LumenLux

Thank you Ken, that is now corrected. But I will have to ask you to edit your post to get rid of the "quoted" erroneous linkage. (I think that is the way it works.) How will I ever learn the 5.0 workings when I can't even link to a file?! Perseverence I guess.

I'm sorry, I was having trouble managing my web site file locations. I have just re-tested after your message and all should work by either left or right clicking on the links. Please holler again if still a problem. By the way, I still want to reply to your comments about "after having made a show like that".

I agree with Granot's suggestion but also with Lin's expressed concerns. I have appreciated those that have been able to upload the project files and slides = essentially a PTE template. But I think we all need to be understanding that it isn't always feasable. On a different direction, there may be some who can learn a lot from the .PTE text file alone, but not I. I think the other thought, of continued descriptive guidance as Lin has done such a swell job of, is most useful and appreciated. Maybe some more of us can try to share a little more that way. Probably some of our members are preparing such even as we speak. I don't mean waiting until a formal "tutorial" is produced, but just what ever anyone learns that can be written in respectively useful language. Again, thanks to those that can do this, as it takes quite a bit of time to try to "type" what one learns through explorations. As others have already pointed out, one sure way of learning a little is to just use two slides, and open the object window, set some keypoints, change the values in the animation boxes (Pan and Zoom) values, drag the items around in the visual editor window and push Play in that same object screen. It will get us started. It is a brave new world but fun to even scratch the dirt at our doorstep.

When I made my Spirits in the Sky with Beta #1, it was 109 MB file. The range of viewers responses was from "very smooth" to "very jerky" or worse. I then tried it on five other pc's and found it would not run correctly on any of them. By using Igor's suggested image dimension guidelines, I then made seven different versions using Beta #2. I would like to explain more later, but for now I am making three lighter, smaller, but complete versions of the show available. I think it may be interesting to see at what level, the show becomes playable on some of the machines that choked on the original. Shows available now, and hopefully more info and discussion later. 1. Most likely to run, but low quality photos 9 mb file 2. Larger slides, modest quality 17 mb file 3. Same dimension slides, as #2, less compression 22 mb file Remember the original sequence was 109 mb. There should be differences in quality and playability. Please share your experience if you try these.

I heard the music and thought I was going to be part of Disneyland's old Electric Light Parade. Do they still use that music? Or is this another clever nostalgia trick Ken? The show on my "best" pc runs very smooth. Two tiny "gulps" as if the panning engine needed a breath. Will try on other machines later.

Good grief Lin, you and Igor are going to put Pixar studios and maybe Disney out of business! And how will we ever have time to take our thousands of photos when now we can take two or three and create a lifetime of happiness. Good work, and useful, thank you.

I don't really think that will be necessary. My understanding is - If I don't use the new features of 5.0, I can still make it with 5.0 for all viewers. I don't expect there will be any reason to need to use 4.48 - not even to dumb it down for an older graphics card. Do we understand that the same way?

