Lin Evans

I may be the only person still running Windows XP but I use it for my daily web - email, etc., and I have used Malware Bytes (free version) for many years and found it to work perfectly. Tonight I got a message which wanted me to install a new version of Malware Bytes and I did. BIG MISTAKE !!!! The new version put a free 14 day copy of the paid version on your system which automatically reverts to the freeware version in 14 days unless you purchase the paid version. After the installation, my system ran like a snail. It took literally minutes to get a response from a mouse click to exit a program or start a program. I went into the Windows Control Panel to uninstall Malware Bytes and it refused to uninstall. After a full 15 minutes of the hour glass, I killed the power and restarted in Safe Mode and uninstalled Malware Bytes and everything is back to normal. Just a word to the wise - if you are running Win XP and using Malware Bytes, it's probably best if you do not install the new version. Unless this is an anomaly relating to only my system, it will absolutely kill your performance and require you to go to Safe Mode to uninstall. Best regards, Lin

Cool Dave - I like these! Best regards, Lin

Hi Rob, Video card... This sounds like a problem with a marginal video card. I'm not totally clear on whether it's the exe or the mp4 which has the problem on your laptop. The exe requires more from the video card than an mp4 so it would be logical that the exe might not play smoothly on your laptop. Usually once everything is converted to mp4 it runs smoothly because the conversion to individual frames has already been done during the creation of the video. With an exe file, individual images up to and possibly exceeding 60 frames per second are being created on the fly. If there is significant animation, this requires a good modern video card which most laptops just don't have. If they do have an external (not shared resource) card, there is usually a necessity to have the laptop plugged into AC rather than running off battery and also usually a procedure for switching from the integrated video to the more powerful external card. Best regards, Lin

Just a suggestion for anyone using XP or perhaps Vista operating systems. Without a complete uninstall of the previously installed version of PTE, I found that the beta wouldn't install because a number of dll files could not be deleted. To delete them, I went into safe mode then manually cleaned out all traces of the previous PTE 9 installation. Although I have not yet tried to create a larger than 2 gigabyte exe file, I did find that this new beta 14 removed some of the problems with my previous installation of PTE 9.13 which would not create videos on my XP system for some reason. With the new Beta PTE 9.14 the video creation works normally. I don't know whether this was something specific to my own system or not, but if you are using XP and get errors when trying to install the beta, go into the safe mode (f8 when booting up) and delete everything under PTE 9.0 - that worked for me. Keep in mind that PTE 9 is not guaranteed compatible with either XP or Vista, but designed for more current operating systems. Best regards, Lin

Looking great FX - excellent use of various PTE features - looking forward to seeing the completed project! Best regards, Lin

Hi Rob, The problem is that an executable file content is totally contained within the code which creates the images and screens as programmed by the .pte file used to create the exe. No other software can gain access to the internals of a good executable file like the PTE exe which is protected from tampering via proprietary encryption. In order to display on a computer screen the image following the one being displayed on a projector the software would have to be reading from a "map" or template such at the PTE file itself. Then the software would have to split the content and send one image to the projector while sending the next image in the sequence to the computer screen. I'm afraid you are not going to find any software that can do this with a PTE exe file - it would have to be something written by Wnsoft developers themselves. Best regards, Lin

Hi Rob, There is no way to do this with PTE. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jack, What is important is that you've solved the "freeze" issue - please let us know how it works after the upgrade.. Best regards, Lin

Just turn the power off then back on - reboot is reboot - CTRL ALT DEL will bring up the task manager in Windows and allow the exit of PTE, but it will not hurt anything to just power down then back up and that will kill any connect between the Mac and Windows and allow him to start over and remove the current version of PTE and reinstall the newer version. Best regards, Lin

??? Jack - why don't you just reboot your computer or turn it off and back on or pull the plug and plug it back in??? Best regards, Lin

Cool Manuel !!! Very Creative!!!! Just a little more explanation about how one can use this style. Use two images of the same dimensions and orientation. Set the Project Options to 16:9 (Best with 16:9 aspect ratio images) Put the one you want the cut out text to appear on as the second image and the one you want the text cut out of as the first image. Select both images, then select and run Manuel's style. Next go to Objects and Animations and everywhere you see the word "Text1" in the objects list on the Animations Tab, click on it to select, go to the Properties tab and change the word "Text" to whatever word or words you want cut out. Re size the text to fit the image then copy and paste this new size on the Animations Tab in the "zoom block" as well as the new text into each place the word "text1" is found. Where you see "text2" you can leave as it is, delete or change "PicturesToExe" to some other sentence and size accordingly. Lin

Hi Jim, I seem to remember that we had a problem with icons some time ago and it was solved most of the time by rebooting the computer. Try that and if that doesn't do it we can ask Igor to look into it for you. Best regards, Lin

