Lin Evans

Hi Tom, In short, no. It's not the same or even similar. For example let's say I have a picture with 30 people or a map with multiple locations and I want to pop up either a name or perhaps a picture of this area on the map. With the existing feature it's extremely easy to just put a small frame over the landmark on the map or surrounding the head of each person in the picture. Then click on that area on the map or on the head of the person and have the ID or photo appear. Click again and it goes away. No need for having 30 or more executable files which each add a substantial amount of overall resource load. It's really a great feature which is really helpful to people doing presentations and can't really be replaced by run slideshow with return... Doing it with run slideshow would, in a word be a kludge solution. Best regards, Lin

I think before a decision is made on whether or not to remove this feature - developers should consider the future direction of PicturesToExe. If it is to be primarily marketed only as a tool for the audio visual enthusiast, photographer, etc., then having this feature is not of compelling importance. On the other hand, if there is any inclination to expand PTE into the presentation tool arena, then it may not be a good idea to remove it because it serves a very valuable purpose in that regard. Primarily, PTE lacks an ability to comfortably deal with text to make it competitive in many venues to products like PowerPoint. It alows the user to perform sophisticated manipulation of objects, audio, video and still images in ways which PowerPoint can't do or does poorly. If better text handling were incorporated, I believe a real tangible expansion market exists especially in educational institutions where a number of teachers, professors, etc., are presently using it successfully even with the limitations. If this feature is removed, then its usefulness for this venu is substantially reduced or even eliminated. So the question must be asked about the future direction for PicturesToExe? Do the developers want to concentrate on the present market or perhaps enhance the opportunities to move into new markets? Best regards, Lin

I use the feature to pop-up names of people in a group when an invisible frame over the head of the individual is mouse clicked, but as you say, it's a rarely used feature and one could always run an older version of PTE if that particular feature is needed. I would say that probably it would be fine to eliminate this feature on a new version of PTE as long as users have access to older versions if they find it necessary. Lin

Hi Tom - see your PM - some information about RGBA... In addition to the software I suggest you need to download a free CODEC HuffYUV which supports RGBA AVI format. I think you can download it here: http://www.videohelp.com/software/HuffYUV Best regards, Lin

LOL - don't know if witches do tattoos or not? L

Sometimes when there's nothing much to do - two weeks of rain and bad weather - fantasy takes over and I am compelled to play. This the result of an afternoon of musing over warriors, witches, dragons and mystery... LOL http://www.lin-evans.org/fantasy/mylatestfolly3.zip (about 83 meg zipped mp4 video) Lin

Hi Manuel, Very innovative !!! Nice... Best regards, Lin

Eric, Use your search engine: http://camstudio.org/ Lin

It sound like Camtasia Studio is the "cat's meow" for you then Eric - unfortunately it won't work for my purposes... Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, It's definitely a great bargain for what it does. I have HyperSnap ver 7.27 and Snagit 10.0.1 and I've been upgrading on a regular basis for both for a number of years. I found features in each that I liked but Snagit was having problems with capturing long screen scrolls and I found HyperSnap better for that. Then HyperSnap began having issues with it as well as websites began changing their programming. I'm hoping that FastoneCapture will replace the other two in functionality... Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Had you actually read my posts you would not be beating a straw man right now. I have said repeatedly that what I am trying to achieve is the capture of PTE's 60fps animations smoothly with a screen capture tool. I have said repeatedly that FastoneCapture's maximum frame rate is 25 fps. Camtasia can't handle the animations smoothly. FastoneCapture can handle the animations smoothly - end of story. Rather than criticize the methodology and theorize about what is and what is not difficult to capture, perhaps you should do your own extensive testing if you are really interested. Nothing is preventing you from installing FastoneCapture and testing it for up to 30 days free. You are bringing yet more variables (YouTube) into an already complex arena. I could care less about what YouTube does or doesn't do. I don't use YouTube as a vehicle for the distribution of my tutorials, I make them available for download and I recommend VLC Media Player as the best solution for the user to play them. It seems you are trying to make this into a Camtasia vs FastoneCapture contest. It's not about Camtasia vs the world, it's about finding a product which does what I need and eliminating those which don't. Camtasia has been eliminated. Best regards, Lin

