Lin Evans

Hi Barry, Very nice music - I listened to the excerpts and bought the entire collection of 8 CD's. I haven't been able to figure out how to download them yet - but still looking. Best regards, Lin

Hi Alan, One would think that this would be a general "rule of thumb," and in most cases it probably is, but there are some caveats which must be considered. If pixel count were a true measure of resolution this would be true, but though pixel count contributes to resolution there are numerous other issues which impact resolution. First one must be aware of just what is meant by the term "resolution." The amount of detail in a digital image is the result of the combination of pixel count, pixel quality, amount of noise in the image and lens quality. True resolution is usually measured by the number of line pairs per mm which can be discerned from the capture. A six megapixel capture from a good quality dSLR with a decent lens will generally produce more detail and thus higher resolution than a corresponding image from a seven megapixel fixed lens digicam. A 3.4 megapixel capture from a Sigma SD10 with a decent lens will produce slightly more detail and higher resolution than a 6 megapixel capture from a typical CFA (bayer processed) dSlR sensor. So even though the SD10 only produces a file of 3.4 megapixels the capture was made with 10.3 million photo detecting sites (pixels). The directly captured pixel level detail (separate sensors for RBG at a given site) and quality are cleaner and more accurate than the corresponding pixels produced by bayer interpolation from the larger file of a CFA type sensor. The bottom line is that when comparing resolution and detail we need to be attuned to not only pixel count but pixel quality, lens quality and noise performance - all of which impact resolution. Best regards, Lin

There is an easy way to determine which is the better way to go, assuming similar quality pixels, lens, noise ratios, etc., which is called the Figure of Merit. The answer depends on the resolution of the higher pixel count sensor and the degree of magnification of the lower pixel count sensor. Here's a link where you can get the formula, read a comprehensive explanation and simply plug in the variables. http://www.mav-magazine.com/Jun2000/FigureofMerit/ Lin

I assume you mean from the executable code - if so at present the answer is no. But of course you can modify and recreate the slideshow and recreate the executable as many times as you like. One of the requests I've had in the past is to encode and be able to recover the .pte from the executable via password. I'm not certain where Igor is on this at present, but it would be very useful to include this capability in future releases. Lin

Hi Eddie, First, it's better to wait and see before drawing conclusions. Second, all programs which use the Ken Burns effects (pan, zoom, rotate, etc.) have this common problem. It simply takes a decent hardware complement to allow smooth actions when dealing with the amount of data necessary to make these features happen. I also use ProShow Gold as well as P2E and frequently my executable files are jerky - text scrolling is "iffy" and so on when played on different machines. One work-around is to convert to DVD but this has its own issues such as image quality and the inability to use manual features such as manual advance and back, print image from the slideshow, run external code, etc. There is no "perfect" solution and probably won't be one until all the older PC's have been replaced with upgraded units which have reasonably large memory video cards made for action graphics. The world is full of compromise, but P2E is and probably always will be one of the very best solutions for presentation slideshows. Lin

But "bogus" from your perspective, not from everyone's. DVD creation seems more important to you than versatility in executable creation. As another who uses both P2E and ProShow Gold, I find the flexibility lacking in ProShow Gold for creating usable manual slideshows with the ability to manually advance, go back, go to end, print, etc. - things which P2E does very smoothly. We all have our "preferences" and though self-contained DVD creation is nice, it doesn't always work well for everyone with ProShow Gold as is evidenced by the numerous issues reported with hardware and driver incompatibilities. Perhaps the author's of P2E are more cautious about choosing the best of available alternatives? Best regards, Lin

No, there is no way to do this with an existing executable file, but you could use the AVI creation capabilities and convert to another web usable format. We use third party software to create Flash slideshows from the P2E generated AVI. Lin Read here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3547

I think I've had it with AVG. I just noticed that my subscription expires on the 22nd of this month and I think I'll try Panda which has a much better track record of both detecting and removing viruses and of not rendering false positives. Lin

