg to show up on my one Win98se pc. When I run your starter, the screen runs black until the pte portion is reached. I am convinced this is some graphic setup quirk on my machine, not in your mmb work. (Yes, the mpg will play by itself with Media Player and other players.) On the xp machine the whole setup runs like a charm including from HD and Autorun from CD.

Thank you for your interest, attention - and the result. I think you could certainly post it for general use for those that have an occasional need for it.

[RodB]

Hi Bob

Glad it worked out , Guido said it tested ok on his machine , if your slideshow is small it will show just about straight away when the movie is finished less than a second on a small fast loading show , but if the PTE show is large it will take a couple of seconds to display a PTE loading image

, this is controlled by PTE.

Im still working on a last frame image to display during the change from Media player to PTE .

On the Win98 machine Bob , if you double click the mpg , what plays it , Media Player or Irfanview , it needs to be Mplayer for this to work .

Is the extension of your video mpeg or mpg , use .mpg for my launcher .

Does my launcher not work on one particular mpg or on all mpgs on that machine .

l have tested this out on 4 Win98 machines and it worked ok on all of them .

You could try .

Dble click My Computer , then

View -then

Folder options -then

File Types

Now scroll the list for mpeg , and highlight it , then click on edit , you can see what its associated to and the extensions and actions .

You could also remove mpeg from the file list then reboot and then put it back with Mplayer associated .

Regards Rod

[LumenLux]

Rod, your work is fine I think. But as to the launcher not working on this one Win98 SE machine - I am not able to trace down the problem. I pursued your ideas/questions from above and came up with :

There are no .mpeg files on this machine. They are all .mpg - from a wide variety of sources and sizes from 500k to 85 MB. They all open and run just fine with Windows Media Player. I went in and deleted, rebooted, reassociated to Windows Media Player. Double ckick on any one will run it in Media Player. But your launcher will not run it. Also, now after the re-association, when I now try the launcher it seems only sometimes might the PTE show run after the black screen of the non-visable mpg. When I Escape key out of the blank screen, I will sometimes get an error box: "Ctenchdr This program has performed and illegal operation and will be shut down." Also, while on the blank screen, if I Ctrl-Alt-Del to see what programs are running, the top program listed is "Welcome!" I have also gone through and closed every other running program in the box, until only Explorer and Systray are showing. The launcher runs with the same result.

Earlier today, at work, I tried the launcher on 4 more machines. On one Win98 SE machine, it worked, on another it did not. (same blank screen during the mpg and then PTE would show fine. On an XP Pro, it ran as intended. On a Windows 2000, it ran as full screen but with unbearable jitter until mpg ended and PTE ran fine.

This is frustrating but somewhat intriguing. If you think of anything else I can tell you or anything else to try, let me know.

[RodB]

Hello Bob

Your right about this being frustrating , you can go mad with this stuff , the more l look into the mci command system the more flaky it can be , but you might want to look at this , l copied it from a web page regarding mci , might be worth a try in your case .

Run the Media Player and select the Device menu. An MPEG menu item should appear. This indicates an MCI driver is installed. Make sure the sample movies that shipped with your card play well in the Media Player before proceeding. Also make sure you have the latest version of the drivers for your card.

Edit the SYSTEM.INI and in the [MCI] section, check for a line that reads MPEGVideo=<path>\<drivername.drv>, where <path> is the path to the driver, and <drivername.drv> is the driver file name. If a line such as this is not present, contact your card vendor and ask for the name of the MCI driver. Add the above line to the SYSTEM.INI, replacing the <path>\<drivername.drv> with the full path and filename of the MCI driver. If the driver name is present but is set to a device type other than MPEGVideo, change the device type to MPEGVideo. Next, edit the WIN.INI, and in the [MCI Extensions] section, add a line (if not already present) that reads mpg=MPEGVideo. If a line already exists that associates the mpg extension to another device type, change the device type to MPEGVideo. Save both files, and restart Windows.

Lots of references to MCI in the system.ini and win.ini files , take a look and compare on machine that works with machine that dont .

Still llooking for answers

Rod