Lin Evans

Hi Tom, I you watch my little video tutorial you'll see that by using VisiSketch Pro there is no need for keyframes. In a way, you create position markers when you place mouse clicks which make tiny "dots" which when made into the bitmap are connected by lines. These "lines" are actually acting in the capacity of a mask when converted into the uncompressed AVI which reveal what is underneath and on the canvas as "brush strokes." It takes a bit of time and patience if you want to create a realistic sketch before beginning the use of larger brush samples for the "paint" simulation, but the results can be nice. Of course if you just want to do a "spray painted" version you can just use one of my styles which does all the heavy lifting. The styles create the easel and canvas then "paint" the image you have selected on that canvas. Best regards, Lin

O.K. - this is my sample of easel paint demonstrations. This demonstrates a range of possibilities with PicturesToExe and David Fitzpatrick's VisiSketch Pro and the ending using David's Typewriter program. It's long - 29 minutes and six second to be exact but the viewer can use the navigation bar to move through if looking at something they have already seen. Take note - there is one show with tasteful nudity so if one doesn't like that, no need to look. Among the shows are some PTE effects, transition from the painting to video done by using a frame from the video as the painted image, etc. It's just samples of things some might like to do. For Tomcatred who mentioned earlier in a post that the painting isn't done as an artist would - I'm well aware of that. My late girlfriend of seven years, Lisah, was a superb artist with the brush and I've watched her paint many beautiful oil and acrylic works so I'm very familiar with how its done, but there are limitations with the software which make that type approach of laying down one color then going back and adding others and gradual detail simply not feasible so the way it's done is essentially what is possible with these programs. To do it as an artist would in real life would probably take a week to create a single example. Lin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS7lU_npiD8

Hi, Igor will need to know your operating system, computer resources and whether or not you have antivirus software running. You can go to Run then type in dxdiag and click on O.K. to get this information if you're running a Windows OS Best regards, Lin

Definitely capturing a moving subject - video and macro photography was the primary object of doing this for me. Just a tiny amount of wind movement can totally destroy a stereo object in 3d if the shutters are not synchronized. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Yes, there are numerous ways to do this - some more complex and actually better. The way I suggested is very rudimentary and the results are only fair. Using two camera or a stereo camera is by far the best way. Years ago I had a jig I made where two small digital cameras could be mounted with the lens center distance being the average pupillary distance between. Sadly the cameras I used could not have their shutters synchronized so to make it work I had to have two mechanical shutter releases and press them simultaneously. I quickly tired of that and bought some expensive software which would take a single capture and turn it into a stereo image. It really worked well, but nobody was really interested it doing it so I finally gave up with it. Something sparked my interest again but I've not been able to find the software and the manufacturer is no longer in business so it was a dead end. I suspect I lost the software when one of my hard drives went south. Having around six external hard drives each on three different systems, I can't even remember which one it might have been. We had one PTE user who made some beautiful PTE shows in anaglyph stereo 3D but he drifted away and hasn't been on the forum in years. He had an ideal setup with a stereo camera and his shows were outstanding. Perhaps when Version 10 is released it might be possible to do this again except instead of anaglyph perhaps with a newer method as is being used in IMAX photography. It would be really nice to be able to shoot video that way. There are so many great things which "can" be done but never enough time or money to pursue them... Best regards, Lin

Hi Ruth, It depends on which version of PTE the show was made with. If it was prior to version 8 it may be possible to decompile, but from version 8 forward the PTE security is very, very strong and the only good way to recover the images is to play the exe on the highest resolution display you have available and screen capture each image. If you can post a link to the exe I can check it for you... Best regards, Lin

Here ya go... I think this is what you are looking for... Added a keyframe to hold the original positions until change. http://www.lin-evans.org/bragg/bragg.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Chuck, Get your animation working correctly in linear mode. Then apply the smooth to all animations including ones you don't call such as rotate, etc., If you zip up your project and post a link, I'll be glad to sort it for you. Best regards, Lin

Heap good help Kemosabe... Best regards, Lin

Nostalgia - Many years ago - back in 1975 - My soon to be sweet wife Sherry and I were both in school at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. I was living in my travel trailer with my big red Malamute pup named Red Dog in a KOA campground nineteen miles north and Sherry was living at home in Escondido, California. In those days I played bluegrass guitar in a local band to help pay my tuition and would bring my Martin D-41 to classes and during breaks and after classes sit under the trees and pick. One day a couple of musicians wandered in, sat down and listened then pulled out their guitars and we jammed for about two hours. They said they had recently made an album and had a single which was about to be released. Their names were Dan and John. Dan played his guitar upside down with normal stringing so that what is normally done with the left hand was done with the right and it produced a really neat effect. The had come from Texas and made California their home. Dan said his older brother was named Jim and played with Dash Crofts in the group Seals and Crofts. This is how I met Dan Seals and John Coley (England Dan and John Ford Coley). They were truly nice guys - very personable and Texas friendly. After a couple hours we shook hands and I never saw them again. Dan and John split a few years later and Dan Seals went over to the country venue. Sadly Dan passed away with Lymphoma in Nashville at the age of 61 in 2009. Others there who have also died are Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed, Glen Campbell, Roy Clark and Waylon Jennings that I'm aware of. My wife Sherry passed away a year later in 2010 at the age of 53 years and three days. In this room were some of the finest country musicians of the past 50 years or so. This rendition of All That Glitters Is Not Gold by Dan is my favorite. Here’s a partial list of the people in this room: Dan Seals, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Roy Clark, Bobby Bear, T. Graham Brown, Crystal Gayle, Gary Morris, Gene Watson, Glen Campbell, Janie Fricke, Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed There are more that I don’t recognize but I just thought folks here on this forum might like to hear and see this. Nothing special – just the video made of Dan’s turn to sing. Lin

