Lin Evans

Just a sample of how this can be used for a photo signature, etc. I've made samples for a couple of forum users. It's really a neat program and comes with Highlighter Pro and VisiSketch Pro for about $39 USD, so well worth it if you want to play with effects, easel painting, glitter, etc. On the other hand, if you would just like to have your signature available as a video to use with PTE and don't want to purchase the program; if you email me at data2@lpbroadband.net and send me your name as you want it to appear, I'll be glad to make you a quick signature video which you can use as a video mask stencil with any color rectangle as the mask content. It's no big deal and only takes me about three minutes or less. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, I have no problems running an mp4 as an application using a button. Could it possibly be that your system isn't finding a player? Best regards, Lin

That works well ! Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Yes, it's always difficult to decide whether one "needs" certain features or whether they would just be fun to play with sometimes. The fact that you get all three programs in the bundle made it attractive to me because I like to play with new ideas and was intrigued by the way Dave Fitzpatrick uses bitmapped bmp's to create the uncompressed AVI files. In some ways it reminds me of the bezier curve software written by our French friend which Igor was considering adding something like to PTE. Dave F. was (is?) a long time user of Proshow and I think his primary intent for this software was for users of that program. Proshow Producer accepts a wide variety of files including uncompressed AVI files and when these are made into a video or exe file the uncompressed AVI's get compressed so other than a huge RAM hit before the compression, they work well with Producer. Fortunately for us, when compressed in WMV format they are quite small and seem to work well with PTE that way. Looking back at many of the shows created with Producer, the type of effects with these three programs fit right in. For competitive AV folks and PTE, not so much. The flourishes, twinkle screens, and particle type effects are pretty common with many of their users and such is rarely seen in serious PTE shows. On the other hand, we may end up with many who are accustomed to this so I thought it might be useful to demo a few possibilities. If I get the time I'll make a demo of a full screen text effect. The primary reason for Dave F. using the alpha channel mask is that Producer doesn't support alpha channel video so programs such as Bluff Titler which allow the user to create AVI alpha channel video (which PTE supports) could be used by including an alpha matt (pure black and white video) to use as a mask through which a regular video could be run as the mask content. That is Producer's way of getting around not supporting alpha channel videos. I'm hoping Igor will include other codecs and alpha channel video other than the antiquated AVI alpha channel for version 10. There are just many possibilities that many users may be interested in. It's just something to keep me busy with - I don't have much else going on ......... Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I didn't delete anything? I answered your post, but I didn't delete it??? It's visible to me right above my reply to wideangle??? As I said in my reply above, and if you saw my tutorial on the tutorials page, I didn't get into all the possibilities with CaptionsAlive Pro because it would take WAY too long to demonstrate them and it wasn't important. When people purchase the package of three programs (VisiSketch Pro, CaptionsAlive Pro and HighlighterPro) they will learn about the options for different text effects. CaptionsAlive Pro allows not only something simple such as a signature, but it's possible to write an entire screen of text and one can change the effects on each line if desired. People who don't purchase the programs will have no interest unless someone creates a video mask for them using the program. Those who do purchase the programs will want to create them as in my tutorial otherwise they would not be able to take advantage of any of the effects possible. In my post to wideangle I explained how it could be done with Photoshop by capturing a video of a signature then using it as a video mask and a simple color file as the content which is what I think you are saying. Yes it can be done this way with the alpha mask only and a color file or rectangle in the mask content, but my own experience as an educator was that when there are multiple ways to do something and one way is more inclusive , it's more expedient to teach that way than to get into alternatives. Also if you saw my tutorial in the tutorials section, I cover changing the speed of the videos. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, The second video as shown in the tutorial is a simple color or white, but the program allows a variety of options for the text which I didn't discuss for simplicity. You can have bold, embossed, 3D and other text effects which, of course, can't be done with a simple color rectangle rather than video text in the mask content. For "only" a color signature one could use a simple rectangle of the desired color, but when people purchase Dave's software, they will learn to use the other options and they can only be realized with two videos rather than the video mask plus a color. Best regards, Lin

