Competition

[Catrick]

what the difference between PicturesToExe and PhotoDex ProShow Gold is other than price and a few more bells and whistles?

[Ken Cox]

best way to find out is to buy both and try them out

after p2e comes out of beta of course:))

ken

[What A Ride]

best way to find out is to buy both and try them out

after p2e comes out of beta of course:))

ken

Yeh, same here...Iv'e purchased both, even purchased the Newest ProShow gold for even more money...Iv'e always knew which one was the cleanest, smoothest and most direct at producing slide shows. But, I had to venture out and try others....But, because of Ver5 coming out, I need no more to search for the best program on the market.....But, I agree with Ken, go out and spend your money, that way you will know first hand what works for you.. Bill

[Lin Evans]

what the difference between PicturesToExe and PhotoDex ProShow Gold is other than price and a few more bells and whistles?

I can give you a few differences now. P2E has the ability to have multiple objects on a single slide simultaneously. Each image, text object, etc., can have it's own motion, opacity, animation, etc. This can't be done with ProShow Gold (I use both programs and have had both since pre-release beta).

P2E also allows high resolution executable file images which are rendered at the resolution you choose. ProShow Gold renders at 720x576 resolution and if you need an executable file at a greater screen resolution then the images must be interpolated up which results in an inevitable loss of image quality.

ProShow Gold has an internal DVD burning engine while P2E does not. This internal engine has caused a good deal of difficulty for a number of users because of incompatibilities with present or past installations of incompatible DVD burning software. The developers of P2E elected to do it another way by providing the user two methods of creating an AVI file which can then easily be made into a DVD with 3rd party software such as Nero or Ulead Movie Factory, etc.

P2E allows the user to create and use "objects." This very powerful feature greatly extends the flexibility of P2E and lets you do things like create a fully manual slideshow so you can move forward, backward, jump to the beginning or end, print an image, etc., all from a Navigation bar. You can "easily" display the file name of each image during the slideshow if you wish. You can call external programs (executable files) from within a P2E slideshow and return seamlessly to the show. This flexibility allows the user to easily create their own custom menus and so on. These things can't be done with ProShow Gold.

Here is a link to a quick demo I created in about 15 minutes with PicturesToExe beta 1. You will see several things which simply can't be done with ProShow Gold and some other things which are easily done with PicturesToExe and others which "if" they could be done with ProShow, could be done only with much difficulty by an experienced ProShow Gold user.

Notice first the small yellow airplane flying across the clouds. The airplane as it passes behind the clouds changes transparency as if clouds were obscuring the plane. It then becomes 100% opaque and the condition changes as it flies into and out of the clouds. Notice the small green biplane as it disappears into the clouds behind the marmot on the rock then reappears flying much faster racing the yellow plane as they both fly out of the frame.

On the following frame, note that the text scrolling down from the top and the text scrolling up from the bottom cross one another with apparent 3D depth. Notice that the text passes behind the goat kid in front and in front of the Kid in the back in a 3D effect. Watch the spinning free-wheeling text spin toward to top of the frame, reverse it's direction of rotation then spin downward and "attach" itself to the tail of the front goat kid while continuing to spin. Notice that it then diminishes in size while continuing to spin and finally fades away to a tiny size then disappears. Note also that the first goat slowly "ghosts" away while the camera zooms in on the second goat. Finally a "the end" message begins in a transparent mode then finally becomes opaque and eventually scrolls up and off the screen while changing size.

Try this with ProShow Gold and you will quickly see what PicturesToExe can do with ease which ProShow Gold simply can't do. If you want these features with a PhotoDex product you will need to buy ProShow Producer at $400 or more and have a "dongle" hanging off your port and pay as much as six copies of PicturesToexe for even upgrades. Remember PicturesToExe is free upgrades for life.....

Link below to about a 12 megabyte zipped executable demo....

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/hidebehind.zip

This will give you something to think about....

Best regards,

Lin

[Catrick]

Thank you, just what I wanted to know. Sometimes one can get brain freeze and overload. I am very happy with PTE and a friend of a co-worker had an impressive slide show done with ProGrow

[thedom]

I use(d) Proshow Producer (before PTE v5).

Here is the list of his great features that PTE doesn't have (yet ?) :

- photo editor to enhance and modify your pictures directly inside PTE

- ability to insert video file

- total control on sounds : start, end, fade in, fade out, offset

- captions with nice animated effect

- Ken Burns options : smooth, linear, accelerating, decelerrating.

- more ergonomic than PTE (drag and drop, tabs on a single window, timeline...)

If you want to quickly produce a simple show, it's nice.

Here are the list of great features that Proshow Producer doesn't have :

- keypoints

- ability to modify opacity within the same slide

- ability to group objects

AND :

- PTE has a much nicer output rendering !

- PTE has much smoother transitions !

- PTE is stable and doesn't freeze !

- PTE is not buggy !

- PTE is less expensive !

If you really want to make a nice, complex, great quality show and have time to do it, PTE is the ONE.