Hi Ken, I emailed both Grisoft technical support and their sales with the problem. I also called their U.S. distributor who was less than helpful. My first contact at the distributor was a woman who informed me that AVG doesn't "erase" Trojan Horses. She then tried to explain to me the difference between a "virus" and a "trojan horse". I spoke with her supervisor and again explained the situation as well as explaining that I was unsure whether my message to technical support would get through because their auto-response kicked back my email explaining that they didn't have me on record as a "registered user" of AVG even though I've been a paid registered user since they left beta. The manager at their US distributor told me I would need to contact Grisoft and I asked him for a phone number. He said they could only contact Grisoft by email (frankly I find this hard to believe). I explained to him that delays in correcting this situation would result in considerable bad press for AVG since I had posted a warning on dPReview which is visited by millions of people each month. He didn't seem to be at all concerned so I suspect I will post the warning on all forums I visit - in total read by over 1,000,000 visitors DAILY. I've had the same experience as you. Files recovered from the Virus Vault have been damaged and no longer run. The program didn't even say it was moving the files to the virus vault, instead it said it had "healed them" (probably where the damage occurred) and "deleted" them. I did find all five of my executable files in the Virus Vault and non of them are usable any more. I'm very dissapointed with Grisoft - not because of their making a mistake because that's sometimes unavoidable, but because there is no telephone number where someone can immediately report such problems. I find it very difficult to believe that a company with the amount of business that is generated by AVG does not have a telephone where they can be reached. Further, the distributor told me that it sometimes takes 48 hours or even 72 hours to get a response from their technical support. That's simply unacceptable. Best regards, Lin

AVG got me as well - erased five of my commercial executables before I could kill the program. AVG "Says" it has "healed" the files when in fact it erases them. They do not subsequently appear in the Windows trash bin so it will be necessary to use commercial hard disk recovery software to recover the deleted files. Fortunately I have them backed up on media not available to AVG, but it's very annoying that I was given no choice in what to do. After I saw that five of my slideshows had been tagged as having a Trojan Horse I immediately stopped AVG, but instead of immediately stopping it proceeded to erase my files. This is not a good way for a program to behave - I emailed both sales and support and told them what happened. Lin

I'm not familiar with worldwide copyright laws, but here in the U.S. any copy made of a photograph whose copyright is owned by another without express permission is a violation of copyright laws. The fact that the image is of one's self and that one would be using it for non profit purposes has no bearing whatsoever on the copyright. Using a copyrighted image without compensation to the photographer who owns the copyright is, defacto, depriving that photographer of compensation. The photographer makes his/her living from photographs and in the case of a wedding, sold prints to the bride/groom, etc. Subsequent use of those copyrighted images without either express permission from the copyright holder or payment to the copyright holder violates the copyright laws. Now, whether or not this is "fair" or "right" is another issue altogether. In my own case, when I shoot for clients I give them joint ownership of the photographs so that they may, without further compensation to me, do what they please with them. I charge sufficiently up front to give myself fair compensation for their future use. But remember - in the days before digital, the photographer always owned not only the copyright but the "negative" and never relinquished ownership unless the client paid for the negatives. In such a case the "copyright" passed to the owner of the negative. In Ron's case, I would assume that he now owns the copyright to the image from the negative given him. The fact that the photographer for Ginger's wedding placed text over the images furnished to her on the CD means that they were not intended to be used for reproduction and that the photographer expected the client to return to him for copies. Since he no longer has the originals, in some sense this is like destroying the negative. In such a case there may be grounds for a claim that copyright ownership has been passed or at least shared with Ginger so that it may be possible to make a legal case for reproduction from the demo disk but probably not for "altering" the image by removing the text. This is legal "muddy waters" and the advice of a copyright attorney would be advised. Lin

Hi Ginger, You should take the "draft" CD back to your photographer and let him deal with getting the images for you. If he uses PicturesToExe then he will know how to best deal with recovery of the images and how to remove the "draft" information and print them for you. Photographs made by a professional photographer are copyrighted by the photographer and most likely the reason the images on the CD are marked draft were to prevent them from being printed without compensation. If your photographer is willing to let you print them, then he should give you written permission to have them done, otherwise you would be in violation of copyright laws and you will not find many professional printers willing to do so without express permission from the photographer. Best regards, Lin

Great news Igor! These changes will elevate P2E to the "head of the class" for presentation slideshow programs. Congratulations and we're all anxiously awaiting the first beta to test!!! Lin