Hi Wideangle, Thanks! It "is" possible to create your own signature using Photoshop or other image editor, but it's awkward. The way it's done is to use a screen video recorder. First, you open Photoshop, create a "new" black image and set your brush to white. Once that is done start the recording and paint the signature or text in white on the black background then stop the recording. What has then been recorded is a white text painted on pure black. This being saved as a video file is used as the video mask. A pure color image is then used in the mask container and when played back reveals the text as it was written in white on the currently loaded image in whatever color(s) were used as the mask content. If this is put under a frame just as with the samples in my tutorial, the signature or text can be moved, sized, slowed down, sped up, etc. The problem with doing it this way is two-fold. First it's awkward if one doesn't have a Wacom Tablet or something similar to write with. Doing it with a mouse just doesn't work well. Secondly, there will be a cursor which you can't eliminate when you use the image editor. You really can't do much about that so the completed effect is less that ideal. Really, the best way to write any text as one would see in a real example is to use software such as CaptionsAlive Pro. It greatly simplifies things and does it perfectly. Best regards, Lin

Tutorial on elements of masking added ... Lin

NOTE For those interested in this I have posted two video tutorials and explanations on the Tutorials and Articles forum. One is quite similar to the one above and the other is a brief explanation on how to use CaptionsAlive Pro to output the files necessary to create the video mask and then convert these uncompressed avi files so they can easily be used with PicturesToExe. These video tutorials are at the bottom (numbers 72 and 73) of the PTE Made Easy - Continuously Updated thread. They are embedded YouTube videos so easily seen right on the forum. Best regards, Lin

Tutorial For Dennis and Others On Signature Video..... I have added a very similar video to PTE Made Easy - in the Tutorials Section along with a tutorial on how to use Captions Alive Pro to export the uncompressed avi signature files and how to convert them to wmv, etc. to use with PTE. See Tutorials section of this forum... Lin

It only works with the provided fonts and really only one is script. If you send me a copy of the signature you want to use, I will create a video for you using the same font you see in my example above which you can use in any PTE show to place the signature and size and position it as you like. The advantage of having the software is that you can choose the background image then the color, etc., for yourself. If I make a video for you it will only be of the color you choose and you place it on a PTE image using video masking as described above. I will also make you a little video tutorial to show you how to use making (very easy) to size and position the signature. Best regards, Lin

Gary, If you email me at data2@lpbroadband.net I'll explain some things about this for you... This is really not the correct place to get sidetracked on issues of YouTube and copyright issues. Best regards, Lin

"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

Hi Barry, Since it's a video mask, it could be slowed down a great deal. The software creates an uncompressed avi file and an optional alpha mask. The alpha mask is just a pure black background with white text video and the video can have any color text of the available few fonts with bold, embossed, texture, 3d simulation and any color. The uncompressed avi files, of course won't work in PTE - they were designed for video software or for Proshow Producer which can use uncompressed avi's. One can simply convert them with freeware such as Video Pad Video Editor (the one I use) to wmv files which are tiny. The alpha mask can then be used in PTE as a video mask (stencil) with the video as the content. Or, if the color white for the text is OK, then the alpha mask can be used both for the mask and the content. The tiny files can then be saved and used with any image or show. The size and position is adjusted by just adjusting the Mask Container. The program also creates "flourishes." Best regards, Lin

Actually, there is not a really good way to do this without using outside software. You can "reveal" a signature by using a moving mask, but that's not quite the same thing as actually writing. It would be possible to go into Photoshop or other software and create a video mask which revealed script writing in a similar way to which it was written, but that would require screen capture of the video and that requires a decent screen capture software. Perhaps the best way is to use an outside product such as CaptionsAlive Pro by David Fitzgerald because that's precisely what it does. This product is available for a reasonable price along with two other useful products HIghliter Pro and VisiSketch Pro here: https://www.mediadigitronics.com/ Here's a sample: You can change the size, change the location, rotate, whatever by adjusting the mask container in O&A B Lin

