Lin Evans

Hi Dave, Congrats on the new D7200 - Great camera in my experience - hard to say on the crop but there is sufficient resolution to do the equivalent of some pretty good digital zoom... Best regards, Lin

Yes - that's one of the things which might have made image quality a little better, but truthfully, on my Canon SX50 HS which has RAW support I rarely if ever use it because I just don't see much difference in the IQ. On my Nikon APS C dSLR's (D7000, D5300, D7200) there is a substantial difference but on these tiny sensor cameras in my experience the improvement is marginal. The overall capability for the P900 though is outstanding. My main reason for getting it was that I seem to never have the right combination of lens and camera body with me when opportunistic moments for those special shots happen. As I get older, carrying my Sigma 300-800 and huge tripod has become a real task in the high country. I've considered getting a Sigma 150-600 OS which would be much lighter but the little (relatively) all-in-one P900 sure has its advantages. You're right though - adding those few extra feature for a next iteration might be the way to continue to draw new users but Nikon was sure not ready for the demand for this camera. They still haven't gotten production ramped to meed the demand. As a manufacturer, they are probably quite happy with the response to the P900... Best regards, Lin

Hi Mike, Nikon has really set the bar for long zoom with this one. With optical zoom to 2000mm and very useable digital zoom to 4,000mm and even able to digitally zoom to 8,000mm it's got some pretty amazing flexibility. Of course the image quality isn't as good as a serious dSLR with expensive glass, but it's good enough for getting shots otherwise impossible in a practical way. I'm having lots of fun with it... Best regards, Lin

Just a recent demo of what really long zoom does - these five images taken at variously aproximately 33, 70, 200, 450, 1200 and 2400 mm focal lengths. All hand held so not intended as examples of good photography but rather just to demonstrate the huge zoom potential of the P900...

Dawn, The quickest way to test is to directly access one of the videos without going through your website. For example - Use your FTP software to determine the folder on your server where one of the videos reside. An example below from one of my own. My website is accessed as follows: "http://www.lin-evans.org" I have a video called "demo.mp4" in a folder called "dawn" So to access it directly, I simply type the following: http://www.lin-evans.org/dawn/demo.mp4 If you click on the above, a little video I have just uploaded consisting of two slides and a third blank with "End" should play on your computer with your default player. So to test your own videos, you just need to do the same substituting your own website URL and the folder and name of one of your videos. If it plays that way, then probably your website host has made some changes and you need to contact them and explain that your videos will no longer play and they can help you resolve the problem. It appears that your mp4 video has been converted to either Flash or SWF Flash by your player and this format isn't compatible with web browsers. If you try the above procedure and are able to see your videos that way, then you need to change the format on your website to something compatible with everything such as mp4. This issue of Flash being converted to HTML5 whether by your web host or by your software is apparently causing issues. MP4 is much slower to load and has a larger "footprint" but is compatible with virtually all systems and browsers. Let's take it one step at a time and we can get it resolved. Lin

Hi Dawn, In checking with different browsers, it appears that the browsers can't find a video with "supported format." Where are the videos for your website actually hosted? Were they placed on YouTube or Vimeo, etc., then embedded in your website or were they uploaded to the website server? Do you know the original format (mp4, Flash, AVI, etc.)? There have been changes and not all good ones IMHO at YouTube where the defaults are for HTML5 and unless the viewer's browser is set to ignore HTML5 and use Flash instead some videos may not be visible. To chase down the issue, the first thing needed is to determine where these videos were hosted. Once that is determined then it's possible to proceed and see if they have been removed or what the problem is. Best regards, Lin

Hi Denis, Yes - I see that it is indeed date modified, but wasn't the OP asking about "time?" Maybe he meant date instead. I'm not certain why Igor and the development team have not given us access to the original date in addition to the date modified. It seems as if it would make sense to allow a much larger selection of Exif information. It's been something we have discussed for a number of years. I think we need changes for the next version. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mick, There is a way, (not in the Windows list - but in the Slide List) although it's a manual sorting. If you select all slides in the slide view then click on "Comments" and choose "Insert Text Template" (upper left in blue) then choose "Exif Info" then "JPG Exif Date" or "JPG Exif Time" all slides will be labeled with the date or time respectively taken. Sort them by dragging as desired then simply select all, repeat the process to delete the visual tag. Best regards, Lin