My problem with this topic is not lack of thoughts, but too many. Your topic starter Ken, and your related question (from my Spirits in the Sky effort) resulted in my making 7 different versions yesterday to try to focus my questions and experience as 5.0 Beta has been driving me. In the early stages of digital graphics I was always looking for cards that would speed up screen display of my photos and especially speed up individual PS type editing processes. As (other) Ken, points out, there was plenty of hype and promotion of graphics cards. But, when on occasion, I could get knowledgeable responses, I realized most the power and speed of the expensive cards was aimed at 3D and games, and would do relatively little to speed up adjustments in Photoshop. I think Igor's Version 5 has now changed where that power applys. As best I understand, he has cleverly directed all that 3D power so it is what we can use in the photographic sequence world. I think the single most important thing for us to all remember, and I'm sure you realize, is that no user of PTE is going to lose anything with Version 5.0 and the future! Once Igor has the complete Version, Version 5 will sing "Anything you can do, I can do better" to Version 4.48. Any old graphics card will be able to do what it always did for a PTE show, and probably better. I, like you, would like to get a better understanding of all the relationships between image size and quality and processing demands on the graphics card. When you posted your KenBurns 5.0 demo of the school class, I quickly added a large family photo of my own to your project file to try the panning feature. My photo did not seem to even show up in the PTE slide window. Yesterday, in re-visiting, I realized my photo I had inserted is a 44 MB file with dimensions of 12,000x8400! It does show up in the project window, but it takes more than a moment to appear. We all know that for 5.0, graphics card power, more is better. From a mechanics standpoint, that is clear, but not so easy with the psychological aspects. I will try to deal with that relative to your 2nd response to my Spirits in the Sky demo/trial. When I posted my Spirits sequence, of 109 MB, some members found it very smooth and others could not even run it. I then tried it on five other machines here and found none could handle it except the one I created it on. I had been excited to project the show on the big screen, but could not, as my recent but apparently graphically handicapped laptop won't run it. The jerky movements at least sometimes sync with the beat of the soundtrack. I hope someone here will help educate us about graphics cards for laptops. I know what is involved in installing a new card in a desktop pc, but what is available and what is involved if I do want to upgrade the capabiltiy in my laptop? I'm sure Igor has his end under control regarding making DVD's from Version 5, but I am wondering how that will be. If 5.0 will create DVD files that retain the smoothness and clarity of .exe shows, that may solve many of the end users without graphics-powerful pc's. In my Spirits sequence, there is an early slide of Machu Picchu where the PTE zoom value is 300. At the full zoom, the pixels are no longer perfect, but adequate. The zooming however is perfectly smooth. I had used the same photo in a DVD video (outside of PTE, in a Mac) video software of a friend. The zoom in the video gurgled and boiled all the way in. Looked like an unintentionally animated water scene. My conclusion for now is that Igor has unleashed a creative powerhouse and I look forward to learning from everyone but not expecting to be doing everything that everyone finds to do with it. With enough sharing of our experiences and thoughts, we will find what is now intimidating will be comfortable.

Very good Ian! Perfectly executed in 5.00. Not any slightest flaw in playback as far as I could see. Certainly a clever plot for a sequence. I remember the first of the story as the rockets were built about 60 miles from here. Thanks for sharing the show and Beta testing.

I'm less constructive than Ron on this occasion, but will say the presentations have very good photography in a "couldn't be better" package. I too usually like to use the full monitor screen for the photo, but I was not distracted and actually thought your background/frames were well chosen. They seem to fit your artistic orientation to life.

I only get a zip file that won't open. But am eager to see your example.

I agree with you Al - I think on all counts here. The portion of the power that I have used is mostly quite understandable. But it is one of those "the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know." But the program is very powerful whether we understand it or not. On the object tag ideas - My experience was that I would find that the "run" of the objects would often include something different than I expected. If there are multiple object points on the horizontal line, they are often very close together and hard to move a particular one without knowing which one it even is. It is nice that you can reposition the object points - slide one over the other - but then the "time sign" changes to it's position and again it is very hard to know which point is which. BUT, maybe there are other helps that I am not utilizing yet. I found the "tree" of object/image heirarchy in the lower right is useful but I still don't have it all clear. I would have "trouble" trying to deal with a certain single image because I had apparently "grouped" the images - probably by as you said, setting up sub-images. I have not thought about it yet, but Igor's demo "Fractals" - would that have been done with the layered nesting/multi levels of sub images?

Thank you Ken for enjoying. As I started out to "play" with the Beta I started to realize what a natural some of my Machu Picchu shots wih ever-changing weather, light, and perspective, might be. When I saw how well Igor's genius could work the clouds and zooms, I was quite excited. As for getting some of your own photos - just let me know when you want to go. I'v been privileged to visit Machu Picchu three times. All of these photos were from the same single day.

Do you mean, in the annimations window, if you manually move the vertical arrow back and forth that the screen action is different that when the main PTE screen runs the action? The problem I've noticed is: In the object window I have inserted keypoints and then previewed in main screen. Then when I return to the object window, the keypoints don't always show up on the line. I can slide the arrow, or push "play" and the actions will run, but I can not see the keypoints that are instructing them.