I'm still not sure but I think I won't use Proshow Producer anymore after the final release of PTE v5....

[Lin Evans]

I use(d) Proshow Producer (before PTE v5).

Here is the list of his great features that PTE doesn't have (yet ?) :

- photo editor to enhance and modify your pictures directly inside PTE

- ability to insert video file

- total control on sounds : start, end, fade in, fade out, offset

- captions with nice animated effect

- Ken Burns options : smooth, linear, accelerating, decelerrating.

- more ergonomic than PTE (drag and drop, tabs on a single window, timeline...)

If you want to quickly produce a simple show, it's nice.

Here are the list of great features that Proshow Producer doesn't have :

- keypoints

- ability to modify opacity within the same slide

- ability to group objects

AND :

- PTE has a much nicer output rendering !

- PTE has much smoother transitions !

- PTE is stable and doesn't freeze !

- PTE is not buggy !

- PTE is less expensive !

If you really want to make a nice, complex, great quality show and have time to do it, PTE is the ONE.

I'm still not sure but I think I won't use Proshow Producer anymore after the final release of PTE v5....

Yes, that's pretty much the differences right now. P2E has always had low level controls which the competition lacks so there are a few other very important differences. For example, having the ability to run "objects" lets the P2E user call external executable code from other programs, run them then seamlessly return to your slideshow. Back in October of 2000 I was using PicturesToExe to make slideshows which included video accessed by embedding IrfanView which itself called and ran the video shows then seamlessly returned to the P2E slideshow.

Also the ability to use objects lets the user create their own custom menus which can be incredibly sophisticated. P2E has always appealed to the programmer in me. As a former software developer I've always greatly appreciated the "nuts and bolts" approach versus the menu-driven high level approach by the competition. Though I've used and still use the PhotoDex products since pre-release beta I've found that this low level code approach which P2E offers gives more flexibility in most cases. Take text effects as an example.

You don't have the ability to choose a caption, apply specific effects via an P2E menu then instantly have these effects in your show, but what you do have is the ability to use your own outside construction of sophisticated transparent background PNG files then with the keypoints, layering and built-in opacity controls create text effects which just can't be duplicated by the competition.

Those who have yet to see JP's objects objects demo need to watch this one all the way through to the end. Go to Producer or even the extremely powerful "Vegas Video" (I also use this) and try to duplicate this and you will better appreciate the low level control offered by the P2E approach:

http://www.diapositif.net/V5/PTE5-Objets.zip

So what we have is sort like a nuts and bolts approach versus a menu driven features approach. The beauty of the menu approach is that everything is right at your fingertips so it's extremely convenient. The beauty of the nuts an bolts approach is that though it takes longer, the controls are finer and the flexibility is greater.

The real greatness is that right now you can buy six full copies of P2E for what a single upgrade costs for Producer - LOL, and you never pay for upgrades with P2E.

Best regards,

Lin

[Catrick]

I already own PTE and I am looking forward to version 5 (which seems to have a few people pretty giddy!). I do prefer the "fine-tuning - nuts & bolts" of PTE.

I have another question. Our motorcycle club puts together slide show presentations (i.e. motorcycle safety) and I would like to know if animated gif's can be used in PTE presentations and how would I import them into a show I was building?

[alrobin]

Sorry, no animated GIF's yet. Unless you can find a way to satisfactorily open a window in HTML format from PTE, as an "external application", and run the GIF that way. You might have to manually close it though. Might be worth experimenting with.

[jevans]

Sorry, no animated GIF's yet. Unless you can find a way to satisfactorily open a window in HTML format from PTE, as an "external application", and run the GIF that way. You might have to manually close it though. Might be worth experimenting with.

Might be able to do what you want using Flash files created with an editor such as Swish. I have made animated titles this way and the animation file can be called from PTE. A forum member Marcovelo is the expert and has posted sample shows. If you want to know more, just email me and I can give you some pointers.

Jeff

[alrobin]

If you make IrfanView the default viewer for GIF's, and insert the name of the animated GIF on the "Run external application" line in "Customize slide" for an image, then the GIF will open in an IrfanView window when the slideshow arrives at that image. PTE will continue playing, so you would have to make the image duration longer as well to give you time to deal with the animated GIF and close IrfanView when you are finished with it.

Don't know if this is of any benefit for you, though. There are command-line options for IrfanView, but I don't know how to reference them from PTE.

-------------------------

Did some more digging, and found this:

To open an animated gif using "Customize slide / Run external application", enter something like: "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe" c:\ca_flag.gif /hide=15 .

Then, to close the animated gif, on the next PTE slide enter something like: "C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe" /killmesoftly on the "Run external application" line.

Here is a SAMPLE ANIMATED GIF you can try it out with.

[LumenLux]

It seems to me that only the most complicated animated gifs could not quite easily be constructed by PTE V5 O/A facility?

[alrobin]

Robert,

That is true, especially given the clever way that Igor has implemented the new effects.

One additional feature that would complete the capability would be the ability to have a mini-scenario repeat over and over while "riding along" on a slower-moving pan, for instance.