Lin Evans

Hi Dave, Andrew didn't say, but generally I assume one links audio to a slide because they might want the option of moving that slide wherever without losing the audio which has been sequenced to fit it - at least that's the only reason I do it that way. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, That's true, but if you intend to copy/paste a slide to another show, etc., and the audio is linked to the slide, it will go with the paste. If the sound is not linked to the slide, the audio will not accompany the "copy/paste" AFAIK... So sometimes there are good reasons for doing it as Andrew did?? Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, Could you give a few more details such as which slide in the slide sequence you added the sound to and how you went about turning off the sound in the main track? I've tried to duplicate your issue but haven't been able to. If you clicked on the main sound track line and dragged the line down to the bottom of the display to turn off or fade out the main sound, you can right click on the tiny dots to erase the individual keyframe and return the envelope to the default position. Also you can use the Project Options Audio Tab to return the fade, etc., to the default of zero. When you say "it held on to the slide with sound added in the timeline view" I'm not clear on this. If you could elaborate a bit perhaps we can duplicate the issue and see where things went south... Best regards, Lin

Will be posting some images soon! The P900 is a poor man's treasure. Optical zoom from 24mm to 2000mm with digital zoom to 8000mm. It's actually possible to hand hold at 2000mm and get decent results. I just received the camera and took first images yesterday but so far it's an extremely impressive camera with a lens to die for. Absolutely zero chromatic aberrations at any zoom. Only jpg, no RAW but gives one the opportunity to get shots which would, if coupled with Nikon's own equipment, cost over $20,000 to duplicate with only marginally better results. A Nikon 800mm lens with built in 1.25x teleconverter, plus a Nikon 1.4x teleconverter and a D810 would set one back over $21,000. That would give one 1344 mm optical, which when cropped and enlarged is only slightly better than the 2000mm native on the P900. The really big thing is that you can carry the camera and have an incredible range of 83x zoom. It's slightly smaller and lighter than my D7200 with an 18-105mm attached. Of course one could substitute the D7200 for the D810 and get optical zoom to @2000mm with this combination and that indeed would be superior but could not be hand-held and would require a really solid tripod. The cost would be about $1600 less than with the D810 and it would be possible to substitute the very good Sigma 300-800 f/5.6 for the Nikon prime with about equal quality and save around $9500 but it would still be an over $10,000 investment. Then one would need another $1000 in terms of tripod and head plus the difficulty of toting this weight and bulk and the set-up time which would undoubtedly result in many missed wildlife opportunities since wildlife is unlikely to continue to "pose" while the photographer sets up the tripod, mounts the lens and camera and focuses. Here's a link which shows some of the results in a review of this jewel. Worth every penny of the $600 investment IMHO. http://photographylife.com/reviews/nikon-coolpix-p900 And below some size comparisons with my D7200 with an attached 18-105 mm ... Lin