I'm sorry Jean-Pierre, if I can make a "lite" version without compromising photo quality, we will see if that makes a difference. Two "warnings" I should share from my constructing the sequence. 1. This 5.00 version is going to have most of us using "objects" much more than previous versions. This Spirits sequence of course involved the object screen on many slides. The management problem I ran into was that I was using a few photos as both "slide"and "object." PTE handled it just fine in the sequence but when I tried to make the final template, I would receive very helpful error messages. (Thank you Igor for designing in so many smart ideas. I don't know how you or anyone can think of so many of the potential pitfalls!) The problem was that as I had gone along, I had earlier created two templates with different names. Then during the rest of the construction I would pull object files from whichever template caught my fancy. But this is a "no no" because the files themselves had identical names other than the paths. So I had for instance, PicFile1776 as a slide or a couple of slides and then PicFile1776 with a different path for the object use. Then if I tried to make a new template possible by changing file names or path names, PTE could not make a project because it could not find the files. So at that point it was Show (Project) vs. Template. Ultimately the only solution I found was to edit the project.pte txt file. So, if you can follow this lengthy account, you may avoid the mess. 2. Igor, you may want to check this one out, or may already know. The project background selection will only accept colors, solid or graduated. If I tried project background as image, tiled, or fit screen, error messages and crash. Re-starting PTE would not bring back any picture. "Preview" would only play sound unless I rebooted. If you need the actuall error messages I will dig them up for you. (It may have been the "PreView3 ...Alpha" error that has cropped in earlier messages.)

Jerkiness huh - and the first comment I received via email said "Very smooth". If you have opportunity to further "test" it, we might learn something. Also, are there identifiable slides where problem is pronounced? Or is the jerkiness due to my handling of the "commands"? Personally, I only ran it on my best pc, and it was perfectly smooth but for two hiccups - and I think they are of my own error. If I do get around to reducing photo file sizes, that would give us another factor to evaluate against the jerkiness you observed. But my guess is the photos that need to remain full size are likely the ones that are already causing the bumps as you view.

For any of you that can handle a 106 mb download, my first "production" with 5.0 Beta is available at Spirits in the Sky When I can make time I will try to reduce photo file sizes and repost. But don't hold your breath. As for now, I wanted to keep photos full size so as to not add an unknown variable in trying out the zoom and pan capabilities of PTE 5.0 Comments of course are welcome!

For any of you that can handle a 106 mb download, my first "production" with 5.0 Beta is available at Spirits in the Sky When I can make time I will try to reduce photo file sizes and repost. But don't hold your breath. As for now, I wanted to keep photos full size so as to not add an unknown variable in trying out the zoom and pan capabilities of PTE 5.0 Comments of course are welcome!

On 2nd or 3rd run, at about 2 minutes, on Escape: Error #1 Error #2 appeared when I closed the error message #1. Ken, how do you make/attach the nice little thumbnails in forum posts? Memleak_result1.BMP Memleak_result2.BMP

Yup, glad you found it.

Igor, when you say "run several times" - Do you want the test show to loop over and over again? Or do you want us to Escape after each individual "run"? I have done both, on two pc's. I have only one Memory Leak failure. On the more powerful pc with the better video card, I had the failure. On the first run, approximately 20 seconds into the Music version, I pressed Escape. Memory leak error occurred. All other trials, Music or No Music, on two PC's, I have not been able to duplicate the error.

Thanks Lin and Al, your observations are right on. Both on product and on Igor. Igor is not only smart but also wise. Admittedly, brand loyalty to PTE is very easy for me as my needs have never been able to run ahead of Igor. Thank you again, Igor.

I believe an earlier post indicates the condition is knowingly the intent for ONLY this Beta stage.

Thanks lt, for your comment and your vote. The little guinea pig in the corner was not part of my meal, but by now has certainly been part of that family's nutrition. The families normally share their home with their future food. In that little house, the couple was proudly showing me the new type of "stove" that they had built in one corner. The little fire bin/stove is fueled by the droppings of the guinea pigs. A rather efficient system I'd say. A later photo in the sequence shows a Kentuck Fried Chicken (restaurant) version of guinea pig. That one appears poised in front of a wide-eyed member of our group and still sports all four legs and head. Machu Picchu is about as interesting as anyplace I have ever been. This ancient community had for uncertain reasons survived the conquests that plagued other nearby Inca establishments. Photographically, it is very stimulating. Up til now, I have been able to wander and explore there without any regulatory restrictions. In spite of the heavy tourist traffic, the fringes of the area, or early or late hours, offer some un-equaled experiences.

Igor, I report this event now after it has happened a few times. I have not been able to determine the common circumstances that may be part of it. A Beta 5 exe will suddenly apparently quit. But the task bar still shows a part of it is open. I think the task bar shows that PteViewer3 PreAlpha1 is still open. The most recent occurence still had the .exe music playing but it did not loop. When the problem happens, the Windows Task Manager shows that PteViewer3 PreAlpha1 is "Not responding." I am able to "End task" and continue all work without having to re-boot.