alrobin

Bill, welcome back! PTE-5 slideshow of the Emerald Isle coming up soon??

Yes, there is very little shimmer on the pan version. It is more noticeable on the zoomed version - probably because the lines are sharper, and also they are not changing position as quickly as in a pan so tend to "jump" back and forth, producing a sort of "moire" pattern effect.

Cor, Thanks for the feedback - it's encouraging to hear that even with very large images, the pan and zoom in PTE v.5 seemst to play well on even the "older" pc's, without a lot of extra video RAM. If one is careful, therefore, not to overlap a transition with a PZRO action, and does not have many such actions happening at once, most v.5 shows should play quite smoothly on most "new" pc's. I didn't think I would experience this, but personally, now when I watch an older show made with version 4, I keep wanting to see a slight bit of motion on certain slides. Not a lot, but just a touch, depending of course on the nature of the show. I think, like fine scotch, these new effects are an acquired taste.

Mary, Thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear it works in at least one installation of Excel 2003. Wonder why Judy's doesn't open it.

Giel, I watched your show on the old sailing ships and enjoyed it very much. I like the effect with the cannon blasting off (and the mermaids, too, of course!) Just a note for those who want to examine the show in more detail: by pressing the space bar it is possible to pause the show, and then forward through the slides at one's own will (without the effective accompanying music, of course). Thanks for posting this show for us to see!

Thanks to those of you who tried out the Adjustor Model - it looks like it may not compatible with Excel versions 2003 and later - that's the way it is with Microsoft and their Visual Basic. They did that to me with Excel 2000 vs 97, too, and I had to make a new model. But I don't have a need to keep current any more, so version 2000 is probably the last one I will use (sorry Judy and Dom, and anyone else using the later versions). Thanks, Ken, too, for testing, and to Dom, Hartmut and Jeff for your kind words! Ken, I opened all 3 of your pte files with no problems. Maybe JC will get his "SY(P)" updated after v.5 is "finalized".

Maybe someone else with the same version of Excel as Dom could give it a try.

Hi, Dom, It's possible that there is an incompatibility with the latest version of Excel, which I don't use - no one else has complained about it yet, though, and I just tested the version listed, and it still works for me. Are you trying to open an "exe" file, perhaps? It only works with the project ".pte" files. By the way, I have posted the latest version (#2) of the model on my web site, http://www.alrobinson.com/av/technology1.htm . The only change is that it shows the slides with O&A actions when you first open it, instead of after the first calculation. Otherwise it works exactly the same as before. Ciao, Al

Lin, Thanks for the info. I was wondering whether this technology had been picked up yet. I'll check out the "Autopano Pro". John, I changed my mind - HERE is a more elaborate version - a sort of figure-8 stroll through the town. I think I like this version best. Thanks for the tip! However, with the additional objects in O&A (all empty "frames"), I had to fix the beginning and ending so that the dissolves in and out were complete before the pan started. One thing I have noticed in doing these is that when "smooth" acceleration/deceleration is used, the opening and closing slide transitions seem to have a slightly less-noticeable effect on the smoothness of the PZR effects as they take a little longer to "get going".

Andrew As you know, I used the UBC "autostitch" program (it's a free demo, but after 30 days I found that I can simply delete the program and download a new copy from www.autostitch.net ). I used plenty of overlap between the images. The only problem I had was in the sky area - it went from light to darker and back to lighter a couple of times, so I had to do some cloning to make it uniform. Otherwise, I thought the stitching and exposure compensation were handled quite well. Of course, not much was moving in the image, except for a few people and automobiles, and they were far enough away that any distortion is not noticeable. I just threw all the images into a single folder, adjusted the desired output size, and pressed the start button - it took about 3/4 of an hour to complete the process, which I thought was quite reasonable considering the number of images involved. I'll have to give PTGUI a try. One drawback with the free demo is that it only accepts and outputs to jpeg format.

Igor, I have revised my website since PTE 4 - I have started to add tools & tips to the new AV technology page, and will be adding more once things are finalized. The address is: http://www.alrobinson.com/av/technology1.htm .

It's useful to note, too, that you can use "shift-click" on the "handles" to change just the width, or just the height of the button.

Freddy, Welcome to the Forum! I have converted a number of analogue 2- and 3- projector shows (and I still have a number of them to do). It is a lot of work, but worth it in the end. The steps I follow are these: 1. Scan all of the transparencies, and name them with sequential numbers (e.g. "_001xxxx"), where xxxx is an optional text descriptor. Then they will appear in the file list in PTE in the right order. 2. Try to find the original music (if they are synched to music), and convert it to "MP3" format (using the free audio editor, "Audacity", or some similar program). 3. Bring all of the images and the music into PTE, and put together a digital AV sequence. 4. Use PTE to burn the finished show to DVD. Best of luck - hope you have lots of patience!

