Lin Evans

LOL - yep flag and wind physics have to take a backseat to the possible... Actually, the number of frames per second doesn't affect the speed of the video, only the smoothness. The exe files we create average 60 fps and 30 fps video can't render animations as smoothly. Using a higher frame rate in the same period of time just gives additional increments which smooth up the motion. Typical movies were shot at 24 fps and to get smooth motion, they used special tricks such as blurring the leading edge of an object in motion. With higher frame rates the apparent motion is much smoother, but the size of the video file is doubled. Think of it like this - you have a deck of cards on which there are drawings of a subject in motion. Let's say there were 24 drawings each representing part of a sequence of someone taking two steps. You flip all 24 of them in one second and observe. You see the subject take two steps, but the distance traveled with each card is much greater than if you had sixty cards with each card representing a shorter distance moved. If you flip all 60 in the same one second, the subject doesn't move any further than the two steps, but the motion is less jerky because each card represents a smaller amount of travel. So 60 frames per second covering the same capture of motion is much smoother than 30 frames per second or 24 frames per second. The more frames each representing a smaller amount of travel in terms of motion in the same time frame (one second) the smoother the appearance of motion. Thanks for checking it for me! Best regards, Lin

This was the first HD Video I've made (made with the latest version of PTE) which I believe equals the EXE file in every way. It's a remake of my "What Can I Do" demo of PTE with some added material. It was done at full HD 60 fps and it's big - 1.274 gigabytes zipped mp4 for anyone interested. If you have the bandwidth and want to see it I would appreciated comments about the video quality. I played it on my 30 inch 2560 x 1600 display with Win 8.1 on a high performance high RAM system and it looks excellent. http://www.lin-evans.org/pte/whatcanido2018.zip Best regards, Lin

Gary, the way FB works is that you have various "privacy" settings. If you don't see video shows on other's FB sites, it's probably because they have their privacy set so that only their friends can see them. Facebook is a broad use media platform and not everyone posts their videos there. There are a number of shows on the PTE Users Group which are not mine, but I try to put up something every month or so and because of that many are mine. The FB PTE User Group has been online for a number of years. I took it from Private to Public in May of 2015. The idea of the group is for discussion, demonstrations of new techniques, what people are doing with PTE, answering questions, etc., so videos themselves are only a part of the intent of having a group. Maybe many of the users do not create videos or are only interested in finding out about the program. The larger the group becomes, the more people will know about PicturesToExe and that's the primary purpose of having a group. I suggest that whenever someone joins the group that they sign up all their FB friends whether or not they are PTE users. They have the option of opting out if they don't want to belong to the group. Unfortunately, not too many of our users have done that but the more people we can convince to add friends, the more exposure is possible. It's not necessary to put all one's shows on the group - just ones which you particularly like or have some special feature, etc. It's not meant to take the place of Slideshow Club, only to spread the word about PicturesToExe. Hopefully if more people add their friends to the group, there will be greater interest, greater purchases which will allow more development and refinement which will benefit all users. Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, The "group" has it's own provisions for posting shows. It has no relationship to the member's own FB sites. If you want to post a show on the group site just do it like you would on your own site. When you upload a show to the group FB page it will be shortly approved then appear along with any associated text. Best regards, Lin

If you are a Facebook user, please come visit and join the PTE Facebook Group Folks - There you can post shows, images, etc., and discuss PicturesToExe.... The link is below: https://www.facebook.com/groups/picturestoexefans/ Lin

Hi Geoff, I don't believe it works from O&A but it doesn't work with my earlier versions either (Win 8.1 and Win XP) so don't know if it ever actually did. I haven't tried with all previous version of 9 but it doesn't work with 9.0.16 or 9.0.17 for me... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, Sadly, I have no other suggestions. I don't make large video files so this is an area outside my experience. Perhaps Igor my have a suggestion... Best regards, Lin

Just a thought Jose. Could you try creating the PTE files as AVI rather than MP4 then try to join? This would mean a different codec would be used. Not having ever tried this I can't be certain but the error message references a codec issue and creating as an AVI uses a different codec. Perhaps after joining the show can be converted to MP4? Best regards, Lin

Sorry to be so late answering your question. The show needs to be in some location where it can be downloaded by the person who it is shared with. You can put it on a private website or in the Cloud (if you have Cloud storage), on YouTube, Vimeo, etc., or on a media sharing site such as MediaFire. The show you share should be in a video format. The person who then wants to see your show and upload it into their phone needs an app which allows this or they need to use the internet. You could also email them the show if it's small enough and they can save it from the email. Since there are multiple types of smartphones - I can't speak for all them but the user can contact their phone service company for specific directions for their own phones. Best regards, Lin

It depends on whether you are referencing the camera or the image. Since PTE is an image/slide program the reference by the various author's of these styles are the image and not the camera. So if the camera moves from the right to the left the image appears to move from left to right, etc. The actual image itself is a static item zoomed in and the view as seen by the observer moves either to the left, right, up or down or any simultaneous combination of left/up/down or right/up/down. A camera pan would be relevant in a video were an actual pan done, but not in a still image. The demonstration simply gives the name of the style given by the author then shows what it does. Best regards, Lin

