Screensavers

[Ronniebootwest]

I am in the process of making a CD tutorial about using Pictures To Exe and I realise that I know nothing about the 'SCR' feature. I wonder if anybody uses this, if so I would appreciate a step by step on how to create a screensaver.

Ron

[centreofengland]

Hi Ron, Yes I often use the screensaver option in PTE. There is not really much to be said about doing this.

You make a show as you normally would BUT you tick the create Screensaver option in the project settings.

On the Advanced tab you tick Exit on mouse move. When you are ready you click Create screensaver (F7)

All a screensaver consists of is an executable but with a .SCR filetype, which is why they have put this function in PTE as its easy to do.

Things you DO need to do differently for making a screensaver when compaired with slideshow are...

1) Don't use music ! (you will soon get annoyed with it repeating over and over).

2) Make the show so it will repeat for ever.

To use a screensaver on a PC you need to copy the .SCR file into the Windows directory.

i.e. C:\WINDOWS\

This will then show up in the drop down list in the screensaver selector of windows Display properties.

I have a few example screensavers I have made on my site. Some of which are like watching a fullscreen video...

Derby and Derbyshire Screensavers.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Andy

[Ronniebootwest]

Hi Andy, Thanks for the information, it is appreciated. I visited your web site and was impressed by the 4 sample screensavers that you have posted there. I was particularly interested in the 'shimmering effect' on the water and also the 'rollovers' that you included as a download option. Is there a special way of creating these two techniqes?

Ron

[boxig]

Hi Ron,

Screen Savers are kept in different folders depending on OS.

Check the interface of my screen saver installation utility to see what I mean.

Download:

InstallSS

With this utility user can install the screen saver without copying the file or copy the file according to his OS. This utility installs only one screen saver from CD. Operating System to install are Win95/98/Me/XP/2K.

Granot

[centreofengland]

I was impressed by the 4 sample screensavers that you have posted there. I was particularly interested in the 'shimmering effect' on the water and also the 'rollovers' that you included as a download option. Is there a special way of creating these two techniqes?

Ron

Hi, Thanks Ron glad you liked them. With regard to the shimmering effect, this is real footage of water being effected by wind and not a special computer effect!

I just set my camera to take frames quickly one after another, effectivly making a movie from photos.

PTE is ideal for making time-lapse movies one I have posted one beechbrook Canal boat time-lapse and a new one I have just made is full screen 1024x768 journey at night with the camera stuck on the dashboard looking forward taking a frame every second. I filmed this at night so the blurred effect of lights is quite effective.

Download it here..

Nighttime Time-lapse car jouney

Its only 14Mb. The film is made from 393 individual photos joined in a sequence. You can even stop the show and then go back frame by frame then restart.

See what you think.

With regard to "rollovers" on my webpage this is just javascript which works on all browsers (PC and MAC) and all OS. As you can see I use it on all my web pages, it makes it more obvious to the viewer Example page of thumbnails on my site with roll-over text