Hi Ghulya, There is certainly lots of marketing and sales propaganda hyping high megapixel cameras and admittedly, the vast majority of people do not need extremely high resolution. I have spent many hours discussing this very subject with world renowned fashion photographer Melvin Sokolsky. Back when Canon released their first professional digital camera, the EOS 1D, Melvin and I both bought them. I used mine to do professional rodeo photography which was then a large part of my work. Melvin used the same 4.2 megapixel camera to shoot fashion for major magazines including many double truck pages. Melvin tells me that the 4.2 megapixel sensor was quite appropriate and never let him down. Many huge billboards have been made with similar cameras because from the normal viewing distance, whether the shots were made with a 100 megapixel sensor or a 4 megapixel sensor is indistinguishable. New York fashion photographer Stephen Eastwood made some beautiful 70 inch portrait prints of his girlfriend with the lowly 3 megapixel Canon D30 - see image below. The essence is that it takes far fewer pixels to do a head and shoulders portrait with decent definition than a detailed landscape with thousands of trees, leaves, pine needles, etc. 3 megapixels was quite sufficient for these beautiful head and shoulders shots, but would fail miserably in an enlargement of a detailed landscape. It's all a matter of understanding the need (or not) for detail in an image. When I shot gallery art for a living, I often used medium format film because 35mm just wasn't sufficient for the detail the art gallery owners needed. When I bought my first professional digital camera in 1995 (the Kodak DCS 460) the $30,000 I spent was worth every penny. Today, of course that would not be sufficient for many jobs, but in 1995 it was a huge time saving device. The essence is that there is a place for low resolution and a place for high resolution. They both have their own character and value. Best regards, Lin

Even though some excellent images have been made with the iPhone, there are still myriad reasons why photographers choose other options - not the least of is that it's just not possible to do things with a tiny sensor that can be easily accomplished with larger formats. With a tiny sensor it's nearly impossible to blur a background and get the lovely bokeh easily accomplished with a larger sensor and much larger lens. If all you want in your photos is everything in focus all the time, the tiny sensor and lens has its advantage. Otherwise? Not so much. Then there is the telephoto side for wildlife, etc. Try to get a decent image of the moon with the iPhone or zoom in for a closeup of a bird on a perch, or stop action on a hummingbird. Then there is the very real problem of even being able to see and frame the subject with the sun behind you as is common for many types of photography. It's always rather comical to me when I'm shooting wildlife at sundown such as elk, deer, bears, marmots, coyotes, wolves, etc., to see a small crowd of tourists pointing their phones in the general direction of the subject and moving their phone at arms length back and forth trying desperately to find the subject and knowing full well that their photos will reveal only a distant speck hardly recognizable. Even with my Nokia 808 phone and its 41.3 megapixel sensor, I've found trying to shoot wildlife in general to be nearly an impossible task. What can be done with my NIkon D7200 and Sigma 150-600 mm lens or with my Nikon P9000 shooting at 3000 mm optical is simply not possible with any telephone camera. How about taking multiple frames and stacking? Did you ever try to adjust focus precisely in multiple locations on a tiny macro subject with an iPhone? Hint - it doesn't work and simply is not possible to do. I always laugh when I see the Facebook ads selling small telescopes to attach to your phone to try to emulate a telephoto lens on a dedicated camera. These ads often depict images captured with real telephoto equipment implying they were taken with the cell phone and the tiny telescope. I was a pioneer in digiscoping, using telescopes as lenses with tiny camera lenses. I still break out my old Nikon CP990 and my very, very expensive Swarovski scope or my Meade ETX-90 and do a bit of digiscoping for fun, but it takes a rock steady tripod and my wired remote release and lots of luck to even remotely approach what I can do hand-held with my Nikon P9000. Using a telephone with a tripod and a telescope and getting decent results is an exercise in statistics. Perhaps one of ten shots is half-way decent. Then when time comes to make generous enlargements, there is rarely any substitute for optical resolution - something just not happening with the iPhone and similar instruments. Blow those images which are beautiful on the tiny screen up to a 40 inch print width and tell me what you see... Then you will begin to appreciate the difference between a telephone camera and a real camera I suspect... Best regards, Lin

Yep, that's all water under the bridge now - Adobe changed their "call home" requirements drastically since the early days. Good to know time lapse has the electronic shutter option! Good also that V10 will handle 120fps !! You will love the stabilization if you get any long glass and the "in-focus" indication is a major plus. I changed from Canon to Nikon a number of years ago when several sucessive models of Canon had serious autofocus reliability issues. I've never been sorry... Best regards, Lin

