PicturesToExe Deluxe v5.00 Beta 9A

[Igor]

PicturesToExe Deluxe v5.00 Beta 9A:

http://www.wnsoft.com/apr/apr-deluxe_beta.zip (4 MB)

Key features:

- Support of old video cards.

- All music modes and synchronization.

- Text objects and support of old objects created in v4.48.

- Drop shadow and glow for Text and other objects.

- New music player with better quality of sound.

Please read full list of new features of beta 9 below:

+ Objects and animation window:

- Added "Text" object;

- Added "Button" object. And 6 styles.

- Drop shadow and glow for objects.

+ Support of old video cards.

See Project options | Screen tab | "Hardware acceleration" option.

When it enabled slide show tries to use video card for maximal quality of picture and smoothnes of Pan/Zoom effects. In case of old video card slide show automatically uses CPU based graphical engine.

+ Added templates for shadows. See "Drop shadow" window.

+ Fully rewritten music player and improved quality of sound.

+ WnSoft Video Builder:

- Added "Burn ISO image" function. See main menu | File

- You can create new DVD menu template using current templates.

- Added "Apply settings for each page" option to main menu | Edit on the second page (customizing of DVD menu).

- Accepts source 48 KHz audio files of a slide show without reconverting. You'll reach maximal quality now with 48 KHz WAV/MP3 music files, because DVD-Video disc uses 48 KHz as native format.

- New template for DVD menu ("Pictures").

+ Added text macros.

+ Added "Low quality of resizing" option for objects.

You can use this option for masks images where you need to have sharp edges of an image.

+ Copying of objects in "Objects and animation" window works via Windows clipboard now.

+ Much more fast work of File tree in the main window of PicturesToExe.

+ Text comments to slides work again.

Beta 9A (April 20, 2007):

+ Portrait photos (with rotate flag in JPEG EXIF) supported again.

* Fixed bug of previous beta 9 with impossibility to set Rotation angle more than 360 degree.

* Fixed bug of previous beta 9 with incorrect wave form (on the timeline) on some music files.

* Fixed bug of previous beta versions where customized Startup window (of slide shows) didn't appear.

p.s. of course, this beta still may contains bugs - we did a lot of changes and new features since past 3 months.

[nickunwin]

Hi Igor,

Thanks for getting Beta 9 out for us all to play with ...lots of fun exploring the new version in the next few days!

One thing I've noticed already, and I'm not sure if it's intended behaviour or not, when using the keyboard to move forward/backward through slides the transitions only work going forwards to the next slide - a simple 'fast' switch happens when moving backwards....

[Guest guru]

Yippee!!!

[ronwil]

Well done Igor & team, but am I right in thinking that the 4.48 Object facility for invisible buttons and Run Application... has not been included, as these are prime needs in producing a professional introduction to a selection of sequences.

Ron [uK]

[jtneal]

Wow this is great news! I can hardly wait to start adding credits to my show. Thank you so much Igor.

-Jon

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ron,

Though I don't think the buttons are yet linked to the various functions, you can indeed create "invisible" buttons. As objects, the buttons can have any attribute just as any other object. So to make a button invisible, just decide what area you wish to cover, size the button accordingly and set the attribute for opacity to zero and the button becomes invisible.

Best regards,

Lin

Well done Igor & team, but am I right in thinking that the 4.48 Object facility for invisible buttons and Run Application... has not been included, as these are prime needs in producing a professional introduction to a selection of sequences.

Ron [uK]

[rakn]

Until now I have been using V5 beta 8u, and I have created a few shows with it.

When I open one of these in beta 9, the "small preview button" (preview from current slide) does not work like before.

With beta 8u, the preview started from the correct slide and the music started at the corresponding position.

With beta 9, it starts the preview from the correct slide, but the music starts from the very beginning of the soundtrack...

I know we have a quite new sound engine in beta 9, so things may work differently. And possibly there is some kind of workaround. At least I hope so ...

Any ideas about this ?

Ragnar

[ronwil]

Thanks Lin, but how to you add "Action on mouse click>Run Application"? It used to be Right click>Properties>Action on mouse click>Run application.

Ron [uK]

[alrobin]

Ragnar,

I find that it works as before in "sync" mode. Are you synchronizing the show to music?

[alrobin]

Ron,

This hasn't been activated yet. Next beta.

[ronwil]

Thanks Al. I thought that was it. I believe there was a mention within the last few days.

Ron [uK]

[Peter S]

Hi Igor,

It's great to have our hands on Beta 9. I have been checking out the text facility and think it has great time saving potential. I used to make lots of png text files in Photoshop and it seems I can now get the same results simply using PTE. I love the facility of being able to adjust attributes such as line spacing and text size while viewing the live slide view. But ....

Why is there a Rasterize text to png image facility if the PTE text is already transparent? Are there system consequences of using the PTE text facility v png files?

The blur function does not seem to have any effect is this implemented?

Peter

[Lin Evans]

Hi Peter,

Not to answer for Igor, but the blur does work on the text. The rasterize text to png is simply a convenience. What if you wanted to apply the perspective distortion to a png text paragraph to simulate the Star Wars effect? You just create your text in PTE export then open the png file in Photoshop, apply any specialized effects with the layers properties, free transform, transform, etc., and you have saved lots of effort in trying to type in your text and so on in Photoshop. As you know it's very difficult to make corrections on a PNG file once it's been created. Doing the hard work in PTE makes it a snap.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Igor,

It's great to have our hands on Beta 9. I have been checking out the text facility and think it has great time saving potential. I used to make lots of png text files in Photoshop and it seems I can now get the same results simply using PTE. I love the facility of being able to adjust attributes such as line spacing and text size while viewing the live slide view. But ....

