Fried

This is my laptop: Sager NP9262 - Gaming Laptop - $3,067.00 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) Glossy Widescreen nVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX 1GB Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9650 3.0GHz Processor w/12M L2 Cache - 1333MHz FSB Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound 4GB (2 SODIMMS) DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (64bit Vista Required) 320GB SATA II 3GB/s 7,200 RPM Hard Drive (16MB Cache Buffer) 320GB SATA II 3GB/s 7,200 RPM Hard Drive (16MB Cache Buffer) RAID Disabled Combo 8x8x6x4x Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW 5x DVD-RAM 24x CD-R/RW Drive w/Softwares 7-in-1 Memory Card Reader (All versions of MS + SD/MMC) Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 5300 802.11a/g/n Built-in Bluetooth Wireless Smart Li-ion Battery (12 Cell)

Great feedback as usual Lin! Many thanks. 1. Compression/resolution confusion. AH HA. Yes, I've been confusing this. I am processing my NEF-->PSD-->JPEG in Bridge+Photoshop CS4. The JPEG I've been creating is 1920x1080 @ 100 Quality for the "day of presentation" show. The 1920x1080 @ 100 works pretty well on my laptop and my Optoma supports 1920x1080, which is awesome. I then have been making a second version in which I reduce the quality to 60 to keep the size down for downloading; the resolution is still 1920x1080 though so the throughput requirement really hasn't changed. Perhaps I should expand my workflow and add making a lower resolution 1080x720 version so users get a smoother experience. That would also make the downloads smaller. 2. I've not been clicking on the "anti shimmering" setting. I'll start doing so. 3. The Mac version... I will try your suggestion later this week. 4. I'll give up on the MP4 versions for now. The thing the really drew me to P2E was being able to precisely control the synch between the music and the slides, etc. I'll not release anything that compromises the quality of that. I was making my shows 800x600 until this year. With my new laptop and projector, I may been a bit overly enthusiastic and made too big of a leap to 1920x1080 for the hardware used by the majority of my users since they're all over the world and run anything from the latest and greatest to the worst of the worst.

Hi Everyone I am done with my slide shows for the year and made use of the pan/zoom as well as the MP4 output option for my Mac users. The following results are based on testing on multiple PC and Mac systems running various versions of OS. In the EXE version of shows the pan/zoom was not smooth at times but if I cut back on the amount of pan or zoom and really dropped back on the quality of the JPEG the usual EXE smoothness was achieved. You can get a good example of this starting at 0:030 in either version of the slide shows. The MP4 versions are disappointing. It seems no matter what pan/zoom settings or options I select in the MP4 creation menu, the pan/zooms are jerky. Furthermore, the latest show is exhibiting an odd artifact: after a high-speed rotation at 6:58, the images increasingly are showing a "paint" effect in their rendering not present in the EXE version and certainly not present in the original images. This effect is seen in the MP4 on both PC and Mac and in all three resolutions of the MP4 available in the creation menu. The shows are available on these links: EXE Version: http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing/Snipe/2009Worlds/Slideshow/2009SnipeWorlds_v2_EXE.zip MP4 Version: http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing/Snipe/2009Worlds/Slideshow/2009SnipeWorlds_v2_MP4.zip At this point I don't know what else to try or do. I'm not entirely happy with the pan/zoom performance but I can keep trying to work around it. The weird rendering effect in the MP4 makes it unusable and my Mac users are very vociferous.

Hi Everyone Once again I managed to defy all odds and cranked out another big hit slide show at the Snipe Nationals. Hooray! I cropped all images using 9:16, sized to 1920x1080 Medium Quality JPEGS, created an EXE, and presented it on my new Optoma projector. All was great. After I got home, I created an MP4 version at 1080x720, and it plays well on PC and Mac. You can download either version from my Snipe page under 2009 Nationals. http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing/Snipe/index.php QUESTION How do I now make an iPhone version given that I made the original at 9:16? It seems to only make 3:4.