Hi Urmas, Perhaps a little more idealistic than can be achieved in the real world without an unlimited budget. I agree entirely in theory, but when you watch Manuel's show I think you will see why it's unrealistic to expect him to have found the necessary material from alternate and totally known sources. If one were only using a dozen photos or so and of subjects frequently photographed it might be possible. In his case some of the locations simply are not common enough to find alternatives. For example, Lahemaa National Park in your country is visited and photographed by multitudes of people, much like the Grand Canyon National Park in the United States. So it would not be difficult to find photos with known photographers and seek rights to use photos. But in the case of the Tepuis in Venezuela, much of the subject matter is in very remote and inaccessable regions and finding sufficient material with known photographers and available copyright information is much, much more difficult. Some of the images simply have no duplicate views available anywhere that I was able to find. It's not a simple thing and especially when the purpose of the presentation is decidedly non-commercial and educational, fair use plays an important role. Of course stealing someone's work then presenting it as one's own is downright dishonest such as the case where your photo was taken and then used in an attempt to gain a prize. Sometimes it's difficult to believe that people could be so blatantly abusive of one's rights. Of course culture sometimes rears its head and some people (commonly done in China) seem to have no conscience when it comes to theft of intellectual property. The last time I was in Beijing I was appalled at the sheer quantity of stolen and copied software, movies, and knock-off copies of major clothing brands, etc., being freely sold and traded on the streets. Want a copy of Photoshop CS6 Extended complete with virtually identical packaging complete with hologram, etc.? If you have five dollars it's yours....Want the latest BluRay copy of any major motion picture? For five dollars you can get five movies. It's crazy.... Best regards, Lin

"So, for the moment, until the issue would have its outcome in Supreme Court, it seems, that Google has acted according to "Fair use"." Only because they were forced by a lawsuit to not provide paid access to the complete books: "Although Google intended to make snippets of its books searchable, while charging a fee to access the full versions, a lawsuit brought by the Author's Guild has kept its collection locked behind a digital fence" Google is operating on shakey legal ground and if not for the Author's Guild would be presently stealing income from the authors of the millions of books they scanned in their entirity. When you have the huge deep pockets of Google it's possible to hire the best legal help and drag this case out for many, many years. I personally believe that Manuel is well within the legal definition of Fair Use as it is practiced in the United States. His friends are in Canada so I'm not as familiar with their laws on Fair Use. It's never a simple thing but essentially people like to be either paid or credited for their work and sometimes both. But to preserve these copyrights, photos need to be marked as copyrighted to make it possible to either properly credit the photographer or pay for their use. When photos are posted on public forums without a legible copyright message on the photo itself it makes it very difficult to properly credit the photographer or ask for permission to use the photo or video. There are tools - free ones - to do reverse photo searches to try to find the source of the photo, but when over a hundred photos are being used it is very difficult and in many cases impossible to track down the origin and original copyright holder. With music, there are numerous opportunistic companies - Warner Music (WMG) comes immediately to mind. They and other companies who hold many copyrights frequently claim music which does not belong to them. YouTube is resplendent with cases where these unscrupulous media moguls attempt to claim ownership of music they do not and in many cases "can not" own. It happened to me on several occasions and I had to fight with YouTube to prove that WMG did not and can not own copyrights to music firmly in the Public Domain. I was victorious but only because I would not back off. These companies don't do this because they want to be paid for the use of the music, they do it because they want to sell advertising which they "attach" to other people's videos. If the author of the video doesn't stand up for their rights, these media giants simply unjustly claim rights and YouTube allows them to attach their client's advertising to the video. It's too bad that many of the big guys don't play fair.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Urmas, Being "useful" is not justification for copyright infringement even though Google would like to have it that way. Google is scanning millions of copyrighted books without any permission from the authors. In addition, they are making these books available to the public and charging for this - i.e. profiting from someone else's labor. You say you don't mind Google Street View because you find it useful. What if you spent two years writing a text book to sell and then someone copied your book and used it to sell to people for profit without your permission? Would you still think that was O.K. because perhaps your book had public usefulness? The fruits of your labor being used for profit by a multi-billion dollar business without any remuneration to you whatsoever? The situation here is not justification for copyright infringement because someone else does it (Google), but rather whether the use of images for non-profit educational purposes falls under "fair use" laws. In the case of what Manuel has done, in the United States it would fall clearly under fair use and not be a violation of copyright. He is not selling or profiting in any way by using the images nor is he claiming they are his images. He clearly indicates in his production (which I can tell by your statement that you have not yet watched) the source of the images and informational videos. It is not possible to track each of the images to determine the exact copyright holder to give credit to because they were not marked as copyrighted. You statement: "Telling that somebody acts as bad (as we intend to be ourselves) is a lousy excuse" Is, in my opinion, not a valid description of anything related to this discussion. Nobody is "intending" to "act bad" here. Best regards, Lin

Yes, Google themselves have trampled over copyright issues time and again by quoting entire books without the author's permission. They try to justify it by claiming it's in the public's best interest. It's not a simple thing but what Manuel has presented in my opinion fits firmly into fair use for educational purposes. Best regards, Lin

Nice solution Denis! There are always alternatives and the nice thing about PTE is that it is very flexible... Best regards, Lin

It indeed is "educational" and a very nice presentation. Nothing that I see in it would not qualify as "fair use" under US copyright laws. Excellent job... Lin

Hi Manuel, It's a very nice and very educational presentation! I have some suggestions for corrections in English but otherwise it's fine as it is... Please see your messages for my suggestions... Best regards, Lin

