mhwarner

Jeff: Have just spent the last few hours downloading and watching all 4 of the shows you posted. I thoroughly enjoyed them and living in Northern Arizona, I have visited many of the same places so I can really appreciate your skills as a photographer. I was particularly impressed with the clarity of the shots from Newspaper Rock. I also loved the reflections of the red-topped mountains in your latest "Some Dreams Come True" sequence. I don't do as much hiking as I would like, so I don't often get to places like that. Canyonlands is beautiful and your photos do it justice. I even recognized the "Wooden Shoe" arch in one of the shots. I spent several days at the Sand Dunes in late August but unfortunately there was no snow (or water to wade across either). I like the way you have used gentle animations in your sequences, and I always enjoy the shots you include of your dog. I also think the music you selected was well suited to the content. Thanks for sharing these and I look forward to more shows (hopefully sooner rather than later).

Can't you just use PTE and use the Video Builder piece to "publish" it to HDVideo or video for iPad or iPhone? I think there are some postings here referencing this technique but I don't have links at the moment.

A breathtakingly beautiful place magnificently captured by your excellent photography, Maureen! The music was perfect. I will watch this show again many times and wish that someday I might travel there. It reminds me somewhat of both Newfoundland (which has much smaller mountains) and parts of Alaska. Thanks for sharing!

Success! I downloaded the latest project file and created the .exe from within PTE after setting project options to 5:4 to fill my screen vertically. It works perfectly now and I can see all the animations. I think this type of format and animation would work very well with travel/vacation slides. You did a great job on the postcards. I would love to know where you found the stamps and the various postmarks. Thanks for sharing the PTE file.

Sorry, but I don't think this slideshow is working properly for me. I have downloaded all versions including the latest. It takes 20-30 seconds to load a black screen. Then another 30 sec. to show the opening animation. The postcard animation then opens for Machu Pichu. It remains onscreen for at least 30 seconds. After that, there is no animation. The slides just sort of pop onscreen with no postcards (maybe there aren't any?) They remain on screen for close to a minute. I gave up after the pyramid. I have a fairly new quad core laptop running Windows 7-64x. All of the other slideshows with animations and video included that I have downloaded lately run fine. I downloaded the project file and could see the animations, but of course there were too many missing files to actually create anything. The animations in the PTE file look like an interesting concept and I'd love to actually see the complete show (or better yet, get a copy of the complete template).

Graham, In PTE click on the menu item "Help", then "About PicturesToExe". The dialog window which opens will display the details of your particular license (including when your license for the Deluxe features expires).

Just downloaded and installed final version of PTE 7. I am trying to change the directory where my templates are installed. I go to File\Templates\Manage Templates. I then select a different template folder from the "Browser for Folder" dialog and click "OK". I am then returned to the "Manage Templates" dialog. When I push the "OK" button to close the dialog and save my changes, nothing happens. The dialog shows "Not Responding" and PTE is completely locked up. I then have to shut it down and start over. It doesn't seem to matter which folder I choose. Sorry if this is not the correct thread to post this bug report. Follow up: Apparently performing the above action attempts to move any existing templates from the old folder to the new one. I had a lot of templates. I moved them first manually and then made the change. It worked ok then, but it still seems like a bug. Running Windows 7 64x

Hi Morasoft, Your show was a very clever use of PTE. I don't do karaoke but I sure enjoyed watching the video and listening to the music. Thanks for sharing.

Nicely done. Beautiful colors and amazing photography. Having just visited a butterfly museum recently, I know how difficult the butterfly shots must have been and the patience required to get those useable pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Igor, Regarding THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I have waited a long time for this and it will be most useful! And I very much appreciate all of your hard work on the many new features in version 7.

Maureen, I guess there's not much I can add to what's already been said, but thanks again for sharing your talents. I thoroughly enjoyed the show and, as always, am impressed by the wonderful sharpness of your photos. I very much enjoy the interspersed detail shots of windows and architectural details as well as the candid portraits of the gondoliers. Another one for my keeper file.

Mark, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your show. I did a good bit of the same trip last summer. The bears are so difficult to capture because (aside from the obvious of getting close enough from a safe position), there is often such great contrast. I did a couple of whale excursions and got a few tails and one good breech. Here is the link to a blog I did: http://www.mhwarner.com/alaska/index.htm. Although I ultimately put together a show for friends and family (2 of them actually), they were much too large to post. Anyway, thanks for sharing your show.

Andrew, I enjoyed the show and your wonderful photography. I liked the way you added the video. My only comment would be that the photos all seemed to be of slightly different sizes, which was especially obvious looking at the two pages side by side. Also, they were not always aligned evenly (i.e., the margins were not the same on many of the two adjoinging pages. I would have cropped all photos to the same size and had the same margins on both left-hand and right-hand pages. Otherwise, great show. I still hope to get there someday. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks to all for the suggestions. Just thought I would post a follow-up with my actual solution. A straight solution in Photoshop does not seem to work as PS, like PTE, has no ability to automatically do text wrapping. What I have done instead is paste my text into MS Word and used its capabilities to modify font type and size, line spacing, centering and/or alignment, as well as to set page breaks as necessary. I have about 30 "pages". I then "printed" the document to PDF (using free open-source PDF Creator). Then I went into Photoshop and opened the PDF file (PS will only bring in one page of the PDF at a time and asks you to choose which pages -- which is somewhat of an annoyance)so it has to be done multiple times. The pages are actually imported with a transparent background so it was not necessary to remove the background. I then added my shadow layer style and "saved as" a .png file. I think this method gives a lot of flexibility with regard to the stylization of text because it is possible to alter the color, bevel, shadow, or whatever interesting effects you want. The basic (and of course the original Word doc) remain intact should you need to make future changes.