Hi Ken, Thanks for the testing - I'm pretty certain this is the best video screen capture tool out there for PTE and those making tutorials. It has lots of features I haven't explored and an entire host of still image capture and editing capabilities. It will even convert your video to an animated gif - something I'm experimenting with right now for a number of reasons.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom - Eric, Here's the FastoneCapture version - this link to a PTE preview at 1280x800 screen resolution. I used a 9 element caurosel with a 3d transition to a single image then a single rain animation followed by a snow animation.... VLC media player handles it very well... http://www.lin-evans.org/snow/fastonecapturetest.zip (about 96 meg zipped video) Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, On my system the 720p looks best - a little problem handling the YouTube 1080p but in all much, much better than the vast majority of software solutions. I'll try a similar one tomorrow and put it up on YouTube with FastoneCapture and we can compare how they perform. It's difficult to know exactly how the YouTube conversion affects things but perhaps we can sort it out. Best regards, Lin

O.K., I'm prepared to give FastoneCapture the thumbs up!! I lowered the resolution of my 2560x1600 display down to 1280x800 and ran a really heavy animation sequence and it was as smooth as silk! This is by far the best yet I've found and it's cheap! Here's a link for anyone who wants to try a free 30 day evaluation. http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm I'll put up a demo capture in a few minutes for anyone who wants to download to try.... This is a LARGE video download - about 195 meg zipped - but it shows that FastoneCapture can handle the PTE very heavy animations just fine. In this sample I had created a rotating zooming icosahedron with 3620 independent video displays in simultaneous live action (181 on each of 20 icosahedron faces). Included are alpha channel videos and masks with text, etc., all perfectly smooth as captured by this tool. Please ignore the poor audio from the microphone. I had not yet balanced my very loud audio from the demo with my microphone which needed to be much louder. It's a learning experience: Here's the link to the 1280x800 video: http://www.lin-evans.org/snow/heavyanimation.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, Sorry, but I have no clue how to use PTE to construct my tutorials. My tutorials demonstrate "how" to construct a show using PTE so the live screens complete with keystrokes, previews and such need to be recorded in order to accomplish that. To my knowledge there is no way to create a tutorial demonstrating how to use this product "with" this product in any straight-forward manner. Yes, I have looked at the Techsmith tutorials and yes, my evaluation copy was downloaded from Techsmith. I'm not "slagging Camtasia off" anymore than any of the other sixteen or so products I've evaluated for this purpose. Camtasia simply can't handle the 60 fps animations while recording - it has the same issues as the vast majority of other products I've tried. Camtasia itself uses a lot of the processing power of the system and there simply isn't enough for it to function in an optimal fashion when PTE is running a heavy animation preview. Unfortunately I have neither the time nor inclination to piecemeal a tutorial together by creating multiple mp4's and separate audio tracks and combining them in an editing tool like Camtasia. I can't justify the expense of Camtasia when it isn't suitable for the task at hand. Probably the best solution is going to be something along the lines of what Tom is doing with a hardware rather than software approach. There just isn't sufficient resources in even my top-end 8.1 system with 32 gigabytes of RAM and a 4 gigabyte high-end video card to both run and capture complex animations simultaneously and that's what is needed. Programs such as ShadowPlay by nVidia can do it by using primarily the GPU rather than the CPU but ShadowPlay only works with established video games. External hardware exists which can do what I want but the ones I've found are in the $2000 range and far beyond my budget. Right now the best thing I've discovered is still FastoneCapture and it's less than $20 and includes the ability to zoom, add text and do minor editing, etc., The only reason I haven't settled on it yet is that I think there may be a hardware solution which is better but that remains to be seen. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Try it with a live PTE session - Open one of your own PTE files and run a preview containing some fairly heavy animation and see how it records that live. There is a world of difference in capturing an already produced video being played by a decent player, and screen capturing your own work which is being crunched in real-time by your system. I have no problems at all capturing a video perfectly smoothly when being played by a video player, but trying to capture a live PTE preview is a whole different ball-game... The system is already being taxed by the PTE preview which is in essence running an executable file and all that entails. Adding yet more to that with the recording software results in a real performance hit. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, I have both Snagit and Camtasia but neither is worth a tinker's damn for screen capturing and recording PTE animations during a tutorial. I have an evaluation copy of Camtasia and it has incredible features, but just can't handle the 60 fps of PTE and all I get are multiple "flashing" issues which have been the bain of every product I've tried except FastoneCapture. Fastone has no flashing and handles the screen capture in a fairly smooth fashion - far from optimal, but better than any of the other 16+ software tools I've tried. The hardware device looks interesting. Have you tried it for screen capturing running PTE animations along with simultaneous audio from the running show and from the microphone? I wouldn't mind paying the price "if" it works better than the software solutions. It's nice to have the editing capabilities of the tools like Camtasia or even the much abbreviated ones of FastoneCapture, but I would trade that for perfectly smooth animation capture. I notice in the FAQ's that "voice is recorded only via separated .mp3 file." If that means I would have to do my tutorials in two stages it wouldn't be a solution. Best regards, Lin