No. To create a style you must click on the Slide Style button which is found at the bottom of the Slide List page to the right of Slide Options. You create your slide and do whatever you need to do in the Objects and Animations screen to get the effect or animation you want then once that slide has been created to your satisfaction, close the Objects and Animations screen and click on the Slide Style, then Tools, then Create Style. Be sure to set the proper Main Objects in the Objects and Animations screen Properties Tab. Anything that the user will need to provide is a Main Object and they are numbered consecutively. Objects which are in Objects and Animations which are NOT Main Objects will be created or copied and transferred by the style. Transitions can be created from the Objects and Animations screen by clicking on Slide Options, Manage Transitions, Create transition. Best regards, Lin

Pieter, Put the video and object on different layers and try setting opacity on both the object and the video to other than 100% to achieve a blend. Also, you can change the background from the default black to other colors or white to achieve different blending effects. Best regards, Lin

Michele, Just go to Objects and Animations screen, click on the existing picture to select it, click on the "Properties Tab" then click on the small arrow in the little blue box to the far right of "Picture" - Navigate to your new picture, click on it and then "Open" and it will be done. Best regards, Lin

There are a number of interactive capabilities with PTE and these capabilities are frequently used by educators doing lectures and presentations. One can use any object (text, image, frame, rectangle, etc.) as the target which can be mouse clicked on and that click can result in any of the following actions: 1. Run Slideshow 2. Run Slideshow With Return 3. Run Application or Open File 4. Run Application and Exit 5. Print Picture or Slide 6. Elicit Help 7. Open Web Page 8. Write Email 9. Go To Next or Previous Slide 10. Go To First Slide 11. Go To A Named Slide 12. Exit 13. Show Window 14. Close Window The above plethora of choices allow users to create complex presentations with lots of options. Name one slide "Menu" and from that allow the user to go to any slide in the show by simply clicking on its name. Bring up a page of help for specific issues. Years ago we had users who created shows which allowed the user to select any of hundreds of songs from a "jukebox" so that one could spend hours listening to their favorite music. PTE has had interactive capabilities for many, many years. Obviously these features are not used by everyone, but they are very important to those of us who use this product for educational purposes. Of course these features can't be used with video constructs. Video is by nature a "canned" presentation. Only in the past couple years have some developers created "hotspots" for some video to allow users to click on a position and visit another website. Even this requires special server software and isn't something easily done without specialized software. Interactivity means the user is communicating via the executable program with the computer and has the option to ask the computer to perform tasks it's suited for. Best regards, Lin

A name change is something really only the developers should decide. It's always a risky proposition. Maybe it would be good and helpful for futures sales but it could also somewhat eradicate 20 years of success. The important thing is to get the word out about the benefits and value of PTE to those who haven't a clue about presentation slideshow software. A competitor's current problems may provide an opportunity for more to learn about PTE and what it can do. If the letters PTE can be kept, then the exact meaning of the last letter might be left to the imagination of the person using the product. It could simply be called PTE Mac 64 or PTE Windows 64? Just a thought... Lin

As long as people are made aware of the beautiful interactive features with PTE, the name itself having to be descriptive isn't as important, but there are plenty of people who use PTE specifically to make interactive shows so we do not want to lose any of this capability. With the advent of relatively powerful computers these days there is no problem with running highly interactive executable shows. There are people, just today who are looking at PTE specifically because of the interactive features. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jill, Yes - it's in milliseconds to give you the precision to the nearest thousandth of a second. Yes some changes between 8 & 9 I'm not certain why. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jill, No that was only an example which just needed one object to disappear. You have the option of turning on or off the appearance of any object using the time range. Look at Dave's sample video here: https://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/topic/20934-time-range/?tab=comments#comment-139017 Best regards, Lin

