Igor

Barry, Yes, we plan to increase price when v5.00 will arrive (maybe $47 for Business license), but, of course, no additional payments for buyers of old versions of PTE. Maybe our pricing is not suitable for larger companies, but we find it optimal for PTE. Also many people help us with advices and beta-testing of PicturesToExe. p.s. please wait a little more for v5.00 beta. It's a difficult and long work and we want to show reliable product. Just so serious step in development of PTE required to write a lot of new code, keeping in the mind future features of v5.00 and next versions. All next versions will be released much faster than v5.00 because we've wrote now the new base/foundation.

There is a good and well known InnoSetup free ulitity which creates such package. See www.innosetup.com.

Yes, no additional upgrades or fees.

Please let me know what version of PicturesToExe you used to create these slide-shows? And what CPU in your PC?

The good idea, but the most difficult technical problem - how to mix two different images with differect color profiles in one limited sRGB screen in slide-show? Teoretically it's possible, but in this case we will need to mix images in back buffer with 16-bit per channel (48-bit). Only modern video card supports it. And officially Microsoft doesn't support this feature in DirectX. However personally I think that there is no serious benefits to use color management in slide-show. The difference is small (after convertation in Photoshop from Adobe RGB to sRGB) and especially not noticeable in compressed JPEG images with 200-500 KB of file size.

Of course, there is only one v4.43

1) Not synchronized slide-show 2) 0 sec. and 1 ms. for all slides (Project options -> Main tab) 3) Push effect with 3000 ms. 4) "Fit to screen" option in Screen tab 5) Images with aspect ratio 4:3 (1024x768 or 1280x960, or etc.)

It should works fine in PTE v4.43 I just created small example: www.wnsoft.com/test/Project1_vid1.avi (900 KB)

If you plan to use Pan/Zoom/Rotate effects in the next PicturesToExe v5.00, I highly recommend you to buy a laptop with a good NVIDIA or ATI video card.

In v5.00 you can animate main picture of a slide only. In the next v5.10 we'll write new Visual editor fo rmore complex effects, including text effects.

In all versions of PTE, file name of an added image shown with bold font (under thumbnails)

Yes, panorama looks terrifically smooth even with slow speed. Far better than current Push effect in 4.xx Of course, all Pan/Zoom/Rotate effects can be combined together.

Brian, I fully understand and agree with you! I thought thousand times about all these questions. Because of this we wrote 2 different graphical engines in v5,00 - one which uses power of video cards and second - CPU based as earlier. If you plan to create slide-shows without Pan/Zoom you will able to turn on second engine - it reliable as earlier, because it doesn't use video acceleration - only CPU. After first beta, which will be ready soon, please say us about all moments. However concerning reliability of new graphical engine which uses DirectX. We've used minimum of functions and spent a half of year to write, I believe reliable code. Currently I can say that after past 4 months of testing of this new engine on various 9 PCs, it NEVER crashed or freezed up Windows. So even not ready earlier code with possible errors always worked fine everywhere. p.s. thanks, Maureen. I missed to describe this moment

Please vote what video card installed in your main PC where you work with PicturesToExe. For ideally smooth Pan/Zoom/Rotate motion effects in 1280x1024 PicturesToExe will require something like NVIDIA Geforce 3/4 or ATI Radeon 8500/9000/9200 with 64 MB of video memory. CPU doesn't matter at all. Only good video card for fine Pan/Zoom/Rotate. If you create usual slide-show without Pan/Zoom/Rotate effects, it should works fine even on Geforce 1 or 2 or ATI Radeon with 32 MB video memory and with any CPU, as I today tested. Additionally we plan to write special code for old video cards, so we think that PTE slide-shows without motion effect will work fine on any PC as earlier. Brian, in another topic you suggested to keep v4.43 on the site as alternate version. Yes, we will keep it on the web site. But we also will try to make v5.00 suitable for wide range of PCs. (Maybe only except of Pentium II/III 400-500 MHz and earlier.) We're trying to keep PTE as simple and reliable product. v5.00 will look exactly as earlier, same 1,5 MB, very small EXE slide-show engine (even smaller than earlier) and fast work. It's very important for us to hear your opinion concerning any changes in PicturesToExe and we open and ready for discussion (and add some changes, if it necessary). p.s. when we added Fade effect 4,5 year ago, it worked ideally only on top-end PCs (Pentium III 1000-1500 Hz). Now almost every slide-show uses this effect and it works fine.

I grateful to Ken and to you for letting me about all past problems with the forum!

1) Uploading should works now. 2) Email topic feature also workable now. 3) Posting counter is working now, as Invision technician wrote to me right now.

Please read http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....opic=3667&st=40

The first beta will be available for all soon.

Tom, if I show demo of slide-show right now (without giving beta), you will not able to wait at all after it

Thanks for letting me know. I just sent new request to Invision about this current problems.

We'll have a first internal alpha of PTE v5.00 within several days (with minimal features, but workable Pan/Zoom/Rotate with Fade effect). So first beta will be soon.

Yes, the forum was moved to another server today. It's still Invision, but absolutely new server. I hope it will work better now. And I apologize about this long down time.

We are continiously asking Invision for this problem. And if it will not be solved soon, we will change forum hoster.

The problem with false detection of slide-shows created in PicturesToExe v4.30 was solved yesterday. Please update your AVG antivirus. Here is response from AVG developers: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for your email. This False-positive is probably corrected in the latest AVG Update. Please download all available AVG updates and try to check if the problem persists. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Invision wrote me: ------------------------------------- Apologies for the inconvenience, this should now be resolved. We are working to resolve the difficulties with this server ASAP. Thanks! Stewart Campbell Senior Technician & Conversions Specialist