Thanks, Dom - you're welcome! John, Probably not - it's really just a test and demo of the capabilities inherent in PTE v.5, to show the potential of the program, and also the possibilities with panoramas. I wouldn't use such a long panorama in an actual AV sequence unless it were for record purposes. Thanks for the feedback, though!

Andrew, I posted an example of a zoomed 25-image construction from the Brasov images here on my web site (7 Mb). I also posted a similar combined panned and zoomed version (11 Mb) from the full 57 images. In the former, the main image is approx. 4000 x 3000, and in the latter, 11,000 x 3000 pixels. PTE seems to handle them with no problem. It's interesting, though, that in the zoomed version, particularly, since the lines of the buildings are sharper and finer at the beginning, there is a lot more shimmer. This is largely because of the interpolation going on, and the fact that many of the straight lines are only one or two pixels in width, thereby contributing uncertainty in just where to draw them as they move from one spot to another. Thus they tend to jump back and forth with the slow movement of the image. Once the image is larger, the lines consist of more pixels in width, and this "uncertainty" in interpolation is less noticeable.

Hi, Philippe, Welcome to the Forum! I see we're almost neighbours! A while ago I posted a spreadsheet model which allows for examining PTE v.5 project files, and is useful, particularly with large shows such as yours, for identifying and fixing timing problems, etc. If you have MS Excel 2000 or better, you can download this model from THIS LINK. If you are not familiar with Excel, or don't have access to this version of Excel, send me the project file without any images or music, and I'll run it through Adjustor for you. My email address is alrobin @ alrobinson.com (skip the spaces), but I can't accept large files.

Andrew, I did just that when we were over in Romania a couple of years ago - we were staying in an old Roman/medieval city called Brasov, and my wife and I hiked up to the top of a nearby mountain where I photographed the whole panorama with a 400 mm lens - 57 images in all, hand-held! (the lens is a Nikon VR lens, so that helped). I then stitched all 57 images together using the "Autostitch" program from UBC (the one that you alerted us to a while ago), into an image 12,000 x 3,000 pixels (it made a fantastic print, 4 feet by 10 inches, I might add). I then resized and cropped the image down to about 5000 x 1500 (just enough to leave room for a bit of vertical pan) and tested it out in PTE - it was still very smooth. I like to use this in discussions with film die-hards as an example of what can be done with digital technology - it is possible to photograph a subject in digital format with a 35-mm camera that will rival a print from the world's largest large-format film camera! Here is how all 57 images look when arranged in order. (Lin's fine example is much sharper than mine, by the way).

Pete, That's fortunate for Proshow - each program has at least one are where it does something different and/or better than the competition - that's the nature of software, and anything else, for that matter. I have successfully called an AVI file using the "external file" feature in PTE. If your file system is set up to recognize AVI files and assign a player program, then it should work quite well. - the only drawback is that there is no way to close the AVI file from within PTE, but in some situations this may not be a problem. In my case, I was quite content to manually close it, and get on with the program.

Pete, 5000 seconds is 83 minutes - if you leave that long between slides, then you might find that your audience is either asleep, or has left the auditorium. But, if that is not long enough, you can put two slides of the same image back to back, and get yourself 10,000 seconds. IMHO, the new beta 5 offers more manual control over shows, and more elegantly, than v.4. (e.g. pause feature, looping feature for menus, more button features, etc.).

Peter, A few years ago, Boxig, one of our Forum members, developed a system for adding a Flash movie to the front of a PTE show. It's called "FlashMe3", and can be downloaded from his website: http://www.thailandphotoalbum.com/ . It takes a while to figure out, but works quite well.

Done!

Paul, Another way to preserve the original size is to select "windowed mode" in Proj. Ops. Or, you can change your monitor "resolution" (size) to be the same as your image size. But, PTE does a very good job of sizing up to a larger screen resolution.

Patrick, I agree, it does seem to be more jerky in version 5 once the time is greater than 1 second. (Note that in v.4.48 you can't set "appearance" to more than 100, but this does not make any difference to the smoothness of the effect.)

Chris, A while ago Ralph ('Hawk') posted a method for copying a slide from one show to another in PTE v.5. (See HERE). You should be able to use it to copy template slides to an existing show.

This would be an even better solution - then each track would be entirely independent of objects, keypoints, or image transitions.