Lin Evans

Hi Peter, I own more than one PTE license... It's not Igors's proposal I'm discussing, it's Barry's proposal describing the way Adobe CC works. Lin

Hi Barry, That's why I said "it's not necessarily the case." Actually, where I will be moving soon, it's not the case at all. Internet connections are few and far between so about anytime I would leave home would be out of internet range. My internet connect at home will be via satellite because the ranch I'm considering buying is 36 miles from the nearest town. Therefore, in such a situation in order to use PTE on my laptop I would have to deactivate the software on the home system nearly every time I left to pursue my normal wildlife photography which I, personally would find quite inconvenient because I spend several days per week in that pursuit even now. It wouldn't be a deal killer, but it would be quite inconvenient. At nights at camp in my small travel trailer powered by my generator, I spend a good deal of time experimenting with PicturesToExe. Of course, were this scheme used on PTE, I could always use an older version then do updates on my development system when I returned home. One of the reasons I refuse to use Adobe CC products at all is because of this system. Probably there are only a few users of PTE who would be so affected by such a process so in the great scheme of things whatever works best for Wnsoft is fine with me. Best regards, Lin

Hi Barry, Not necessarily the case ("its not that hard to find a connection"). Sometimes friends of mine who use PTE spend months in the high country on photo safari's far away from civilization and beyond anything but satellite telephone service. I usually spend a week or more in similar situations at least once a year and do my work on a laptop in my small travel trailer. Where you are there may be internet connections available, but where I live it's quite different. The only places where internet is available are in towns or sometimes at certain rest stops along the major highways, but it's not uncommon at all for me to be completely out of internet contact for as long as two weeks when I'm camping in the mountains. Best regards, Lin

In testing it, it does not appear to "phone home" once activated - so apparently only on initial activation. It should work fine off-line for those who use PTE on non-internet systems, but the system must be connected to the internet when upgraded or with new installation. UPDATE: Igor has said that in the absence of internet, PTE will activate so no need for concern at all. Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, What happens if the buyer doesn't have internet? Some PTE users here in the US do not always have access to the internet. I know at least two PTE users who travel extensively living in motorhomes and may only have internet access once or twice a month. Does this new activation process actuate each time they open PTE on their systems or is it only for the initial activation when they purchase or upgrade PTE? Best regards, Lin

Added a video version link to DailyMotion the original post.... L

Hi Peter, A .rar format is just another zip format. Programs like PKZip will unzip a .rar file if it's simply renamed to .zip. I think 7zip will handle .rar files without a filename change. Best regards, Lin

Hi Peter, I don't have a clue - I've only tried to use it a couple times but have had the same error message both times. I've tried just as an experiment since and always the same result. Best regards, Lin

Guess his "oats" are on the boat and he's not going to get too far away from that treat! LOL L

I decided to change it a bit for fun so uploaded the changed versions early this morning. I figured Lyle should be on his pony on his boat so created a personalized boat with his fiancee's name (April) and added a couple images timed to the lyrics... Can't get on my roof yet because of the snow so just playing - LOL Best regards, Lin

Wonderful presentation soldier! Well done! Best Regards, Lin

Wonderful adventures Jeff - if only some of those old walls (both canyon and cabin) could talk - what a tale they could tell. "I Guess I'm Just a Tourist, After All" Wasatch to Boulder.... I didn't know Rex had passed - fitting to spread his (their) ashes in the land that they loved. Best regards, Lin

Chris, it's imperative that you give Igor the actual precise filename of your video file. The error may be caused by the name of your file. Igor doesn't need to see the error message but he does need to have you copy/paste the file name of your video here. The error message you are seeing is telling you that there are improper (illegal) characters in the file name. If you do nothing else, rename the video to something like "test.avi" or "test.mov" or "test.mp4" or whatever format file you are submitting to the converter. If you rename your video file then try to convert it we can determine whether the original name has characters which are not accepted. Best regards, Lin

A little off-topic, but the "Like This" doesn't appear to be working - at least for me. I get an error message about exceeding my daily quota even though I've never yet been able to use the feature? Best regards, Lin

Go to Objects and Animations screen and delete the "Text Comment" in the Objects List for those slides you do not want the information displayed on. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim, Thanks for the feedback! Glad the download issues are solved - not certain what caused them but the internet is so complex that it's truly difficult to sort out all the possibilities. Peter has serious issues with downloading my files so there is some bottleneck between his ISP and mine somewhere, but we will probably never know exactly what is causing it or where it originates. Bests regards, Lin

Patience, patience - LOL - Remember, PTE development is proceeding along two disparate platforms with different operating systems. It takes lots of time to fine tune and implement major changes. We've been spoiled over the years by very quick new versions. All good things come in due time... Best regards, Lin