Thanks Dave, that is what I will try when I get the "final" version put together. For those of you interested, here is a website that guides you through the process of converting your Windows Server 2008 to a Workstation. http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/ I'm double-checking the Fine-Tuning Services page now... http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpres...uning-services/

Thanks everyone, all good pointers. I've got enough to play with when I get to the event to see what will work. I usually have intermittent Internet access at the venue so I wanted to get your feedback before I got there. Oddly enough, I didn't notice the problem when I started with a larger (9600=5x1920 pixels in the horizontal dimension) image. But I added some stuff, which allowed me to reduce the size to an "odd" 7900 or so pixels thinking that would make it, in effect, pan slower, and then the problem appeared. I'm running Vista 64-bit MS Server reconfigured as a Workstation. I'll ask my IT guys if there are any Services that could be preempting that would cause the glitches. The "Workstation" configuration is supposed to give Service priority to any use app but who knows what is really going on under the MS hood. As a parenthetical comment, Vista 64-bit, Adobe CS4, mega dollar laptop... Other than a lot more pixels I don't know if anything is any better as far as effective usability is concerned. I really wish the computer industry would quit putting us through this rigamarole. I'm running the show on an Optoma TX1080 projector. I like it!

Hmmm... Okay. At the event, I eventually will be placing photos in the places currently occupied by the blue squares. If I'm still having the problem I'll adjust the quality of the JPEG downward. It appears more noticeable in the music version than the silent version. My laptop (where I first noticed the problem) is a SAGER NP9262. Sager NP9262 - Gaming Laptop 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) Glossy Widescreen nVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX 1GB Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q9650 3.0GHz Processor w/12M L2 Cache - 1333MHz FSB 4GB (2 SODIMMS) DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (64bit Vista Required) 2 X 320GB SATA II 3GB/s 7,200 RPM Hard Drive (16MB Cache Buffer) Combo 8x8x6x4x Dual Layer DVD +/-R/RW 5x DVD-RAM 24x CD-R/RW Drive w/Software 7-in-1 Memory Card Reader (All versions of MS + SD/MMC) Built-in Intel® PRO/Wireless 5300 802.11a/g/n

I'm saving it at the minimum size needed to cover the pan for the projection resolution. I am also saving it as a very high quality JPEG. It is 1.4MB in size. Concerning the system-related issues, I've ran the EXE on a wide variety of systems here in the office and it seems to glitch at the same places. Some are full-blown workstations we use for video editing, etc. I'll go through all those system-related points if there isn't an obvious issue otherwise. Attached is the EXE file. 2009SnipeNationals_v1.zip

The JPEG being panned is approx 7600w X 1080h. Presentation is 9:16, 1920x1080.

Hi Everyone Working on my new annual presentation and using the pan and zoom features for the first time. PROBLEM: Starting approx. 30 seconds into the attached presentation, I am panning a large (1.4 MB) JPEG (Credits_Montage.jpg) left-to-right for approx 20 seconds. In both the PTE Preview and the EXE version, the pan exhibits small but disconcerting glitches and catches. I've ran both the PTE Preview and the EXE on my laptop as well as my high-end workstation and it is consistently present. QUESTION: Before I try a bunch of random experiments with the artwork (I really don't want to change the animation too much), is there a simple explanation for why is this happening and what can I do to eliminate it? Is this file too big to pan? If so, what are the guidelines for that? I'm having difficulty attaching the zipped EXE. Let me know if you need it or anything else. Appreciate all the help! Fried

Does anyone know of a comparable scheme or arrangement in the US?

Hmmm... okay now I see what I did wrong. I should make the image be the final "full" size, then set the zoom on the FIRST keypoint to the desired small starting size. If I make the background blank field large enough I'm good. Thanks!

I've created my first pan and zoom effects. This is going to be so nice! I think I have the hang of how it works. Very nicely done on the UI. QUESTION Suppose I have a graphic object (like a logo) embedded on an otherwise blank field, created in Illustrator and saved as a GIF. I'd like to create an animation that starts with the logo very small and centered and then zoom in on it until it almost fills the screen. I made one version that starts with the logo at 50% in size of the desired end size and then applied a 200% zoom. It starts to look a bit fuzzy near the end. How would you do something like this for a logo that starts at 10-20% of the final intended size?

