sanewcomb

Hi Peter, Yes, that would work but it is quite a bit of work to do that for 60+ slides, and for every time I need to make an adjustment to the text comment properties or keyframes. It's one reason the old function was quite useful although I understand its limited use to most users. I think it was Tom who mentioned earlier in the forum that Ctrl-M still ran the old function, but it looks like WnSoft has removed the function itself completely. Would be nice if they could put it back in some form. A more general question, is there any way of copying any object from a single slide to all the other slides or a range of selected slides? That would be even more useful and probably easier to understand than just setting the text comments of all the slides to the currently selected one. Since posting my question above I have figured out what Igor was saying when he said text comments could be set for a number of slides at once, but this isn't what the old function did because it doesn't copy any of the keyframes or other object properties for text comments that are animated in some way (in my case I'm just using the transparency function in O&A to fade them out halfway through the slide duration). Steve

Hi Igor, In the above reply (#176) you were referring to removing the 'Set Comments on All Slides = Current One' and replacing it with a similar function to set the text comment for a number of selected slides. I can't figure out how to do this. To be more precise, I like to show my comment (or caption) when the slide first appears and then fade it about 1/2 the duration of the slide so the image can be viewed without any comment. To do this requires adding two keyframes to the time line for the Text Comment object in O&A. So I need to not only copy the Text Comment object with its parameters to the other slides, but also the keyframes. The removed function did this perfectly. I've also tried Ctrl-M, but does not seem to do anything. This function wasn't very useful for people who entered their captions into the Text Comment object (it would make all the slides have the same comment), but allowed one to continue to modify all the attributes of the Text Comment object such as size, drop shadow, position, etc. until the end by using comments stored in the JPG EXIF or IPTC fields. Thanks for any help.

Hi Dave, Ok, it all makes sense now to me. Thanks. Adding IPTC fields, particularly the caption field, is a great improvement for the P2E comment feature. It will be interesting to see how uniform the IPTC fields are across different photo editing programs. I can now add/edit the IPTC Caption field in Adobe PS CS2 for P2E shows. I'm not sure but it seems like a very useful comment feature has been removed. Maybe it's just been moved but I can't find it. It allowed copying the Text Comment object from one slide to all slides and was a menu item. What this allowed one to do is create an animated comment for the first slide (when it appeared on the slide, the transparency, when and how it dissolved, etc) and apply it to all the other slides using the comment template. You can do this manually, but it gets to be a pain copying and pasting the Text Comment object for every slide, especially since you have to do this all over everytime you make a change to the Text Comment object in the Objects and Animation window. I liked being able to show a comment explaining the photo (particularly for a vacation slideshow) but only having it on the screen for the first 4 seconds or so of each slide so the viewer could see the photograph without the caption too. I guess it was too confusing for many users. Steve Tucson, AZ USA

Hi Igor, P2E has always had support for both user editable text fields of the EXIF header, so your comment confuses me a bit. In P2E EXIF Description extracts the ImageDescription field EXIF Comment extracts the UserComment field (this is a better field for inserting captions IMO) although in the past there were some bugs. I'm trying to remember but at one time it either ignored certain characters or chopped one char off the end of the string (so comments had to have a space padding at the end to avoid it). I'll admit I haven't used P2E much recently but this is what I recall from past discussions. Steve Tucson, AZ

Hi Lin, Neither IPTC nor JPG Comment field in Irfanview are part of the EXIF standard. You'll notice that IPTC, EXIF and Comment (JPG) each have their own buttons in the Irfanview Image Properties window. You can't use Irfanview to edit the EXIF fields. You need a different program, like the one Gerard uses ExifTool or Exifer. I used to use Exifer, but now use Exif Pilot. Both involve a number of keystrokes to insert text into the Exif fields. I find Exif Pilot has a somewhat easier workflow when working with a number of slides. If you do a search on EXIF or IPTC in the archives you'll find a couple of threads with details about these standards and the text/comment fields. One difficulty is the names of the fields are not consistent so some programs call one of the EXIF text fields UserComment and others just Comment (but this isn't the same as the JPG Comment field in Irfanview). The other threads explain the different names used for these fields. Steve Tucson, AZ USA P.S. I highly encourage better support for the EXIF fields, as well as IPTC. I think inserting text directly into the JPEG image files is the equivalent to writing on the back of photographs. It may seem like a bother in the present, but those words will add so much in the future when the user or ancestor reads them.

Hi thedom, It stutters a bit on my system under regular background apps, but I use a high res desktop (2048x1536) with a good, but not top of the line system (9600GT 512MB and AMD 5050e). It probably runs fine under typical desktop screen resolutions. Thanks for putting out these demos - it's given me and idea for an outdoors slideshow. Cheers, Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

After downloading your sample and running it smoothly on my system (which has a higher screen resolution and weaker hardware - 2048x1536 9600GT 512MB) I would say there is some software running in the background that is interrupting the processor. May be difficult to figure out in a loaded machine, but I like to start out with the fresh reboot because a system that has been running for a long time slowly loses resources due to poor programming efforts, both in the OS and apps. Edit: Oh, and as Igor always reminds us make sure the graphics adapter has the latest drivers. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