I wish I could burn it, but have no fireplace so it's just going to have to be hauled off once I get it chopped up into bite size pieces that I can handle.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Judy, It's just me and my old dog and yes, we were inside when it came down. Fortunately the damage to the house is minimal (I think) but it's going to take me at least a week with a pretty good sized chain saw to get it off my house and cut up. Unfortunately, I'm buried in snow right now and it will be -15 F tonight so I won't be able to get on my roof to get started until the snow is gone. The tree was dead and about 48 inches in diameter at the base but the way it came down most of the weight was transferred to the ground first via large branches and it ended up bridging to my roof at probably the strongest point. The tree actually belongs to the neighbor's house, but we've been fighting about it for a number of years. My little place formerly belonged to my mother and she bought the home when it was only three years old. There is a six foot cedar slat fence separating my property from the neighbors and two trees grew close to the fence on their side. They sold the property about twelve years ago to the present owner who proceeded to fence around them in a "U" shape and as they grew, they broke my fence and pushed it nearly over. Just before my wife Sherry passed away four years ago last August, an 18 inch diameter limb broke in a wind storm and bridged between a tree in our yard and the trunk which was slightly higher than the fence. It took three days with a chain saw to cut it up and stack it and I asked the owner (he uses the home as a rental) to remove the trees but he ignored me. About two years ago I put a new roof on my house and have been expecting this to happen every time we get strong winds. The city refuses to help and I guess I'll have to get an attorney and get involved in litigation against the owner because the second dead tree is still standing. He's trying to claim that the trees are "border trees" on the property line so that I have to pay half the fee of having them removed. They are not, but it will probably end up in court before he will be forced to pay to have the one left standing removed. I've made multiple calls to the city but they never return my calls so I guess I'll have to remove this one by myself. Unfortunately I have no one who can help in any way so it's going to take a while. Below are a couple pictures... I snapped these five minutes after the tree came down and ten minutes later it started snowing and hasn't quit... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, File format has no revelant importance concerning what a mask does. The only important thing as far as a mask is concened is color. Pure black is transparent to everything outside a mask and opaque to what's inside. Pure white is transparent to what's inside the mask and opaque to what is outside. A jpg file works just fine. As Peter mentioned, you just need to call your mask from a file. Either a still image or a video can act as a mask. For example, if you purchase an Alpha Channel video along with an Alpha Matte (the Alpha Matte is a black and white video) the Alpha Matte can act as the mask allowing the Alpha Channel video to be superimposed on another video or still image. This is how Proshow Producer uses Alpha Channel Videos. PTE can use this method or use an RGBA Alpha Channel video in AVI format directly. As an example, let's say you go into Photoshop and create a file which has only pure black and white elements. You then subsequently use this file as your mask. Inside the mask container you put a video. The only part of that video which will be visible are the parts covered by the white elements. The parts covered by black will not be seen. You can make a mask any shape and with any degree of transparency depending on the relative intensity of the black and white elements. I think perhaps an AVI tutorial on masking might be helpful. As soon as I get some time available, I'll try to make a few to help explain how they work and how they can be constructed. I'm sort of tied up right now because a tree fell on my house and I'm waiting for the snow to clear so I can remove it. Hopefully in the next week or so I'll be able to get this issue resolved and have some time to devote to PTE. Best regards, Lin

Jeff, any shape will work as a mask. The white areas allow the object inside the mask to show and the black areas allow what isn't inside the mask but on the topmost area to show. Intermediate between black and white such as various shades of grey become semi-transparent to what's inside the mask. Take an image you want to mask into Photoshop. Paint with 255, 255, 255 white where you want to have transparency and have what's inside the mask to show. Paint with black where you want what isn't inside the mask to show. Save as a jpg and use this image as your mask. Best regards, Lin

In the process of making one of my last experimental shows, I used a very dark background for Jean-Cyprien's Rubik Cube style. Jean used a special type of PNG file - an "Indexed Color" file for his miroircadre.png file which allows transparency like a regular PNG file but only has 256 colors like a GIF file to create the beautiful gold mirror frame which reflects the rubik cube in a bed of clouds. I suspect he used this format because the file size is small compared to an RGB PNG file which has the full complement of available colors, but the Indexed Color format doesn't allow using the blur tool to "smooth" the edges of the image. I found a few places where the transparency wasn't perfect outside the gilded frame which showed up along with the somewhat ragged pixel edges which don't show at all on many backgrounds but on a dark background at higher resolution could be improved by smoothing with the blur tool. I changed the format to an RGB color PNG file, removed the few places where transparency was compromised and smoothed the edges to make a better appearance on high resolution displays. After doing so I noticed that the file Jean used for the clouds inside the frame (miroirtain.png) showed up on the upper left and I modified the file slightly to trim off the small area where it wasn't intended to show. This file is also a tiny Indexed Color format but didn't need any further modification. I zipped these two files (link below) and anyone who wishes to replace the originals can do so. The style works perfectly with the modified files and looks a bit better against a dark backdrop. There was no significant increase in file size and the load time was not significantly different on my systems. To replace the files, extract the two files from the zipped archive linked below and copy and paste them replacing the originals. They can be found in C:\documentsandsettings\yourcomputername\mydocuments\picturestoexe\slide styles\{AFCB566A-347A-477A-A60A-C55769F41121}. If you can't find the path, just do a search for miroircadre.png and you should be able to locate it. http://www.lin-evans.org/pte8/forrubikcube.zip Best regards, Lin

I just wanted to see if it was possible.... It was, but what a major undertaking.... A Video Rubik Cube using Jean-Cyprien's Rubik Cube Style.... I don't even want to get into what was necessary to get this to work... At least a nice song to listen to by Lyle Lovett - LOL http://www.lin-evans.org/pte8/rubikvideopc.zip (about 280 meg Windows Exe) http://www.lin-evans.org/pte8/rubikvideomac.zip (about 280 meg Mac Exe) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2af9yx_if-i-had-a-boat_creation (Video version at Daily Motion:) Lin

The free version of Video Pad Video Editor has this feature. See screen capture below: Lin

Hi Jeff, Really nice bucolic scenery! I liked the video introduction as well - great photography! My only suggestions would be to turn off the mouse cursor and fade the sound which ends pretty abruptly at the end of the show. It appeared that the kids were really enjoying the season. Was there a tiny bit of snow in that first still shot? Shame about the guy found on the road on the 8th in Northumberland presumed to have been hit by a lorry.... Best regards, Lin