There is no doubt that having color management is an important future feature for PTE, but I must agree with David, Barry and Peter that perhaps it's overstated as an issue if by no other reason than simple logical deduction. PTE is by far the choice of those winning audio visual competitions. If color management were a serious issue, then it would long ago have been a hot topic for discussion. The fact that the competition has color management yet has only a tiny presence in competitive circles seems to indicate that most have been doing well without it for quite a long time. This is not to diminish the importance of including it and I believe that this will probably be done shortly, but with or without color management, if the devices used to either project the show or to display the show have limited and irregular gamuts then the problems are distributed with or without this feature. Hopefully the Wnsoft development team will be able to include it in the next iteration of PTE and that should make everyone happy. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, There are a couple considerations which may or may not be important in your use. Most computer displays support more than one resolution while most televisions are fixed. So with a television for a display, you may not have the same opportunities to change resolution. Then there is the issue of actual image quality. 1080p looks far better on a 27" computer display than on a 32 inch TV (or computer display with the 1080p resolution). Also you have issues perhaps with input lag. Will the response be as fast as with the display designed for the GUI? In some cases it won't matter but in others there will be a major difference. Their will, as you suspect, also be a difference in refresh rate. Motion pictures and pro video use tricks such as leading edge blur to make motion look smoother. These are things we don't yet have with our slideshow software so that animation may indeed look quite different on the TV than on a display with faster refresh. The largest issue I would have with using a 32" TV at 1080P is image quality. Trying to read text unless the TV is mounted on a wall a good distance away might indeed be problematic. I have a 30" 2650x1600 resolution display and it is excellent. These have dropped in price so that they are available for as low as $340 these days. Assuming you have a video card up to driving one, that would be perhaps the better choice. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, It will be seen differentially depending on the color calibration, type of display and even in some cases the browser. I too see little value in color profiles for the vast majority, but some professional photographers who work in Photoshop save their work in wider gamut colorspace than sRGB even though "most" displays and browsers today use sRGB. So for these photographers whose images are in other colorspace it's a pain to have to save copies in sRGB to use in their slideshows. Having a colorspace aware program solves this issue. It would be nice if the feature could be turned off or on as an option. Admittedly, having this capability will only be important to a few users, but if it's not a major issue to implement, it would be an added feature to make those who use other than sRGB very happy. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, If you use a codec to make the AVI compressed rather than uncompressed, you can just place the AVI in PTE and if you wish, output it as an MP4. That avoids having to use a third software. Best regards, Lin

HI John, I guess it depends on how you have your Mac OS set up. Mac exe files carry the .zip extension and Windows the .exe extension. Not being a Mac user, I'm not sure what you see when the Mac native exe is not in zipped format so perhaps having a different defalult icon makes sense at this time. Once a full Mac version is available, I'm not certain there will be any need for a different icon but it's definitely something you might consider adding as a suggestion on the Suggestions for Next Version forum. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Probably - I was only replying to John's lament about a different icon for MacIntosh.. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, You have the option to use your own Icon rather than the default PTE icon don't you? Best regards, Lin

Hi IG, If you look at the top of your open PTE file and click on "File" "Create backup in zip" it will zip everything into a single zipped file including the six photos. This should probably make the file smaller. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I only use it for aspect ratio crops such as creating square images and for splitting and combining for the most part so I really don't know all the details about the RAW converter. I use mostly Sigma and Nikon and I "know" they don't have a converter which will handle Sigma RAW files and probably not the latest Nikon so I use Sigma SPP and Nikon and as of the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw, it now supports the latest Nikon RAWs. I'll see if I have an older RAW file to test it with and maybe then I can answer that. Later: I found an older RAW to test and it appears that it only creates jpg from the RAW. I wouldn;t suggest it for the RAW converter any more than I would suggest a program like Fastone Image Viewer, etc. - that's really not its main use, rather a convenience I suspect. It's made for people who are not super competent with photo editing software but the interface is very good. Best regards, Lin

Trust me - it has layers. It loads all images into the editor portion over a transparent layer. That's how it allows creation of PNG files with transparency. It also converts many RAW files, etc. Many of the fancy borders, etc., are done in PNG with transparency. It's really a pretty sophisticated program.. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I guess what I didn't understand it why you think PhotoScape can't post process in 16 bit? It has RAW conversion, handles 16 bit tiffs, etc. Not that you need it because you can do what it does in PhotoShop, etc., but I thought you might want to look at it if only temporarily to see what the differences are. My suggestion for people to try it is that it is much, much easier to do things with such as aspect ratio crops, add borders, split and combine files, etc. than Photoshop, Pixbuilder or most other editing software. Editing is a small part of what it is used for. It's really an excellent tool which the unsophisticated user can do things with which might take them literally weeks to learn how to do with Photoshop, etc. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I guess I missing something. I can't really see the relationship between 16 Bit Layers and PTE. This software is useful for those making slideshows because is makes quick work of creating things like borders, various aspect ratios, etc. for preparing images for a slidshow. I wouldn't suggest it for the purpose of serious image manipulation but since what you use in PTE isn't 16 bit??? PhotoScape allows loading 16 bit tiffs and in the editor it loads all files automatically over a transparent background??? Best regards, Lin