Thanks for the suggestion, Dave. It's exactly what I needed!

I've searched here but haven't come up with an answer. If I've missed something please point me in the right direction. I have a project that requires me to enter large blocks of text on slides (actually just the text on a white background would be the contents of the slide). I already have an entire narrative in a text file and I need to add pieces of it to slides in between my pictures. Cutting/pasting into the PTE text box is a bit of a pain as there is no automatic word wrapping and line breaks must be entered manually to fit the format of the slide. The only thing I have come up with is to create .png files in Photoshop of the proper size with a white background and enter the text there or to enter it into a Word document and do screen captures and save to .png. (I'm thinking .png so I could take advantage of shadows in PTE or overlay the text on pictures if I decided to go that route later.) If anybody has a better suggestion, I'd love to hear it. Thanks in advance.

Hi Jeff, So glad to see you back on the road again. I've missed your shows! Southern Utah is such an amazing area and I am fortunate to live only a few hours away myself. I thought the music was a good match and I liked the video sunset at the end. I envy your minimalist travel routine. It certainly affords you the ability to camp at some scenic and solitary places. I'm more the RV type, but we do two a 4-wheel drive so we get lots of opportunity to explore the back country. Thanks again for sharing this.

Maureen, It is obvious that Mark has inherited your fine eye and photographic skills. I have watched this show 3 times already and I am still awed by the photography. The waterfalls are exquisite and he has done a fine job of capturing the silky smoothness. I loved the ruined structures (churches? abbeys? castles?). Is there some place I can read about them? However, by far my favorite photo was the hay bales in the setting sun. What gorgeous light! And, last but not least, your masterful assembly of the photos into the slideshow has done them (and your son) credit. I personally thought the music was perfect and I liked the way you took us from one season to another. You should both be very proud of what you have accomplished. Thank you for sharing it with us!

Patrick, Thanks for sharing this wonderful show of a beautiful area. The photos were top notch and the music was perfect. I especially liked one photo in particular -- the one with the church in the lower right corner completely dwarfed by the towering mountains. Outstanding job and I thoroughly enjoyed the show!

Jean-Claude, The videos were great! I watched the non-HD versions over a wireless connection and they ran very smoothly. Your English (and your tutorial style) are very understandable. I do hope that you will honor us with more tutorials. I learned a few things about the music track that I didn't know. Thanks for sharing these!

Hi Lin, Thanks for the inspiration on some ways to incorporate the new PTE features. The wolf pups were adorable! FYI, Xara Web Designer 7 was released about 2 days ago. I have downloaded it but have not yet had time to play. I did not see anything in the "What's New" regarding preloading, but hopefully it's there somewhere.

Hi Lin, The pan was very smooth on my screen also, and I have an older video card (ATI Mobility Radeon X1400). There was one slight jerk just as the house started coming into view and before the hawk "flew" across the screen. I viewed the pc wide pano version. Lovely shots of the front range.

While the size of the file in pixels is an issue I struggle with (currently my laptop, while not "old", has 2 GB of memory and is dual core, but doesn't have the speediest graphics card), the issue I find most troublesome is the crop factor. I really am not crazy about the amount of top and bottom that must be cut off to fit the 16:10 or 16:9 proportions, particularly since it is almost impossible to do a batch of images that way with some sort of automation. I find that I need to manually crop so as not to lose important parts of the image. While I love to see images (and slideshows) full-screen, most of my latest shows have ended up being 3:2 so that they only require downsizing. But if I am making a DVD for sale or for family distribution, then I tend to go with 4:3. Ultimately, it just seems impossible to come up with a one-size-fits-all show. On the subject of file size/resolution, I am currently working on a show using full-size images. The show has quite a few slow pans and zooms and seems a bit jerky on my computer. I am in the process of downsizing but am having to figure out the optimum size for the zooms so that they don't pixelate. I don't have a hard and fast rule as to what I would download, but my internet connection (like a good number of people I know and meet in my travels) is wireless (a Verizon broadband card). I don't believe it is safe to assume that most people (unless they live in metropolitan areas) have high-speed connections. I would probably balk at downloading anything over 100 MB, and would need to carefully consider even that. Another consideration is that most folks (at least those on satellite or wireless) have some sort of data download metering so they will be selective about file size maximum. (I know that most young adults probably don't give it much consideration, but then I doubt many of them are downloading slideshows.)

I really enjoyed the show but I personally would have liked to see it as two different shows. To me it seemed logical to end the first half at the end of the initial train sequence and make the part with the vineyards and grapes and historical people/festival pictures an entirely different show. (Sorry, I couldn't understand the text comments so perhaps I missed something.) Also, I don't think the outside beige frame added anything to the show. I would have preferred to see the pictures full screen. Other than that, I loved the animations. How very clever to have the passing scenery animate by the train. I think I would have made all of the animations just a bit slower. Some of them were a bit too fast to truly appreciate. The music was great and very suitable to the photography. I love riding old steam trains and this looked like a fun excursion. Thanks for taking us along.

Fantastic show, Bert! I loved it! The music was right on and the animation was perfect. I felt as if I was peering over your shoulder as you walked through the building. I am not normally a fan of overdone HDR but in this case I think it lent exactly the right touch to the photos. Which program did you use for the HDR? The only negative, and this is not directed to you, but it is so very sad to see such a magnificent building allowed to go to ruin. At least with your show, though, perhaps it can live forever. Thanks so much for sharing this interesting show. I look forward to seeing more of your shows.