Okay, thanks Dave, we were typing simultaneously. Hmmm... how now to get a smoother transition than that harsh jump cut to a totally black screen...

Using v5.6, I've opened an old P2E with the desired opening transition and the opening transition is not the same as in previous versions. Help!

Hi Dave What is odd is that I've been able to do this in the past without resorting to the solution you suggest. I can't remember what I did though!

Hello Everyone My annual revisit to P2E! I'm having trouble getting my first slide to open with a transition. The first slide is a black blank slide. The effect I'd like is, suppose my EXE is on my desktop, when I launch it, I want the first slide to transition in such a way that it appears like a black screen is descending from the top the bottom over my desktop (kind of like a black curtain descending over my desktop.) Also, I'm having something happen I thought didn't happen before but maybe I never really noticed it. Suppose I have P2E open working on a P2E project. I have the "image" folder open for the project and I've dropped a few of the images into the presentation timeline. Suppose now I go into PhotoShop or some other app and edit one of those images I've used. I've noticed the image folder window in P2E updates to reflect the changed files but the preview or "preview from slide" features still use the older (cached?) version of the image. The only way I've found to get P2E to actually use the updated image is to close and reopen the project. Is this correct? I'm really looking forward to using the multi-platform capabilities in the latest version. It has been my #1 request: a Mac version! Yea!! I'd love to find the time to use the pan and zoom feature but I'm --- as usual --- under the gun for time. Alas! Many thanks to all!

Thank you LumenLux and thanks Ralph for the offline suggestions! I am not familiar with the Navigation option but sounds like something I need to check out. On this last show, I just made a photo album available (I use JAlbum and included that on the same page with the show download.) It would be good, however, for viewers to be able to do things like pause and continue so they can explain or discuss something. My two other slideshows are on my Snipe page (see Slideshow links under 2006 and 2005 Nationals): http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing/Snipe/index.php At the time they looked great but looking at them now, I can see room for improvement. It is a learning process, which is one of the things that keeps it fun. One thing I learned was to pack more slides into the show. Many people watch the show repeatedly and something that may flash by initially they watch for and catch over time, which seems to make it a bit more fun. Following a suggestion made here concerning the first show, I now crop to the same aspect ratio. Fortunately, my "yield" has gotten to the point I can do this. I do not charge anything for the show and sailors can order prints at a nominal cost. Two reasons: my primary goal is to develop one-design sailing and my own portfolio, and the second is the issue of music royalties. I am the President of a data sevices company by day and have little interest in becoming a professional photographer (with all the attendant headaches) although several of my photos have been published or used by gear manufacturers for promotional purposes and for those I charge normal free lance rates. In thinking about "whats next" I think based on Ralph's suggestions I'm going to try over the winter to do a widescreen HDTV show that is more like a class promotional piece and less of an event piece. Both classes are really wanting something like that. There is also interest in a calendar. Too much to do!

Me too! That sounds fantastic. Okay, thats my goal. I just need to learn how to get there from where I am. I guess the first step/question is do I recrop/resize the original digital negatives to produce 1920x1080 jpegs? The psd files are currently cropped 4:3 in Bridge preserving original pixels and then I use save for web to resize and produce 1024x768 JPEG for P2E. I bought ULead DVD 5 a few weeks ago. Tonight I used it to make an MPEG out of the slideshow. That should mollify some of my Mac users. The slideshow has been downloaded 430 times since the afternoon of the 10th. An LCD projector was used at the trophy dinner.

