Lin Evans Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 Merry Christmas all from Colorado...There have been a few questions lately about (imagine that) creating S N O W for the season. This is just a quick Christmas demo to show, among other things, how a single PNG file can be used in various ways to create totally different snow effects with PicturesToExe. In the linked executable, a single PNG file was used in various ways to simulate snow. We had a huge blizzard in the two days just before Christmas which gave me some images from my windows to use for the demo. I apologize for the size of this zipped executable (32 meg), it can and will be made much smaller when I have time to resize the original images but since it's Christmas and I've been busy shoveling snow - I didn't have time to refine this. There are two techniques in this show. First the creation of the snow itself and then the use of PNG overlay files and layers to allow the snow effect through windows, etc. I plan to make an AV tutorial later this week to explain all in detail, but for right now just a quick demo. In the couple days before Christmas we had true blizzard conditions with blowing snow, high winds, huge drifts and all around bad weather, but Christmas morning dawned beautiful, crystal clear with blue skies and a warming trend.... the demo reflects this change.I hope all have a great holiday and look forward to many more wonderful days on the forum in the year to come.Best regards,Linhttp://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/Christmas.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Cox Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 beauty ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted December 27, 2006 Report Share Posted December 27, 2006 Thank you, Lin!A very interesting technique of snow and good slide show!p.s. I found only one problem with a sound: a music contains "clicks". I played extracted MP3 file in WinAmp and also reproduced this problem there. Because of this I suppose the problem in this MP3 file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Hi Ken,Thanks and happy holidays from Colorado. This gives me something to do between shoveling snow - HA!Lin beauty ken Hi Igor,Thank you and Happy Holidays to all from Colorado.I will check the original MP3 and see, perhaps in the conversion it caused the "clicks" - I will try and convert it again.The slides can be much smaller than the originals I used so I'm going to resample and recreate the show. I think maybe I can get it down to about 10 megabytes so people witth less video card power can enjoy it as well.Best regards,Lin Thank you, Lin!A very interesting technique of snow and good slide show!p.s. I found only one problem with a sound: a music contains "clicks". I played extracted MP3 file in WinAmp and also reproduced this problem there. Because of this I suppose the problem in this MP3 file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Thank you, Lin!A very interesting technique of snow and good slide show!p.s. I found only one problem with a sound: a music contains "clicks". I played extracted MP3 file in WinAmp and also reproduced this problem there. Because of this I suppose the problem in this MP3 file. Hi Igor,This morning I re-encoded the MP3 with a higher bitrate and created the executable again. Hopefully now the clicking sound is gone! The new zip is a few megabytes larger.Best regards,Lin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Cox Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 LINa slight splt second sound burp right at startotherwise no cracklesken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 LINa slight splt second sound burp right at startotherwise no cracklesken Hi Ken,I reduced the size of one of the huge images in the show and recompiled and created yet another executable. This one brought the overall size back to about 32 meg. I can't hear any sound issues with this one, but am not sure if that's because it's not there or my hearing/sound system - LOL.thanks,Best regards,Lin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronwil Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 No clicks. No burps. A flawless playback. Thanks and best wishes.Ron [uK] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 No clicks. No burps. A flawless playback. Thanks and best wishes.Ron [uK] Hi Ron,Thanks much for the feedback! A very happy New Year to you and your family too, and best wishes for the coming year!!Lin & Sherry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Cox Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Lin still there -- just when the first house window comes onthe exe i got dec 25 at 04:20 pm -- 30.mb does not do itthe exe i got dec 27 at 02:29 am -- 39 mb does do it - you modified file at dec 26 04:43 pmken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Lin still there -- just when the first house window comes onthe exe i got dec 25 at 04:20 pm -- 30.mb does not do itthe exe i got dec 27 at 02:29 am -- 39 mb does do it - you modified file at dec 26 04:43 pmken Hi Ken,The latest should be dated 12-28 and should be back to about 30 meg or so in size. I'm not hearing any problems but that doesn't mean other won't. There may be some sound compatibility issues with the bitrate I used with your sound system. I upped the bitrate between the first show with the clicking sounds which Igor found and these latest ones. That may account for the sound issue on your system and not on Ron's or mine, etc. - who really knows?? LOLBest regards,Lin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Cox Posted December 28, 2006 Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Lin the exe is 32.9 mb un packed and dated 12 28ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted December 28, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2006 Hi Ken,The latest should be dated 12-28 and should be back to about 30 meg or so in size. I'm not hearing any problems but that doesn't mean other won't. There may be some sound compatibility issues with the bitrate I used with your sound system. I upped the bitrate between the first show with the clicking sounds which Igor found and these latest ones. That may account for the sound issue on your system and not on Ron's or mine, etc. - who really knows?? LOLI re-compiled with the original bit-rate (128kbps) and uploaded the new version. I think this one will not have the "burp" regardless of the sound system. (I hope)....Best regards,Lin HI Ken,That's the latest one - if it "burps" on the sound at the start, it's most likely some incompatiblity concerning the bitrate I used. Higher bitrates on the MP3 give more acoustic quality but may not be 100% compatible with all sound cards in terms of how fast you can feed it. Using a lower bitrate such as 128kbps is "safer" for more compatibility but at some compromise in sound fidelity. Of course on this little demo with only acoustic music and no vocal track I probably could get by with the lower bitrate such as the one I used on the original conversion but since I was re-encoding anyway I decided to up the acoustic quality a bit and probably overdid it. It's like the bitrate we use in DVD creations. If we went too high (in the older beta versions) we lost sound in places on the burned DVD. That's been addressed in the latest version, but I suspect that we need to be mindful of the sound issues in terms of adding background music. I know that some MP3's in the past have been problematic.Thanks for testing this for me.Best regards,Lin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrobin Posted December 29, 2006 Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 Lin,I don't notice any glitch in the music on my system. However, I noticed one little picky thing - outside the second window, the snow stops falling before the scene completely disappears. Makes for less shoveling, I guess! Nice snow effect, overall, though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lin Evans Posted December 29, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 29, 2006 Lin,I don't notice any glitch in the music on my system. However, I noticed one little picky thing - outside the second window, the snow stops falling before the scene completely disappears. Makes for less shoveling, I guess! Nice snow effect, overall, though! Hey Al,As soon as I rest up from shoveling the last ton, I'll fix that - LOL. Actually we have another blizzard going on right now - we've already had another 30 inches with probably that much more to go before the storm passes early Sunday morning. All my "shoveling" has dissapered under a new blanket of fresh powder. I'll probably add some more pictures tomorrow, but I did try to remedy the snow stopping issue and I "think" it's fixed now.Happy holidays and the best from snowy Colorado,Lin & Sherry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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