That's good news - I'm still a bit miffed at Adobe. When they first came out with their ARC software I bought the first version and upgraded as soon as it was available. Then they decided to add it to Photoshop and rather quickly it became necessary to buy new versions of Photoshop to get the latest RAW converters. I always felt they should have sold ARC as it started as a stand-alone product which could be updated for a reasonable price. Now one has to either buy the cloud versions of Photoshop or Lightroom subscription which I will never do. I got burned early on when I was on an extended back-country trip with no internet and lost my ability to use Photoshop when I couldn't connect so couldn't convert any of my RAW files from three different cameras. I ended up buying Photoshop 6 extended and stopped right there. Now I just use the manufacturer's conversion software. The Z6 sounds like a great product - better I think than the Z7 from what I've read. Does the in-camera time lapse use the mechanical shutter or electronic shutter? I'm hoping the electronic because it seems one could quickly wear out the mechanical shutter doing time lapse... I love the fact that they have included the in-body stabilization. I have both the P900 and P1000 and the stabilization is absolutely amazing. I can hand-hold the P1000 at 3000 mm optical and get excellent results and that's some excellent stabilization. I gave my grandson my D5300 and now I only have the D7200, D7000 and 1V1. I was considering getting a 1V3 but got tempted by the P1000 because I really have loved the P900 and to get the focal length I wanted with the 1V3 would have required me to buy an expensive additional lens... Best regards, Lin

Hi Robbie, Click on the "Project Options" button (Lower left of your screen) then on the "Advanced" tab. At the bottom where it says as default "do not run," click on the small down arrow and choose "Run Slideshow" then navigate to the additional slideshow you want to run. It's possible to "daisy chain" multiple slideshows this way. To do this, each slideshow must have been made with the same version of PTE. If they are not, then use "Run Application." Best regards, Lin

Hi Rob, Let me try to answer your question in different words and in a slightly different way. Yes, the audio is embedded in the video by your SLR and if you simply enter the video on the slide list there is no way to control the sound on your video. PicturesToExe has a very easy way to separate the audio from the video. First, in Objects and Animations screen on the "Properties Tab" click the mouse in the box marked "Mute Audio." Next, click on the "Project Options" button on the lower left of the screen then click on the "Audio" tab. Now click on "Add Audio File" and when the box to Open and audio file appears, where it says "files of type" and defaults to "audio files," click on the little down arrow in the tiny blue box to the right and from the menu choose "video files." Now navigate to your video file and select and open it. Now your audio for this video is fully adjustable via the waveform just as if you had entered an mp3 or other audio file. As for the audio volume from several AV's , you CAN adjust them individually via the waveform, but the better way is to do it in an audio editor such as Audacity. Best regards, Lin

Thanks guys - I made the links into an .rtf file so I can copy and past them for people considering PTE on other forums. Just thought it might be of interest to visitors to this forum who were either new users of PTE or considering it and might be interested in alternative uses for the program. Best regards, Lin

Actually, though there isn't a book - all animation I create and ones used in my shows created by other users are explained in my video tutorials - look in the tutorials section under PTE Made Easy and you will find about 100 video tutorials covering most everything in these samples. Best regards, Lin

Hi Folks - As you know, or will soon discover - PicturesToExe (PTE) is the award winning creation of Wnsoft LTD which is the preferred tool by the vast majority of those competing in audio/visual competitions worldwide. It allows users to make incredibly good and sophisticated shows of their photographs and tell a story in pictures and music. It's value is unquestioned for conventional presentations. But PTE is also such a versatile tool that it can be used to create unconventional animations and allow the user to explore their imaginations. I don't have the talent to make award winning conventional shows myself, so I use PTE to create animated shows which would not be appropriate for competitions, but which are fun for me and may be fun for those who also have little interest in entering competitions. This compendium of links to some of my samples is of primary interest to those who just want to enjoy alternative uses of this amazing tool. Lin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS7lU_npiD8 (Easel Paint Samples) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=318YJIsjI2g (PTE Book Style Demo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JavCuMiP0jk&t=302s (snowglobes demo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOhSIjrLETs (arches fantasy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvP6mFokVCE (Journey into the Possible) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1_q7XdSjvI (What Can I Do – New) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_w0l-OM5A (Facets of PTE) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_SfV7jYTo (Wedding Style Book Sample) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lymd_vaXXqM (Lin’s Wedding Style Sample)

Photographer Jack Bell's Beautiful Image of the Grand Prize Winner, The Ice Queen, at The Magic Festival Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Canada. The Magic Festival Is A World Class Ice Carving Competition. This image provides a great opportunity for new users of PTE to learn about some of the possibilities of the use of masking. The original photo was taken into Photoshop and the actual ice sculpture portions were painted pure white using the brush tool. The remainder of the image was painted pure black. Then this was saved as a mask and the mask content was the snow animation above the original image. The PTE "color filter" coloration blue was keyframed near the end of the presentation to simulate the appearance at night. The original image was also used again as the blurred background to facilitate the 16:9 aspect ratio for the slide. Lin