LOL Tom - actually there are still a few Drive-In Movies operating in northern California... Concord, San Jose and Sacramento still have one along with one each in Glendale and Santa Barbara in southern California. We still have a few in Colorado too... http://www.westwinddi.com/ This site say there are still 338 Drive-In Movies still in the USA.. http://www.nerve.com/entertainment/drivein-theater-open-find-location Best regards, Lin

LOL - A "Triumph," especially a TR3 would be the primo vehicle of choice for a worried dad when his little girl was going to a drive-in movie with her boyfriend! About the only "safer" car might have been an Austin Healey Sprite or an MG Midget! No backseat to get in trouble in and a really tight fit in the little bucket seats. Besides, the TR3's doors were cut so low that it was actually possible to hang an arm out the side with the window down and touch the ground with your fingers. Lots of zip and purring is allowed! HA! For Barry - depending on the model, a Tesla Roadster has zero to sixty miles per hour capability in 3.7 seconds and over 225 mile range on a fully charged set of batteries (it's all electric). In the USA charges are free for life with charging stations currently being built all across the USA. It's also one of the best constructed passenger vehicles in the world. It's built in Fremont, Ca with headquarters in Menlo Park, California..... So PTE appeals to a wide variety of users. Some - like some automobile owners just want a "vehicle" to get from point A to point B efficiently and quickly. It's the destination which is important. To others, the journey is more important than the destination. Fortunately, PTE is a product which has wide appeal so the next great version is anxiously awaited especially by those to whom the journey is as important or more so than the destination I think.. Best regards, Lin

Hi Brian, Do you know how much video RAM is on your GTX 650? That's probably the bottleneck. There are limits in terms of jpg file sizes (not PTE limits) such as older versions of Photoshop limited to 30,000 pixels, etc., but generally the issue revolves around video card limitations. The GTX 650 is a reasonably powerful graphics card but comes standard with one gigabyte RAM which may not be sufficient to load and process a really large jpg. Years ago I worked with seriously large files in PTE and to do deep zooms the way I handled it was to crop the huge file at the points I wanted to zoom to and match subsequent slides visually by loading the original smaller jpg then a zoom out of the next size by placing them both in Objects and Animations then setting the opacity of each to about 50%. Next match them visually by manually zooming and positioning the second slide. Write down the numbers of the pan and zoom then delete the second slide in O&A and place it as slide two and type in the correct numbers for the pan and zoom to match the first slide. Set the opacity for the first slide back to 100% and then with a dissolve or quick transition to the second slide it appears that there has been no change so a zoom on slide two seems like a continuous zoom on slide one. Doing this greatly facilitates doing deep zooms on huge files by breaking the high resolution large files into smaller segments which can easily be used with PTE without taxing either your own or other's systems. I wrote a tutorial on doing this which can be found here as number 6 - Basics of Superzoom....http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7901-pte-made-easy-tutorials-continuously-updated/ Best regards, Lin

Hi, The only limit is imposed by your computer system, and the 32 bit PTE limitation but most probably by your video card. I can load much larger images than 10,800 x10,800 on my system in PTE but I have 3 gigabytes of RAM on my video card and 32 gigabytes of system RAM. Below is a screen capture of a 30,000 x 20,001 pixel image on my XP system which has a 2 gigabyte RAM video card and less than 4 gigabyte system RAM so there is something other than a PTE limitation happening in your case. Best regards, Lin

You're right Jeff - will let Igor know... Best regards, Lin

Hi Frans, I believe it's just the "Insert" key on the keyboard: see hot keys here: http://docs.picturestoexe.com/en/hotkeys/main?s[]=insert&s[]=transition&s[]=point Best regards, Lin

Hi Denis, I see that the extract from Avidemux 2.5.4 seems to have a little less contrast than the ones from FFmpeg but I haven't noticed that with the ones I extracted using Avidexmux 2.5.6 though I wasn't really comparing them that carefully because after extracting I bring all frames into Photoshop, create a Photoshop action and adjust levels, brightness, contrast, color and sharpness applying the same action to each frame. Could it be possible that a filter was set on in Avidemux which could account for the contrast difference? If I get a chance I will try inserting the original video and extract a single frame and try to compare it. For the purpose of making an animated gif it probably doesn't matter if there is a slight difference since all extracted frames would be processed for optimum quality before creating the animated gif... Best regards, Lin

Hi Tonton, Glad you have the zip situation resolved! Yes, it's possible with several versions of Photoshop to extract frame selections but I didn't want to have to write separate tutorials for each so used the freeware Avidemux which is very straight-forward and easy to use for extracting frames. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Yes - PK Zip can be unzipped by about any currently used zip software which is one reason I continue to use it. All my tutorials dating back over ten years are zipped with PKZip and I really see no good reason to try to recompress literally hundreds of files. There has never been a problem with any of them and my opinion is "don't fix it if it's not broken.." Best regards, Lin

Thanks Kieron - Hopefully it will help some better understand how animated gifs can be incorporated in their shows.. Best regards, Lin