Tom - only experience with PTE will teach you how these features can be useful. If you never encounter a need then they are like the electrons in the electronic brain of your automobile. It's not necessary to understand what or why or how they do what they do. It's only necessary to flip the switch and expect the result. Having the ability to pull keframes before the start and after the finish of a slide allows the user to share effects on one slide with the timeline of the preceding or following slide. You can't possibly absorb all the nuances without actually experiencing the need. If you want specifics, ask the OP why he wanted to do what he wanted to do. I create tutorials demonstrating many of the possibilities with PTE - some are things that most will use and others are rather esoteric and may only be used by a very few who want to achieve specific animations or effects. It's best to start at the beginning and proceed rather than trying to jump into a complex situation. Somewhere in the multitude of video tutorials I explain this but I just don't have the energy to do it each time.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jill, The "time range" allows you to make an object disappear instantly after the display period without affecting other objects. So rather than trying to place two keyframes one for each layer very very close to each other for two objects with which you want to exchange visibility, you simply leave the object's transparency at 100% for the object you want to appear and have it on the layer below the object you want to disappear then set the time range to expire for the object you want to disappear to the exact time you want the lower layer to appear. The purpose of being able to pull an object's keyframe before or after the end of the set display time is to allow special effect with cross fades. Only by experimenting can you see the value in this.... Best regards, Lin

Tom, There are a number of potential reasons. Let me give you an example. Let's say you want to create an animation where an object rotates around the screen in a perfect circle. Let's just use a png object with transparency for an example. So you want this object to rotate clockwise beginning at the 12 o'clock position and traveling through a complete 360 degrees or some multiple thereof. BUT - when the object rotates, you want it to remain in the same relative position for the entire rotation(s). When an object is rotated like this, it requires moving its "center" to the dead center of the screen and placing the object in the 12:00 o'clock position to start. The problem then becomes how to keep it in the same relative viewing position because as it is rotated around the 360 circle, it will naturally change so that when at the 180 degree position it will be upside down. To solve this issue, you create an identical "child" object which will inherit the 360 degree rotation from the parent, but to keep it in the upright viewing position you must leave the child's center as it was originally and set that rotation to negative 360 degrees for each cycle of rotation. You do not want the parent to be visible so you set its opacity to zero leaving the child's opacity at 100%. Now somewhere during the process you may want the child to become invisible and the parent to become visible and when moving from this slide to the next and perhaps using a fade dissolve you do not want the object to be seen. So you use one or the other method to make either or both invisible both before and after the first or last keyframe or both. With PTE it's possible to show portions of a preceding or following slide within the time frame of the slide currently being viewed by pulling a starting or ending keyframe outside the prescribed display time of the currently viewed slide. This type thing is of more interest to people who enjoy creative animation than to normal users who make AV's in an ordinary fashion. Best regards, Lin

Perhaps, when releasing version 10 it would be helpful to name it PicturesToAV 10. Just as Proshow renamed their new product to Proshow Gold then when introducing yet another major upgrade Proshow Producer. The important thing is to keep the "PicturesTo" as a preface for whatever name. Since the new version will be significantly different, it could be helpful at that time perhaps to call it PicturesToAV 64 and PicturesToAV-Mac 64 rather than PicturesToAV 10. That way you "kill two birds with one stone." You let people know it's a 64 bit program and a totally new concept. It would also be very, very helpful if it could be released with a "player" so the download of an executable file would only have to be performed once to see shows and also it could preserve the interactivity I think. Best regards, Lin

Love it !! Puts my Nikon P900's 2,000 mm focal length to shame !!! I was thinking about maybe saving for the P1000 which has 3,000 mm optical focal length at the long end, but maybe I'll start thinking about how to steal the Hubble - LOL... LOL - couldn't figure a way to heist the Hubble so I bought the P1000.. Damn, even 3000 mm is LOTS of focal length! Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I think the problem with embedding the MP4 only here is that it isn't readily available to be seen by the general public. Slideshow club is open to the public and the ability to demonstrate shows which are much larger than the 125 meg limit on Slideshow Club is important. Today, users often create videos which when saved as exe files or zipped MacIntosh files are way too large to work with Slideshow Club. Some of these need to be seen by the general public. I was absolutely amazed at the misconceptions on a forum devoted to a competitive product. The vast majority of their users had absolutely no clue what was possible with PTE because they had no exposure to it. The more widely PTE shows are distributed (YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Slideshow Club, Wix Video, Wistia, Video Cloud by Brightcove, SproutVideo, Daily Motion, etc., ) the more people will buy the product. Since we already have Slideshow Club and only minor changes need to be made to it to allow embedding large videos already posted on video hosting platforms without needing to upload zipped exe files, my thoughts are that this would be a normal progression especially since before long we will have 64 bit capability and shows will get even larger. Best regards, Lin

Though there is nothing wrong with embedding shows here - most of us do that already - the advantage of having a site like slideshow club is that when people are looking for slideshow software and do not know the name of the company, the generic term "slideshow" will bring them a link where they recognize the name and can immediately go and see shows made lately as well a shows made many, many years ago. I think that having a place like "Slideshow Club" along with examples posted here is very useful as a marketing tool. It's already up and running and one doesn't need to know a priori that the product featured is any particular brand. However, it would be very nice if it were possible to embed videos there without having to upload zipped files first. In some cases the zipped files are just too large to fit the limitations. Just my $.02 Best regards, Lin