Nice combination of elements Manuel - thanks! Best regards, Lin

Hi Dave, I suspect it's because they are contained within a mask. That "may" not be the reason but it's what I would assume... Bests regards, Lin

I had the question asked about how one could possible "combine" elements of a style into a single slide. When a style is applied to an image and then that image which has the style applied is selected and yet another style applied the original style is replaced with the new one. In most cases this is perfectly logical and exactly what "should" happen because otherwise very strange results might happen. But in the case of an effect such as snow or rain, one might wish to achieve the combination of having elements of different types applied to a single slide. Can this be done, and if so, how? Yes, this can be achieved. The way I do it is to first add the same slide to the show twice. Apply the first style to the first slide then apply the second style to the second slide. Select the second slide and go to Objects and Animations and select everything in the objects list then copy this to the clipboard. Now remove (delete) the second slide and go to the objects list on the first slide and "paste" the content of the clipboard under or over the content from the first slide. Next select the "image" in the top layer and change the opacity as desired. The "snow" or "rain" effects will be combined on the screen in equal amounts and changing the opacity of the main image will essentially only affect the amount of the effect contributed by the lower image. The main image will not be affected because the images are identical on both layers but the contribution of everything else from the lower image will change with the opacity of the main image. I will create a small tutorial demonstrating this.... The tutorial (50 meg zipped video) is linked below: http://www.lin-evans.org/snow/combiningsnowstyles.zip Best regards, Lin

That handled the aspect ratio completely, but defeats the purpose of having a controlling frame - back to the drawing board... LOL. I think the immediate solution is to not attempt to create components of the style using any components from an existing style. If I go back to my original template which is just a single slide pte file which "could" be executed as a demo slide, and if I copy and paste the components from that into a new scenario with a different aspect ratio then save that as yet another template and repeat this process for each aspect ratio; I can then use each of these to create one of the elements which are combined into the final style and the black jpg stays put. Best regards, Lin

http://www.lin-evans.org/snow/snowstylesdemomac.zip (about 15 meg zipped native Mac exe file) http://www.lin-evans.org/snow/snowstylesdemopc.zip (about 15 meg zipped Windows pc exe file) Lin The snow styles have been updated and de-bugged to the best of my ability. I thin the problem with the missing black rectangle which has been a real mystery is now solved. These have the "fix" and I would appreciate it if anyone wants to test them... They are all MARS (Multi-Aspect Ratio Styles) which should work with 16:9, 3:2, 4:3 and 5:4 aspect ratios. Be sure to set the proper aspect ratio in Project Options to match the aspect ratio of the image you apply them to... http://www.lin-evans.org/snow/snowstyles512U.zip Thanks, Lin

That works fine as does the last one I posted - I think the problem had to do with not using the original files but trying to "borrow" the ones in the style for creating additional MARS... Once I created an original without a style and copied my PNG's I built the other three and just saved them all as "templates" then saved each template as one of the four MARS. I've never had so many dumb errors with what should have been a really simple thing .... The problem was compounded because they worked fine on one system but not on the other. L

O.K., I went out and stood in the rain for 15 minutes and came back and created a multi-aspect ratio one minute normal snowfall style for all four. It's fixed - I started all over and made four separate templates to create the new MARS (multi-aspect-ratio-style) for 16:9, 3:2, 4:3 and 5:4 Done - uploaded under same name... I'm going to bed and sleep for an hour - LOL L