I would guess it's a combination of the pixel dimensions of the JPEG and the resolution of the screens on your computers. The quality of the JPEG compression should have no effect at all. I believe the entire JPEG has to be decoded and loaded into the video memory even if you only see part of it at a time. And the video memory requirements scale up by the square as the screen resolution goes up. So a big image sent to a big screen will start to run into hardware limitations. That is one reason it plays smooth on a 1024x768 screen. Try reducing the screen resolution a bit to see if that takes out the stutters. Addition: Another approach is to break up the image into smaller slices and put them on different slides and make sure you turn off the transition between the slides. As others have stated, small glitches can be caused by background tasks grabbing the computer's attention, though if the glitches are always in the same place it is probably related to hardware limitations. Try rebooting the computer and turning off all the widgets and background stuff. Then run the show. If it looks the same, focus on what you're doing inside PTE instead of the system. It sounds like your systems are very powerful, but that is where I've run into the high screen resolution problems before. In general as things scale up, some parts scale differently than others. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Peter, You are correct that text pulled from JPEG files is not the exact same issue as the Text Objects in the O&A window, but they are closely related. In my case, practically all the text that ever ends up in my slideshows comes from JPEG files, as I explained I have no interest in storing this text information in P2E project files. Though the source is different, this text is treated as a Text Object in every other way. In reference to putting this request in the Ideas section, it has already been done several times, by different people. It is a long standing issue (years). Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Is there any chance that text comments in JPEG files function can be improved? It's certainly been on the request list for some time. Though I don't remember all of the requests, I know many asked for the reading of IPTC fields, as well as a few bugs in the JPEG EXIF field reading functions. Well, to be more specific, here is what I would like to see improved with P2E Text function 1. Allow comments entered into P2E to be written to the JPEG. I find it much easier to add comments after most of the slideshow is finished, going from the first picture to the last. It is much more work to use a program like Exifer to add the comments because you first have to locate the images you have used in the slideshow from other pictures in the folder and then have to hunt for them since the order they are shown in P2E is not the order they are sorted in the picture folder. And I don't care much for saving the comments in the P2E project file itself (using the comment box at the top) because I don't expect to keep P2E project files for 30 years, but do expect to keep the photo files themselves. 2. Add IPTC comment and description fields. Others seem to feel the IPTC fields are more consistent and robust across photo applications and have requested this. Others can chime in here as well because I don't use IPTC fields. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

LumenLux, Your original concern if I understood it correctly was preventing the EXE file size from getting "too big". The most effective way to address this in my opinion is to use a JPEG compression value that is reasonable. Not too low or high. I find the settings in Photoshop to be too conservative and not reflective of the visual changes in the images. If I plan to distribute a show to a wide audience, one of the final steps is batch recompressing the single frame shots (not the stitched together panoramas) to a JPEG value of around 70 in Irfanview graphics program. This results in good compression and retains good visual quality. I'll watch the show one more time and if there are any photos with bothersome JPEG artifacts, I'll recompress the originals of those with a higher quality value. Large panoramas are more difficult to deal with on several fronts and are recompressed as well as resized individually with care. The more common difficulty with panos on high res screens is keeping smooth PZR motions throughout the slide and in both transitions (in and out). One thing to remember is as the screen res goes up, the actual pixel size goes down (for the same size monitor), and the JPEG artifacts start to "blend" into one another and are not as visible while watching a show. At least that is my experience. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA P.S. As others have stated, it's best to design and scale the images close to the target screen size (often your own monitor) because the resizing software in dedicated photo programs is better (and more time consuming) at doing this than PTE's runtime engine, which is designed to be small and quick. I also like aiming for a screen res one higher (if target is 1024x768 then my images are 1280x1024) to allow for slight zooms and panning.

Based on the replies I would say the stuttering may be due to a monitor resolution set too high for your video card. The larger the screen resolution, the more horsepower in the video card is needed. A screen set for 1600x1200 requires a lot more than 1280x1024. This is easy to test. Lower your screen resolution if it's above 1024x768 and see what happens. If your screen is already at 1024x768 the problem is probably elsewhere. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

I would check to see if the machine had the latest DirectX drivers for Win98 installed. I forget what version that is, but the Microsoft site will show you. We have a Win98 machine and updating the DirectX drivers allows it to play P2E 5.x shows. It will show most of them pretty good if you restrict the pixel dimension of the show. Probably the easiest way to do this is in windowed mode, maybe 640x480 or 800x600. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Hi Dom, It looked pretty neat, except I found the images moving within the polaroid frames odd. I would expect them not to move. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA

Interesting comment on line vs. frame signal processing. However, if most flat panel computer displays use frame processing then the laptops would most likely be showing the same problem, and they do not. I looked at the manual for the SX50 and it is a very nice and powerful projector. I'm sure there is a work around for this problem. Ed, have you tried turning off the progressive scan option (if it is on)? Or turning it on if it is off. Page 67 of the manual. One work around that should work would be to create HD Videos in P2E, then display them using a powerful enough laptop/desktop. The FPS value should be set in the video file and if the computer is fast enough it should keep up and output at a fixed FPS. (I don't see a setting for the FPS in the HD Video option under the Create function, but under AVI video file you can select 1280x720 60 FPS). I know converting all the slideshows to MP4s would be a bother, but it should give a much better quality image than the s-video or other video (non-computer) input options. This should work whether connected with the standard VGA 15 pin connector or the more modern DVI connector on the projector. But if one doesn't work, try the other. I think it would be fairly easy for WnSoft to offer a fixed FPS output for P2E exe files. Maybe he could send you a custom build beta to see if that does the trick. Steve Newcomb Tucson, AZ USA