I'm assuming you mean "80" second slide show - each slide staying on screen for four seconds. If so, you could use Audacity to do two things. First set the timing to somewhere close to 80 seconds and then fade the volume for the last couple seconds. You "could" set it for exactly 80 seconds, but unless you have a critical need to have each slide remain on screen for "precisely" a fixed amount of time, it would be easier to just set the song for perhaps a little longer than 80 seconds and fade the last few bars out. Remember, you also will have some time devoted to transitions. Usually four seconds isn't sufficient time for someone to really digest an image. Perhaps eight seconds would be more realistic and then you would have some time to devote to the transitions as well. P2E can easily sync to the exact length of the selection, however long it ends up after you modify it in Audacity. Probably rather than look for an exact amount of time, find a "logical" break point in the music after a reasonable play time and do the fade from that point. Best regards, Lin

First, you will probably want to convert your audio to MP3 for inclusion in your slideshows. You can do that with any number of inexpensive software solutions. Next you need to edit the songs and as mentioned in the other threads that takes a sound editor. I'm not certain about some types of "copy protection" on the downloaded songs, but it's quite likely this will be lost when you convert from the base format to mp3, etc... There are many good ones including the ones mentioned. Audacity is free and very powerful but you will need to pay a small fee to get the codec for using it to convert to MP3 from the default format or from WAV format. Editing sound in these editors is very, very easy once you get the hang of what's going on. Essentially you can simply select a portion of the song just like you would select a few words or a sentence using a text editor. You can then cut, paste, etc. You also can select a "portion" and apply effects such as fades or change volume, etc. You can cut and paste ad string together segments of numerous songs and save as a new mp3 file. You can combine any number of selections into a new file. In short, you have nearly complete control with a good sound editor. Use the links provided in the other posts, download and try them - you won't be dissapointed... Lin

Rename the extension to wmv and it should run - I've corrected it on the link... Ha! LIN

LOL - yes indeed, a video is no longer a slideshow, but sometimes you have something you want to "say" which can't be said as "effectively" with still slides.... Click the link below to see what I mean for broadband only.... Lin

Hang in there Harry, our prayers are with you. At your age it's unlikely that it has spread beyond the prostate itself. Many who are diagnosed at your age and not treated at all live for over twenty years because it's a slow growing type and the prognosis after treatment is excellent so keep the faith! Best regards, Lin

Apparently it is "possible" to get good crisp text from a video with ProShow Gold, but to do so means setting the parameters so that rendering is close to the video default you are using. Since the largest video is a good deal smaller than a normal screen show with an executable file, the only way to get "both" good video text (or video) is to make a slideshow with much smaller images - something which is not feasable for me. It's interesting that the same doesn't apply to Media@Show in that it can produce a crisp video right beside full sized images for the regular slideshow. Just a different approach, I guess, than ProShow Gold. Lin

Yes, that's the correct link. The link shows a screen capture of an avi video clip inserted into ProShow Gold and the identical clip inserted into Media@Show. The instant screen capture of the two are displayed above and below with an explanation as to which is which. The video quality of the ProShow Gold rendition was much poorer than the one from Media@Show. This was expected because Media@Show came to be via a company which has a long history in video. This also probably explains why Media@Show has the best text handling and effects of any current slideshow program. Having great video handling within a still slideshow program in no way necessarily compromises image quality. My point is that third party programs already exist such as WildFX Pro which offer fantastic video text which can be exported as avi or mov files. Any slideshow program which can seamlessly mix (Media@Show does it) video and still photos can take advantage of these already sophisticated programs without spending tremendous amounts of resources and time developing their own text handling. ProShow Gold doesn't handle video clips well from the point of image quality. Media@Show simply overcompresses the stills to facilitate running in hardware deprived environments, but this is no longer necessary because the "average" system today is four times as powerful as the "average" system of three years ago. A graphical engine which can properly display the Ken Burns effects "should" be able to handle small video clips with ease - hopefully P2E will eventually do both. Of course we all want optimal image quality for our slideshows. The pan, zoom and rotate are extremely important to many simply because when done correctly it adds a depth and holds the interest of the viewer better than a simple display of the still image. It also allows proper viewing of panoramas without resorting to programming "tricks" to try and display them in an engine not designed for that purpose. It's quite possible to present a slideshow in a program which offers the Ken Burns Effects and video clips without using any of them. Having them simply makes the program that much more versatile. Best regards, Lin