Wow, such terrific words and encouragement from everyone! It really makes me feel good. Great motivation! Thanks! I like all the ideas for pan/zoom sketched out by thedom. Also, because I've decided to stay with the 4:3 crop on all slides, there are shots I don't use in the slideshow because they're really suited to being cropped as a panorama or portrait. If I could crop those as 4:3 and then use the pan/zoom to traverse the area of the image that is important, then I could probably use some of those. For example, starting line shots don't have the impact in the show they could have if I could traverse the line of boats with a pan. The D2X takes 12MP so I've got lots of pixels to work with on some of the scenic or setup shots. Beside the learning curve, the problem I've got is very limited time at the venue after shooting all day, downloading, sorting, editing... so I'm not sure how much I can squeeze in. I definitely need to figure out how to make the DVD. What I really want to do is make a DVD that has not only the slideshow but all the photo albums for a given year as well. I'm not sure how to approach such a project. To the question about how I synchronize the slides and the music, I thought it might be useful to expand a bit on my workflow to let others know what is working for me as well as get feedback for improvement. 1. Starting about six weeks before the event, I start looking for music. I know the location and I try to pick something with a bit of local flavor. I need four pieces: a fanfare, a cool or bouncy song, a mellow one, and a high energy one. I have a background in music that favors jazz and classical so that influences my selection. I try to avoid well known songs and I watch the lyrics (which eliminates a huge number of songs) because the audience is very diverse. I find most of my music on www.cdbaby.com 2. I use Audacity to create a single music track. Usually this involves cuts, fades, and gaps. In this show every piece except Mr. Big Stuff was edited. This takes me about 3 hours to get it perfect. 3. I then make a CD of the sound track and listen to it in my car for several days. I make sure I like the length of the gaps and transitions and that the cuts don't destroy the compositions. I also start visualizing the show. The mellow section is always the most difficult because the image is up there longer and the music is "down" so the images and transitions have to be very compelling. 4. Once I'm satisifed with the soundtrack, I create a "dummy" show using old slides I've numbered 001.jpg to xxx.jpg and start inserting the timing marks and transition effects. Every slide is set manually. Its very tedious but the prior visualization helps alot and I've usually got a pretty good idea by now what I want to see. Again, my music background helps since once I get the first few transitions in place, I can usually pick up the pattern for the rest of a song. My physics background also helps since I can sort of pick up the pattern in the waveform. This takes me about 3-4 hours and I work on it in chunks over a weekend. I respectfully submit this is an area of P2E that could benefit from improvement. 5. Now I watch this show for about a week. I make adjustments and monitor the slide count. I can generate about 40 high quality photos per day at an event. When I'm happy with the dummy show, I write a script in a spreadsheet, notating which slides have special lyrical content or musical emphasis, and the ones that are credits, landscapes, setups, etc. If I'm on schedule this is all done prior to my arrival at the event. 6. During the event, at the end of each day, I download all my RAW files (500-900 per day), immediately discard about half and get down to 40-60 selects. In addition to the daily shooting, early in the week I'm working pretty hard to get the credits sorted out and the landscape shots scouted out and captured. The credits involve alot of work. I set those up in Illustrator and place the .psd files as needed. The landscapes make for some late nights and early mornings. 7. Each night I correct color, straighten, and crop in Bridge. I save all as .psd files and clean up blemishes and fix contrast or shadow/highlights in Photoshop. Including the downloading and ranking, all this takes about 3-4 hours each evening. I have Photoshop automation I run overnight that opens each .psd and then removes noise (Noise Ninja), sharpens, and converts to a 1024x768 jpeg. At this stage, I've got three folders: a NEF, a PSD, and a JPEG all containing files with the same naming convention, along with the fourth folder "Images" containing the sequentially named dummy jpegs P2E is using. (I also make backups of all folders every morning on my portable drive). 8. Usually about the midway point in the event, I start replacing files in the "Images" folder with files from the JPEG folder. I look at my script, decide where I want a particular slide (or range of slides) to go in the show, rename (in Windows or Bridge, not in P2E) those in the JPEG folder to match their new names in the Images folder and then overwrite the dummy slide files with the actual event jpeg files. I keep doing this throughout the week until all the dummies have been replaced. I have found this is the safest and simplest way to keep everything as setup since by this stage I'm running on fumes and prone to making mistakes. 9. The evening prior to the screening I try to have the entire show finished. Then the day of the show I can choose and insert a few winners or not. In this case, we had very little wind until the last day and so I wound up dropping 50 slides into the show at the very end of the event. Ten minutes to spare.

