mhwarner

Gary, I enjoyed your show very much. I've never been to that part of the world and your photos make me want to plan a trip there. Maybe someday ... I loved the opening titles and also the aerial shots. I also liked the shot from inside the tour bus looking out. It helped to set up the story, so to speak. I would however, echo the comments of other posters that the show was a bit too long. Perhaps not too long as much as too many repetitive images. For instance, I might suggest cutting a couple of the aerials, and in the little parade or pageant through the streets, I would cut it back to one or two images. Also, some of the fish pictures could perhaps be eliminated. The music seemed quite appropriate although there was one pretty large silence between two music pieces where I began to wonder if somehow there wasn't enough music to finish the show (eventually the next piece began). I think the thing that I found most bothersome about the show, however, were the transitions between horizontals and vertical images. I know that this has been addressed previously in this forum (probably ad nauseum), but I found it very disconcerting. I am not recommending cutting out the vertical images because most of them were quite interesting and did add to the show, but I would suggest using a transition where there is a horizontal background of say a previous related image and then one or two verticals displayed on top of that. A few that come to mind were a photo of an interesting brick wall where you could then overlay a couple of vertical related street or stairway shots, some of the cat pictures and also some of the fish pictures. There are many ways to do this including having the verticals "fly" in or maybe just have them slowly appear one after the other, or at the same time (through the use of masks or just simple opacity in the object editor). There have been many examples posted here over the years and it used to be more of a hassle to set up using photoshop or an image editor, but PTE now makes it pretty easy to do within the program. I can also sympathize with your comments about having so many photos to pull from and the difficulty in editing them down to only a few. I just returned from an almost 4-month road trip from Arizona to Alaska and back and have somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 photos. I am trying to figure out how to best organize and present even a small portion of those photos. Anyway, I do hope you'll take these comments in the spirit of constructive criticism and I very much appreciate your sharing this show. I am looking forward to seeing the next segments.

Gary, You forgot the link to the download but I found it on Beechbrook: http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/downloadfile.asp?id=1874

Hi George, There is another free template with a slightly different version of a book effect in this thread: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10820&view=findpost&p=70285. You can find a brief discussion on making an album, together with a small (free) template here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10877&st=0&p=70548entry70548 If you are doing this merely as a learning exercise and have more time than $$, these two free templates would be helpful. However, to save yourself a bit of aggravation and a whole lot of time, for minimal expenditures, you can buy one or more excellent "book with turning pages" templates from Dom's web store or from Barry Beckham's site. None are very expensive in US dollars and for me were well worth the savings in time. Any of these purchased templates allow you to modify to your heart's content. For any of these templates you can download sample shows made from the templates first to see which might suit your needs before making a purchase. Dom's Templates: http://www.thedom.fr/index.php?option=com_digistore&controller=digistoreProducts&task=view&pid=64&cid=1&Itemid=58 http://www.thedom.fr/index.php?option=com_digistore&controller=digistoreProducts&task=view&pid=6&cid=1&Itemid=58 http://www.thedom.fr/index.php?option=com_digistore&controller=digistoreProducts&task=list&cid=1&Itemid=58 (Complete list) Barry's Book Templates: http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/downloads/templates/wedding/wedding16_10.htm http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/downloads/templates/oldbook/oldbook16_10l.htm http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/downloads/templates/template_list.htm (Complete list)

Xaver (or whoever you are since you say Xaver doesn't exist), I very much enjoyed your Hazy Days slideshow, in spite of the fact that I didn't understand any of the German titles or narration. The pictures pretty much spoke for themselves and the voice of the narrator (yours?) was quite pleasant, even though I have no clue what was being said. I particularly liked the stork pictures and those of the narrow streets with the colorful house fronts. I'm not sure that the "disappearing" people added anything to the show, though. Some of the architectural angles were interesting and I suspect a few were caused by either the lack of a wide angle lens or the inability to move away far enough to capture the buildings regardless. I did like the vertical panorama of the one church building. Perhaps you might consider editing a few of the photos to slightly remove the "keystoning" effect. I was also impressed with the introductory slides. I liked the title animation and I thought the whole map sequence was a good addition to the show and well done. My only real negative comment was that I thought a few of the photos were a bit too heavily processed in that HDR-like (sort of metalic) manner that seems to be so popular these days. The show is definitely a keeper for me and sometime I'd love to read a brief translation of the title, location, and narrative in English. Thanks for sharing this and I hope it will bring many comments as I will be interested to hear what others think of it as well.