I've placed the names of the IPTC data files as the content of each space then used PTE to extract them on this image. This means PTE is working correctly. So you can place the Author's name in whichever of these you wish then use the IPTC data call template to extract the data from that field as seen in the image below. I would suggest using "Credits" or "Author Byline." Use a freeware product such as Irfanview to write data to the desired IPTC field. Since different camera makers may use different IPTC data and the owner of the camera may or may not have set up the camera to place their name as photographer, one can't depend on the data being there so you may have to put it there if you want to use this feature. Best regards, Lin

Hi Sonja, To save you a little time: "Project Options" - "Control Tab" "Action after Last Slide" from drop-down menu choose "Repeat Show" Best regards, Lin

Yes, you can create a zip file. Click on the top left of your screen on "File" "Create Backup In Zip" which puts all slides, videos, resources, etc., used in your show into a single zipped archive which you can move anywhere then unzip to have everything in one place even on a different computer, etc. Lin

Seems superfluous to use that feature since it's not muting at any specific place. Why not just delete the track? Muting all this way is essentially the same as deleting the tracks AFAIK... except you are still carrying the useless overhead of the audio..???? Best regards, Lin

Objects and Animations screen - Properties Tab - under Video section - Mute Audio No, the only way to mute the entire audio is to either use the waveform or go to Project Options - Audio Tab - Select the Audio You Want To Mute and set Volume % to zero. Best regards, Lin

I don't have any problem using it like this: http://www.lin-evans.org/p2e/sample2.zip But then my standards for what is acceptable might be lower than someone doing a serious AV show. This was just a 30 second example and the first slide could have been dissolved like the blank slide at the end, but I really don't personally have a problem with seeing the back of a slide in the transition. Best regards, Lin

Looks pretty cool to me... I tried it with all kinds of different aspect ratios and even mixed and it looks fine with all as it is... as long as the project option is set to 16:9.... Thanks !!! Best regards, Lin

How To Modify Files Within A Style Just today, Wideangle posted a nice style consisting of a frame, brick background and spotlight for 16:9 aspect ratio images. I noticed that the edges of the light beam were a little “rough” and decided to smooth them a bit. In the process, I realized that probably many who use PTE do not know how to find and modify files within a style so I thought a few words about this might be helpful. When a style is created which has internal images (PNG, Jpg, video, etc.) PicturesToExe creates a special file which when the style is imported by the user is stored in the Documents and Settings/name of your computer/My Documents/PicturesToExe/Slide Styles folder. If you can’t find this folder, go into Objects and Animations and look at the name of the file you want to modify then do a Windows search for that file name on the drive where you have PicturesToExe loaded. What you will find is that a long file name such as {C5B83A54-75DC-4091-9D7F-5DBAF1E44D37} has been created and if you open this file in a program such as PhotoShop, you will then be able to choose the appropriate file, modify it and save it. Doing the above will effectively modify the style so that your changes will be included without having to create a new style. Lin

Thanks !! Great idea. It prompted me to slightly modify the beam of light coming from the spot to soften the edges of the light rays a bit. Then that gave me the thought that perhaps some, if not many who use PTE have no idea about how to gain access to the files used inside a style. I wrote a little tutorial on this which I will post in the Articles and Tutorials section.... Best regards, Lin

It'a a false positive - write or email them and let them know... Best regards, Lin

LOL - Beautiful !!!! Best regards, Lin

George. As David and JT are explaining - perhaps you've never done this before, but if you do as David suggests it may be a solution for you... Here, I've made a little example video to show you how to do as Dave explains. In this example I've copy pasted the slide, but you can just copy paste the video to subsequent slides and achieve the same result by matching the video time in each slide to the run time of the slide.... Lin backgroundvideo.wmv

Hi Ted, Most excellent use of PTE !!! Congratulations on a beautifully constructed show! Best regards, Lin

Hi Gary, From a old software developer's perspective, if it happens on one system and not on another, it could very well be some interaction between the application software and the operating system or between the application and environment. The problem could be on either end. Since no one else has mentioned this problem and since it doesn't happen on Dave's system or on mine, (I'm running XP and Win 8.1) it "may" be something unique to your system. Rather than chase in circles, why don't you run dxdiag and post the report so Igor know exactly what you have in terms of system resources, CPU, OS, drivers, video hardware, etc. Unless it also happens on Igor's system(s) it is very difficult to try to ferret out the answer without all the data. Best regards, Lin

Gary, The solution I suggested is not a "work-around" it's just the simple way to achieve what you are trying to do without all the drama. PTE has the convert feature for a good reason but several other features such as trim are just conveniences. PTE isn't a video editing software. The next version of PTE will have many changes to the video engine so spending development time on something which may or may not be a real bug is probably not a good use of the programming team's time. Trying to make PTE suit each user's style is an exercise in futility to me. Software is never "bug free." It's not certain that what you are experiencing isn't a bug with the OS. When there is a simple way to do what you want without all the fiddling around, why not just use it and get on with making your show? I'm not suggesting that trying to chase bugs is not something which developers should do, but when there is a simple way to achieve what you are trying to do and no one else is complaining about the same thing why not just get on with making your show and if the development team can address this once all other pressing issues which numerous users are having are solved, then that would be great. Just saying.... Best regards, Lin