Why is there a Rasterize text to png image facility if the PTE text is already transparent? Are there system consequences of using the PTE text facility v png files?

The blur function does not seem to have any effect is this implemented?

Peter

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ron,

Notice that there is now an additional tab called "common" between Animations and Properties. Inside this tab window is a greyed out "action on mouse click" which will be where you set the attributes for the particular object or button.

Best regards,

Lin

Thanks Lin, but how to you add "Action on mouse click>Run Application"? It used to be Right click>Properties>Action on mouse click>Run application.

Ron [uK]

[jtfrazer]

Hi,

Keep in mind that I'm pretty new to PTE. I've been waiting for Beta 9 before investing time in learning the product. I think I'm seeing a bug related to portrait images. If I add a portrait type image to my show and preview it, it shows rotated by 90 degrees into a landscape image. If I go to Objects and Animation and rotate the slide 90 degrees then it then appears correct in a preview. If I create an exe show, the portrait slide shows correctly. However, if I create an AVI version of the show, the portrait slide is rotated 90 degrees. This could be a misunderstanding on my part but I thought I'd post it just in case. If it is a misunderstanding on my part, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks,

Jim

[Igor]

Thanks for your responses!

Peter,

If you use unique and rare text font you need to Rasterize a text to PNG.

Jim,

Rotation function is not fully realized in beta 9.

[Peter Coles]

Until now I have been using V5 beta 8u, and I have created a few shows with it.

When I open one of these in beta 9, the "small preview button" (preview from current slide) does not work like before.

With beta 8u, the preview started from the correct slide and the music started at the corresponding position.

With beta 9, it starts the preview from the correct slide, but the music starts from the very beginning of the soundtrack...

I know we have a quite new sound engine in beta 9, so things may work differently. And possibly there is some kind of workaround. At least I hope so ...

Any ideas about this ?

Ragnar

I have just noticed the same "problem" and, as I have now downloaded #9 to replace 8u, presumably I may now need to wait until #10 to be able to edit with precision to match the sound track without going back to the beginning each time - is there any way of downloading and storing #8u once #9 has been downloaded?

[Peter Coles]

I have just noticed the same "problem" and, as I have now downloaded #9 to replace 8u, presumably I may now need to wait until #10 to be able to edit with precision to match the sound track without going back to the beginning each time - is there any way of downloading and storing #8u once #9 has been downloaded?

[/quote

I have now found MY error - the sych to music button was not clicked - I hope that gives a clue to Ragnar too !

AND I also notice that #8u is saved as well as #9

All manner of things are now well !!!!!

[ADB]

Hi,

Keep in mind that I'm pretty new to PTE. I've been waiting for Beta 9 before investing time in learning the product. I think I'm seeing a bug related to portrait images. If I add a portrait type image to my show and preview it, it shows rotated by 90 degrees into a landscape image. If I go to Objects and Animation and rotate the slide 90 degrees then it then appears correct in a preview. If I create an exe show, the portrait slide shows correctly. However, if I create an AVI version of the show, the portrait slide is rotated 90 degrees. This could be a misunderstanding on my part but I thought I'd post it just in case. If it is a misunderstanding on my part, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks,

Jim

Hi Jim

Make sure you are downloading images from your camera correctly, some cameras have a "rotate automatically" function which tries to determine whether the picture taken is Portrait or Landscape and orientates it hopefully correctly saving you the bother to do this manually. I turned this feature off on my camera as I was having similiar problems with other software. To test this just make up some landscape and portrait non photographic images in a painting program and see if they behave the same way. I think it has something to do with the embedded thumbnail image contained within jpeg files but I'm not 100% sure. Good luck

[jtfrazer]

Hi Jim

Make sure you are downloading images from your camera correctly, some cameras have a "rotate automatically" function which tries to determine whether the picture taken is Portrait or Landscape and orientates it hopefully correctly saving you the bother to do this manually. I turned this feature off on my camera as I was having similiar problems with other software. To test this just make up some landscape and portrait non photographic images in a painting program and see if they behave the same way. I think it has something to do with the embedded thumbnail image contained within jpeg files but I'm not 100% sure. Good luck

Thanks ADB, I'll give that a try.

Jim

[Igor]

We've added support of rotated images to future beta 10

[alrobin]

Igor,

That will be good news - especially to Tomuk!

[rakn]

Ragnar,

I find that it works as before in "sync" mode. Are you synchronizing the show to music?

Al (and Peter Coles),

You are right (of course). "Sync to music" was the solution.

Thanks

Ragnar

[jtfrazer]

Thanks ADB, I'll give that a try.

Jim

Hi ADB,

Yep, that was the problem. Other software that I use apparently is able to recognize the need to rotate images taken in portrait road automatically.

Jim

[ADB]

Hi ADB,

Yep, that was the problem. Other software that I use apparently is able to recognize the need to rotate images taken in portrait road automatically.

Jim

That's great Jim, can anybody else explain the "science" of what is exactly going on here?

Cheers

Andrew