Just a little more on this as an explanation.... Not all slideshow programs which allow intermix of video and still slideshows handle video equally. As a test I decided to insert a small .avi video show of text into ProShow Gold and Media@Show, two programs which allow a video clip to be dropped into the show as a slide and seamlessly play them. The results were quite revealing. Media@Show did a MUCH better job of producing optimal video quality than ProShow Gold. This may be reasonable considering that Media@Show had its origins in video and then developed their slideshow program later. Ironically, Media@Show doesn't really need any help with their text handling, because they already have the best and fanciest text handling of any slideshow. ProShow Gold could certainly use the help, but as you will see in the example below, doesn't really handle video all that well in terms of image quality. Hopefully, when PicturesToExe finally has the new graphical engine in place, it will handle video as well as Media@Show. Media@Show, I believe, is at the end of its life cycle. The program was sold to a Taiwanese company and their technical expertise and support has been less than stellar. It has several bugs which they have been unable or unwilling to fix, but it does make an excellent example of a program which should be studied to find out how they handle video and text so well. Below are the results of my little video clip insertion in ProShow Gold and Media@Show.... Lin http://www.lin-evans.net/dpreview/videohandling.jpg

Of course it would be nice if the next version of P2E with the new graphical engine would or could do fancy scrolling, flying, tumbling text, etc., but "IF" P2E could simply allow dropping in short video clips such as is possible with Media@Show, ProShow Gold, etc., it would be VERY easy for the user to create their title and credits screens with any number of incredibly good programs, even the freeware Microsoft Movie Maker 2 which is shipped with Windows XP. I use several programs to simply overlay dynamic text with hundreds of text effects on a jpg for the first and last slide. Just drop the short video clip as the first slide then again another as the last slide and you have solved one issue via third party software rather than having to design in and create from scratch all these effects. Programs like Wild FX Pro have literally hundreds of incredible text effects which can easily be made into a tiny video clip. With ProShow Gold I simply drop the clip in the first slide spot and have complete prefessional text effects for the opening and credits pages. It's seamless and works wonderfully. Having the video clip as a slide would greatly enhance P2E's appeal to many who desperately want text handling. Lin

The show I used as a sample was pretty well maxed out in terms of features which sap resources and the FLV file was about 62 megabytes which is about 20% larger than the executable file to run the identical show. Shows which have the Ken Burns Effect really need about 30 frames per second to give movie-like smoothness, but shows such as present iterations of P2E which are essentially stills with transitions don't really need quite so much overhead and probably would play well with 15 frames per second. With 30 frames per second the total overhead is about 100K for the Flash player and associated files plus the slideshow itself. Essentially, as far as web resources in terms of storage, downloading an exe file from a web site and storing an FLV Flash slideshow are a wash. The primary differences are that if you store an executable file with a link for downloading, the viewer must wait until the executable has downloaded then run it. This requires some expertise in that they must know where the downloaded file was stored then they must know enough to click on run, browse to the file and run it. The "up" side is that the quality is going to be superior to what you get from a Flash show on your web site. The images may be larger, transitions smoother and they can re-run the show which now resides on their hard disk at any time. The other down side is that it will only work on a Windows based PC. The up side of doing it with FLV Flash is that the slideshow begins very quickly and spools to the viewers screen. Also it's available cross-platform so that MacIntosh users as well as Windows users can see it. But another down side is that someone with a dial up connection probably won't be happy with the results so it's pretty much reserved for broadband users. Of course one "could" make the slideshow with relatively tiny display size and make it amenable to dial-up as well as broadband. The other side of this coin is that most with dial-up connects will not have the capacity to download an executable file of more than about 10 megabytes size without undue constraints in time and patience. There really isn't a perfect solution, just a matter of choosing the best of the available choices according to your needs and intent. Best regards, Lin

Mysty, Read my post to you on the Presentations forum.... Lin

Microsoft MPEG 4 Video Codec didn't appear in the options. Any ideas? I'm not certain why they would be different unless perhaps different versions of Windows may have different codecs. I'm using Windows XT home edition on this particular system. Also, I think these various codecs may be downloaded via the web. Maybe Igor can tell us whether some are supplied with P2E or perhaps P2E is simply reading what is available on the individual computer?? Below is a screen snapshot of what I see. You wouldn't necessarily "have" to use the one I suggested, but simply one which is amenable to most Windows systems. Without knowing what you actually have on your computer I wouldn't know which to suggest but maybe you can do a screen snapshot (use IrfanView or something) and post an image of what you have.... Lin Link to Codecs Snapshot