Hi Robert, Glad you found the culprit !!! Hardware issues can be a bear. The saved files are in a folder called "RecoveredProjects" I believe the default for this for future reference is C:\Documents and Settings\your computer's name\Local Settings\Applications Data\PicturesToExe\Versions\your current version.. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Of course - but the TV has to have the capability of playing a video from a USB stick. Make an HD video then place it on your USB drive and plug that into the appropriate place on a television and it should be detected and play. When you say produce a slideshow on "Disc" you need to be more specific. Do you mean on a DVD or on a hard drive? An exe show will not play on a DVD or CD unless you have special software which will detect and allow this. If you create a DVD with PTE it will play on a DVD or BluRay player on a TV, and usually a computer which has a DVD drive will play DVD's. Best regards, Lin

Hi José, A great innovative solution Denis !! In addition to what Denis has suggested - note that in the included PTE zip file version a different font was used in the sample pte file than Denis actually used for the avi. Just to further clarify, the font used to create the avi or mp4 for the mask stencil will be the font which appears when you use it in your creation. In addition to changing the color of the font by changing the rectangle color, you may also want to experiment with slight opacity changes which will allow the background of the image to slightly show through the font. Any changes to the rectangle (color, gradient, etc.) will be reflected in the text.. Change the speed of the page turn transition in the pte file before creating the avi or mp4 as well as the slide time to change the speed of the transition. Match this speed with your slide which contains the mask stencil. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken - Thank NASA - They have some pretty spectacular videos of old Sol... Best regards, Lin

I like that Tom ... The reason I didn't show stars or the International Space Station, etc., was an attempt to show how I thought it "might" had looked if being viewed through the protective glasses which would pretty much cut all light except the sun when and where visible beyond the moon. I like the idea of the ISS passing by. I'm going to try to photograph the ISS first chance I get with a super clear night. My Nikon P900 has 2000mm optical zoom and with it on a tripod I think I might be able to get a reasonably clean image of it. Best regards, Lin

He may have found his "Juliet" - LOL Best regards, Lin

The recent solar eclipse was a big deal around the world. I missed it because I didn't have suitable protective glasses or protective sun filters to do photographs. So I decided to create a simulation. NASA has made some amazing 4K sun videos, but none of them were totally suitable. The best and most suitable were only slightly over half of the sun. So to make this simulation, I used PTE's great masking capability to create the bottom half of the sun - invert that to create the bottom half and reverse its rotation. In all three masks were used and the video used three times to create the entire orb. The moon was one of my captures which was adjusted using PTE's color filters to set black point for proper darkness. Just a fun project - download either the Mac or PC version below if interested... http://www.lin-evans.org/lin/eclipseofsunpc.zip (about 66 meg) http://www.lin-evans.org/lin/eclipseofsunmac.zip (about 66 meg) Best regards, Lin

Hi Jose, Because something - even a transparent PNG has to be a background, I don't believe it's possible to do what you want to do. When a transparent PNG file is used with text or even when text is written over a PNG transparency in Photoshop, there still has to be something visible for a background so PTE defaults to a white background when you specify a transparent PNG for the background. PTE uses the background along with the foreground to create the page curl. That's why it's possible to "turn off" the back of an image and have it blank in whatever the background color is when the page turns. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mick - One correction - move the images into the style portion before deleting the blank page - the page number will change so be sure it's the completely blank image you remove and not the one which has some of the leather view on the left. Yes - you can put as many of the other styles in as you want just be sure to leave the closing style images created by the first application of the style.. If you accidentally remove slide six before putting in more images, it will remove the original style completely. Play around with it with only about six images to see how this works before attempting to do it for real... Best regards, Lin

Hi Mick, Apply the "album" style to one image. Multiple images will be created in the slide list. Remove the seventh image (a blank page) by just clicking and dragging and dropping it out of the slide list. Drag all the images you wish to change the slide style to a two or/and three image into the position which was formerly occupied by slide seven (of the created slides). Select the appropriate number (two or three slides) and apply the two or three slide styles. When the album opens, it opens to your first image then to the two and/or three image pages and then closes normally, Best regards, Lin

Linda, You have to "import" the style before you will be able to see it. Just adding it to your styles folder isn't sufficient. Go to "Slide Styles" "Tools" "Import Style" then navigate to the style and click on it to select then click on "Open". After doing this you will find it among the styles in it's own category. Best regards, Lin

Hi George, There have always been difference in the Preview play and the play of a completed exe file. I don't believe we have ever known the reasons for the difference but sometimes animations which work perfectly well in preview have issues after the exe is created and played back. Having an extra slide after the RC which solves one issue seems to indicate a resource issue of some type involving RAM. Why don't you email Igor and perhaps he can look at this and determine where the problem lies. The fact that it takes about the same length of time for you to run my sample as it does for my XP system while my Win 8.1 system loads and plays the file in about 4 seconds also is indicative of a resource issue of some type. Let's hope Igor can look at the results of the dxdiag and help with a solution. Igor has been notified of this issue - best to wait for his evaluation... Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave - which wedding slide style are you referring to? If the PTE Wedding Style - first put three portrait images in your slide list. Next select all three by clicking on them one at a time while holding down the CTRL key (or click the first the hold the shift key and click the third which will select all three). Next go to slide styles and select and apply the 3 portrait style. Lin