Thanks Ronnie! I downloaded from your site with no problems. Don't know what was happening with Mediafire as I tried again several times and never got the download to start. In any case, I enjoyed your show. It looks like the event was great fun. I especially liked the horse event photos. You have some nice shots of the jumping. With regard to the animation, I honestly cannot say that it added a great deal to the show for me. I found that seeing so much of the white background as the images "flew" away was a bit distracting but that's just my opinion, of course. Thanks for sharing the show and for adding the additional download.

Hi Ronnie, Would love to watch your show but after trying to download both versions both yesterday and today from Mediafire, I haven't had any luck. Even after clicking the various "download" buttons, it never gets to the actual point of downloading. I will have to say (and this is not only to you but others as well who use Mediafire), when I see that someone has posted a slideshow there, I typically do not even bother to try to download it as it is a PITA to do so. I guess I am wondering why folks without their own server/account capability don't just use Bill's free and always easy-to-use Beechbrook capability he so generously provides?

Thanks Barry. Great explanation and lovely photos. You've got some beautiful scenery there "down under". I especially enjoyed the beach/sunset(sunrise?) photos.

Nicely done, Ronnie! My only comment is that I personally would have preferred to see the text and pictures reversed. My eye was always initially drawn to the text page as each page turned, and I had to refocus to concentrate on the pictures. If the photo was on the right-hand page, I think my eyes would have focused on the picture first and then I would have glanced at the text to read it. I guess it all depends which item is most important in the presentation. If it is the text and the photos are more of an illustration, then your arrangement would make sense. Just personal preference, of course. Thank you for sharing this and I look forward to seeing your PDF file of instructions.

Charlie, Very imaginative and extremely well done! I never cease to be amazed by the cleverness and talent of some of the members of this forum. I have enjoyed "Jazz" as I have many of your other shows. When I watched your "Couleurs" show a few years ago, I thought perhaps it would be difficult to achieve a higher level and greater quality of animations, but you have done so with "Jazz". Thanks so much for sharing this show. I will keep it and watch it often when I need inspiration for creating my own shows. P.S. You also have a lovely website as well. Very nicely designed!

I know this can't be something widespread or somebody else would have mentioned it long ago. I have been creating a show in version 6.04. When I clicked on the Timeline button at the bottom to do some work, it never opens and I get the following two error messages "Division by Zero" and "Floating Point Division by Zero". I thought I had lost my project but I was able to save it. I closed PTE then reopened and the error message kept coming up as I moved the cursor around the screen. I finally realized I could click on the "Slides" button and the error would go away. But I cannot get the timeline to open (and the error messages are consistent whenever I click on the Timeline button. I tried reinstalling PTE but it makes no difference. I found one reference in the forum here http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10607&view=findpost&p=70278 to "Division by Zero" but it was supposedly resolved. I tried it with several different small projects where all files were present and it happens every time. Have I done something wrong? Thanks in advance for any help. I am running Win XP with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 graphics card. Update: I just loaded 6.5 beta 1 and I have no problem with it regarding the timeline. Strange.

Thanks for the heads up Lin! The software looks really interesting. I have downloaded the trial to play with.

Andrew, Thanks for a very interesting and well-done presentation. I believe many of us typically think of PTE as a medium for presenting slideshows of photographs we or others have taken. You have cleverly exploited the program to bring to life a wonderful collection of memorabilia that many of us might not otherwise have seen. Thanks for bringing it to us!