Hi Denis, That was my understanding as well: "As for adjusting the area to fit into a cube, essentially the style "should" do that for you unless you are creating a cube manually. If you are creating it manually such as explained using one of my tutorials, you need to use square images to begin with." Which is why I ask the OP for more information.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Yes, you can crop square with a number of tools, but some are much "easier" and more intuitive than either Pixbuilder or Photoshop for the purpose of cropping to a square or other specific aspect ratios. If you haven't used PhotoScape you may want to have a look at it. It's far more intuitive for this type thing than Pixbuilder or Photoshop and there are numerous really nice features and it's free. Here's a link - it's worth downloading and trying... http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php Best regards, Lin

Perfect Dave - that should be the solution to the second part of the OP's question.... Best regards, Lin

LOL - yep - maybe in a future version there will be an option to both save a converted still image and have additive capabilites with styles. There have been many times I have used a screen capture tool to capture an image composed in PTE such as two or more images with various opacity superimposed. It could be a great feature for people who don't have PhotoShop or other software where they can work in multiple layers. IMHO in many ways it's easier to compose such in PTE than in Photoshop. Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, That's one way to do it. Another is to add the border to a square image in PTE, save as a small square video such as 960x960 then use the video as the object for the existing PTE experimental cube style. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use a freeware program such as PhotoScape which has multiple crop aspect ratios including 1:1. Cropping to a square takes about three seconds. Then in PTE you can add borders as desired and save the resulting still image as a video of about 30 seconds length (if you want to add additional effects - otherwise the video can be only a few seconds long). You can also add other styles before saving the square video such as snow, rain, whatever - then create a 30 second square optimized video. Copy and paste this six times, apply the cube style and you have video including border on all six sides of the cube. Below is a link to a quickie demo zipped Windows exe.... http://www.lin-evans.org/pte/Projectsnowcube.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, Sorry I wasn't clear on that. I'm assuming that the border is an integral part of the image. I'll make an example later today and post. Best regards, Lin

Hi IG, Welcome to the PTE forum!! How are you creating your cube? Are you making it yourself or using a style? If using a PTE Style it would be best to use the PTE feature to add borders to your photos before selecting them for the cube style. It's "possible" to go into objects and animations and create a border on each of the sides of the cube one at a time, but much easier to set that default on before using the style to create the cube. As for adjusting the area to fit into a cube, essentially the style "should" do that for you unless you are creating a cube manually. If you are creating it manually such as explained using one of my tutorials, you need to use square images to begin with. If you can give us a few more details, perhaps we can help you get on the fast-track to creating and using cubes, etc. If you could explain exactly what you want to create and perhaps post a line to you PTE file (just use "File" "Create Backup in Zip" and post the zipped file) we can help you figure it out. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, It's possibly a loading issue. Try setting the "start" time for the one with the green screen to about 2 seconds and see what happens. It takes a certain amount of time for loading to occur for videos. Generally loading and video buffering happen before the black screen for an executable file changes to the opening of your show, but when the loading times of videos are different, it's possible for one to begin while the other is still buffering. In such a case you would see a green screen for the one still buffering. The way I would stop this from happening is to start your show with a two or three second black screen then begin the videos as slide two. This would give everything time to be loaded and buffered. Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, That's easy enough. What do you want the two videos to do when you go to the next slide? To run two video, each filling the screen they only need to be both as objects on slide one. Load video A then go to Objects and Animations and load video B. Video B will automatically appear on "top" of video A in the objects list. Set the opacity on video B to variously less than 100% until it appears as you like. In order for them to both run smoothly, you will probably have to have both optimized. When done this way they will both be just video clips, neither will be a master. One or both should only be set to master and linked to itself on subsequent slide "IF" you want that video to continue uninterrupted as the background while you sequence through other videos or still slides. Best regards, Lin