The link below leads you to the page from which you can download either a high or low resolution version of the slideshow I photographed and produced for the 2006 Star World Championship held in San Francisco Sep 28-Oct 8th. http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing...eshow/index.htm The show was initially seen at the awards banquet and is now being viewed all over the world via download. P2E makes it possible! This is my 3rd slideshow. I used v 4.48 and I'm looking forward to upgrading my P2E skills so I can take advantage of the new pan and zoom capabilities. Demand for a DVD version has been high for all my slideshows but I haven't taken the plunge as of now. Any comments or suggestions are most welcome. Thank you everyone for such a terrific tool and for all your help! Fried Elliott Dallas

Hi Everyone Thanks for your wonderful replies. Denwell's answer was the answer. Whew! That is a little "feature" that should be squeezed onto the screen or into a tooltip somewhere, I think --- unless I missed it in which case that isn't too surprising either. Part of my problem was that day was my 51st birthday and not only was I suffering from CRS, it was a bad day to be reminded of it. LOL I'm working on my 3rd "big" slideshow now. I shoot one-design regattas and at the big events I have a slideshow at the trophy dinner. 2005 Snipe Nationals was the first one. At the 2006 Nationals the band arrived too late to pretest the sound hookup and levels so I said I'd play the 2005 show to check everything and then play the 2006 show. Everybody started screaming and shouting. I launched the 2005 show and it was like a cross between the beginning of a rock concert and a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I realized later everyone had been watching it over and over all year and knew every slide, every word, every detail. Then the 2006 show followed and it was a blast. So this one is for the Star Worlds in San Francisco next week. Should be somewhere between 300-400 people at the dinner. Thanks again! Fried My Webpage and links to the shows from there.

I could swear I've had to figure this out before, but I can never seem to remember the answer. I am in Timeline with waveform displayed and in the process of manually setting my slides to their spots on the waveform. How do I get to see a preview from an arbitrary location I select? I remember this mode of playback where the vertical blue line sweeps across the waveform and you get to see a little version of the slideshow with the transition effects. Everything I try restarts the playback or preview from the beginning of the show or blows me out of Timeline mode completely. ARGH! And where is this documented? Many thanks and your tolerance for such a dumb question. It is so frustrating to know I used to be able to do something and now can't remember or figure it out.

Hi Everyone! Amazingly, another year has flashed by and I am once again preparing to photograph the Snipe Nationals. Last year I capped the event with a P2E slideshow and it was a huge hit. It has been used throughout the year at fleet and club meetings, boat shows, and regattas all over the world. So thanks once again to the P2E team and for all the help I received here in the forums! Checking in to get the latest version, I see the amazing features being introduced with v5. I really like the idea of the pan/zoom and can see great potential for this in my slideshow. Before I go down that path, I just wanted to check/confirm a few things with those of you more experienced with P2E to make sure I don't wind up in trouble. This is what I did last year: 1. I assembled the audio track as a single mp3 using Audacity 2. Using dummy slides I then set up my custom synchronizations and transitions (Quick, Fade in/out (to another slide or to a black slide), Circle, and Mosaic) 3. During the event I replaced the dummies with photos of the event so that by the end of the week I had the show assembled 4. Ran the show from my laptop using its "monitor out" to an LCD projector. QUESTIONS 1. Any suggestions for changing the workflow I used last year? I've already created the new music track. Something that was a PITA last year was when I replaced a dummy I had to rename the actual photo to be the name of the dummy or I lost the customizations. It would be very nice to be able to, in effect, substitute one image for another and carry over the customizations without harm 2. Should I use v5 Beta #3 or stick with v4.48? I've ran all the v5 demos I can find here and they all seem to run no problem on my laptop. 3. It is important that the music be synched reliably and that once I establish the syncs and transitions, they not change as I replace the dummies with the actuals. I se some notes about this in the forum and I think this is a non issue given how I'm doing this but want to make sure of that. Many thanks! Fried Elliott Dallas Here is the link to last year's slideshow: http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing...05slideshow.htm

This has me noodling... I'm wondering if when P2E creates the exe it could include some sort of a checksum and if it could somehow include code in itself that before the show starts it checks that. Of course, if that is the part that is corrupted... I'm also surprised that partial files are coming down. From what I understand of our ftp server (I am CEO of a data services company) our clients cannot download an "incomplete" file from us. My personal website is on a server with a different ISP. Our ftp server is our own and configured by my IT guys.