Maureen, My connection is horrible at the moment so I will reply here for both Parts 1 & 2 of your Pyrenees shows. I thoroughly enjoyed both of them! The photography was incredible and I very much liked the mix of scenery/landscapes with close-up details. I especially liked the many window/door details in Part 1 as well as the painted frying pans! Part 2 was just amazing. I felt as if I were standing right there on the mountain with you as you took the pictures. (I also liked the purple door image.) While this looks like a place I would really enjoy visiting, I'm not sure I will ever make it in person. But your slideshows have at least given me the opportunity to see the scenery through the eyes of a masterful photographer. Thanks again for sharing these lovely shows. I'm hoping there will be a Part 3.

Chris, Nice little show. Would love to see the full-screen PTE executable.

It seems to me that the only difference between what you are suggesting and what has been suggested by Dom and nobeefstu is that you have saved your files to a zip file and they suggest creating a template. As far as I can tell there is no difference in the end result. The bottom line is that you have to use some sort of consistent naming convention for the underlying photos and music in order to easily replace them with a different set. If you want to get really clever, you could just name your photos with a convention like "johnsmith013110_01" etc. and then edit the .pte file directly with a text editor and change all references of "johnsmith013110" to "susiebrown020110" and rename all of the slides for the new project as "susiebrown020110_01", "susiebrown020110_02" etc. Then regardless of whether you store your backups as .zip files or in a series of "template" folders you don't have a zillion "pic_01", "pic_02" files and can easily relate the underlying slide files to a client or event.

Hi Michel, If I understand correctly, you are just using simple slides (without animation or additional objects) and you want them NOT to resize. If that is correct, look again at the picture attached above by Ronniebootwest. It does in fact limit the resizing. So for instance if you choose "Fixed size of slide in pixels" and set it to 1920 x 1200 and you resize all of your slides (OUTSIDE of PTE), then on a wide-screen monitor, those pictures would totally fill the screen. If, however, you have one or two slides in the show that are only 1024 x 768, those slides will NOT fill the screen but will be shown at their original sizes. If I were to watch that same show on my laptop monitor which has a maximum resolution of 1400 x 1050, then your show would still fill the screen, EXCEPT for the slides you have sized at 1024 x 768. They would still have black (or whatever background color you have chosen) borders. Again, if you are not using object animations (as opposed to the standard transitions), then you make the setting once for the entire show. I believe what Xaver suggested is more relevant to using multiple objects on a slide and animating that slide in the O&A window. I hope this helps and I'm sorry if I misunderstood what you are asking.

Thanks Dom! I did get the basics of the "page turning" animation working after Peter's suggestion but have gotten pulled off to another project for the moment. Your templates are always so elegant and professional (and instructive!) that I will definitely be on the lookout for your notification email when it is posted. At least now that I know how it is done, it will be easier to make any customizations I might want to do. Also, thanks for the reply Wideangle. I have used the page curling transitions on the last "album" show I did, but I think the new 3D rotations are just a bit more professional looking. I have Dom's other album templates but the demo he mentions above is the template I was waiting for.

Thanks Peter! I thought I had tried that but apparently I didn't get the center point close enough to the edge (or it was the center point of the wrong rectangle). Anyway that worked. I appreciate your help!

I am trying to do a 3D rotation and not having much luck. What I want to do is make a book-like animation, but I don't want to rotate my image from the middle (similar to the "My Little Book" template that was posted) but rather from the left hand side of the image so that I am essentially seeing only half of the book. Is there some setting I am missing to modify the point of rotation? I want the rotation to take place from the left-hand side of the image instead of the center. I have set the 3D Y parameter to -180 and I have tried moving the little center point dot back and forth, but so far I'm not having much luck. I got it to work (sort of) but it is very jerky and ugly and I needed lots of keyframes. If somebody could point me in the right direction, I would be most appreciative. I am attaching a zip file with a single slide project to provide an idea of what I am attempting. I know that Dom did a similar thing in his last album demo so I assume it can be done. Unfortunately, Dom is far more skilled than I am. I would have just purchased his template to save the aggravation, but unfortunately, he never created one. Thanks in advance.RotatePageMW.zip

A wonderful show, as usual! The colors and the light you captured were magnificent. Really stunning images. You are fortunate to live near such spectacular scenery and to have the eye and the photographic talent to transform it into a show that I'm sure many of us will look at again and again. You should be proud of the show .. proud enough to put your name in the closing credits! Well done!

If you get it working on the BluRay player as well, I would love to hear more specific details on the steps taken and the software used from start to finish. Thanks in advance.

Hi Colin, Not sure how the photos in the show were sized, but on my 24" monitor, some were a bit pixelated. You might think about limiting the size of the show to a specific size rather than letting it expand to fill all size monitors. The other thing I noticed is that many of the photos could have benefited from a bit of parallel correction for the "inward leaning" caused by tilting the camera in an attempt to get it all in. The music was well chosen and I did like the way you transitioned to/from the vertical/portrait orientation shots. Thanks for sharing this.

Davy, I really liked Fractal Worlds. Beautiful colors, of course, and it was very relaxing to watch. It was a bit like being in a very expensive jewelry store or glass gallery. It looked great on my 24" monitor. I wish I had time to play with some of the fractal software myself, but there are not enough hours. Thanks for sharing this.

This is getting ridiculous! Cici posted a show here and by doing so -- based on past practices and traditions in this particular forum -- he invited comments and/or criticism. Some people liked his show, some people did not. Cici was apparently offended by the comments of those who did not. (I was one of those who did not but refrained from posting my comments as they were pretty much in line with what others said and it became obvious quickly that the OP did not want to hear any criticism.) As others here (and in many other forums I frequent) have pointed out, without facial expressions, tonal expressions and body language, it is often easy to take offense to the written word when the same words spoken in person might not raise emotions. In this particular situation, I suspect that native language differences may also be an issue. While it would be very nice for us all to take extensive time in crafting our postings so that they are totally unambiguous and completely polite and contain no possibility of offending somebody, that is not likely to happen. Most of us don't have that much time. We are all grownups here. My opinion is that if you post a show here in this forum, you are tacitly agreeing to accept comments -- good, bad or indifferent. Take those comments for what they are worth. Learn from them or ignore them. It's your choice. But don't try to change people's opinions. And don't get into pissing contests with those who may not share your feelings or attachments to a particular show. I don't believe any of the comments expressed here, regardless of anyone's interpretation, were petty, mean, small minded or derogatory. Nor were they politically incorrect. It did not appear that any of the comments were meant as personal attacks, either, until the OP turned them into such. If you (anyone who frequents here) don't want comments, post your show with something like "Here's a show I have created. Please do not comment. I like it and I don't care whether you do or not." You are sure to win many friends here. NOT. Otherwise, post it on Beechbrook and let people find it. Or just send a link via email to your friends. I believe that most of us who do post slideshows (or frequent this forum on a regular basis) learn from the comments (positive or negative) -- those made on our own shows as well as the shows of others. I would hate to see that facility go away because people decide that it is not worth the effort of commenting for fear that they will be attacked for their opinions. Could we just let this thing die and move on to posting slideshows and learning from each other? Thanks!

Hi Jeff, My thought is that most people post their slideshows on Beechbrook or Mediafire or some other free download site because they don't have a place (or the bandwidth) to do it elsewhere. Unless you are running your own server or have a service provider who doesn't charge a fortune for bandwidth useage or server space, you have limited options. I prefer to post on my own site (as apparently Lin and some others do). I feel it gives me just a bit more control and security over the shows I post rather than uploading to somebody essentially unknown site. I have no qualms, of course, posting to Bill's Beechbrook site and have done so occasionally, but I figure why burden his server when he is providing such a wonderful free service and there are obviously others who really need to take advantage of it. Mediafire has become less of an annoyance to download from, but if I couldn't post on my own site, I would probably use Beechbrook. I'm not sure what limits Bill has set as far as size of uploads, but I've downloaded some pretty big shows from there, so I would think the limits are pretty high.