Lin Evans

Hi Gary, Just a side note. Any "mask" in PTE can be adjusted to virtually any aspect ratio and once you have it visually as you want, then you can observe the numeric coefficients in the Animations Tab in O&A and set those numbers for any other images of the same aspect ratio. Just hold down the keyboard "shift" key and drag the side of the mask desired to any position. You can repeat this action with all four sides of a rectangular mask. You can also distort the shape of the "round" mask to any oval shape you desire by doing likewise. You can further distort the shape of any mask by applying three dimensional aspects and use the keyboard shift key to adjust accordingly. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, Thanks!! Sometimes a ballad or a poem compels me to make a show like this. It's a shame that children today rarely understand or even know our own history. If seeing old real photos in context with a mosaic historical ballad can help generate a bit of interest in history, pehaps the future may somehow be affected for the better - at least I hope so. Yes, it was a hard way to die - especially if there was no gallows. Many hangings were conducted by compelling the condemned to stand on horseback then swatting the horse. This small drop was almost never sufficient to snap the neck, but indeed a lingering and slow death from strangulation. It seems we had a fascination with hanging when a single bullet would have sufficed. I recall seeing even a supposedly rogue elephant named Mary which had killed a human handler hung from a crane in Tennessee. Strange thing the human mind.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Andrew, Very moving to see respect paid to the armed forces. There seems to be much less patriotism in my country today. Sadly the liberal movement in the US has tarnished the word "patriot" to equate to something they deem lower than a snake's belly. Very nice images and excellent choice of background music! Good job!! Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Yep, a hard life in those days. If you look carefully at the images you'll notice that the cowboys on the frame immediately preceding the one of the four on horseback where the mandolin appears are rangers - there are two "stars" from the badges apparent in the image. I had to comb the archives at the Library of Congress collection to get suitable images to match the lyrics and construct some of them from several. This show is not everyone's cup of tea for certain, but having had relatives in the cattle ranching business back in the late 1800's through the 1950's it rings a bell for me. I listened to my grand-dad tell stories from his life on the trails between Texas and New Mexico in the old days and stories his pop told him. The poem indeed reflects a mosaic of truths from frontier justice. Lots of situations arose where it simply wasn't possible to get to a place where a judge and courthouse and jury were available and frontier justice was meted out by the available cowboys and ranchers as they deemed fair. The original transcription to music from Willa's poem was done by the old folk singer and superb guitarist Paul Siebel. I hear Paul sing this back in the early 60's. He never recorded the song, but a young David Bromberg was his assistant in those days and David was the first to actually record the song. EmmyLou and Waylon did the duet, but I didn't like their rendition nearly as much as David's which was much closer to what Paul did. I love EmmyLou and Waylon was great too, but on their rendition it's more like just going through the motions - not her best work IMHO. Paul just up and quit the music business. He's still alive and living on the east coast while mostly playing with his sail boat these days from what I hear. He modified the words a bit from Willa's poem for the lyrics. Willa used the Spanish Johnny character in her famous novel "The Song of The Lark." Best regards, Lin

The strategy would be to not combine huge images with intricate animation. It's incumbent for users to keep in mind that the only time an image needs to be larger than the expected display resolution is when there will be deep zooms into detail. Best regards, Lin

That's fantastic Igor - congratulations!! PTE just keeps getting better and better thanks to you and your team's dedication and hard work! Best regards, Lin

I think we need to realize that there are multiple reasons for shows. Some create them for competitions, some just for friends and family to remember holidays or vacations. Some create shows for a demonstration of software features and some just to see whether it is possible to do certain things which may or may not have any social redeeming value. Some shows are simply historical reminiscences and have no intended artistic implications. Sometimes I like to make a slideshow which visually depicts the message in the lyrics of a song and at other times I choose the background music to complement the slide content. Because of the greatly varied nature of presentations and the wide variety of human cultural experiences in the audience, it's generally not reasonable to expect that everyone would like or appreciate the results. So what is really important is that the results please the intended audience and that audience may sometimes be only one's self... Regards, Lin

http://www.lin-evans.org/johnny/spanishjohnny.zip http://www.lin-evans.org/johnny/spanishjohnnymac.zip Slight modification ..... now a bit under 9 megs.. About 9 meg Lin

You may want to also consider the Sigma 18-35 Art lens - more flexible with docking station and generally considered better glass. The 17-40 has a reputation for significant chromatic aberration at full wide angle on a FF sensor. http://www.dxomark.com/Lenses/Compare/Side-by-side/Sigma-18-35mm-F18-DC-HSM-A-Canon-versus-Canon-EF-17-40mm-F4L-USM___1141_0_794_0 Best regards, Lin

Cool Jan! Thanks! Lin

Hi Igor, I agree with all the above suggestions as potential improvements and especially with MUR that expanding the view of the keyframes on the timeline would be very helpful in many cases. Presently, when keyframes are very close to one another, I find it difficult or actually impossible to move a keyframe a short distance by dragging because it "jumps" to coincide with an adjacent keyframe which creates an illogical situation - thus an error. The only way I've been able to move a keyframe which is very close to the adjacent keyframe a tiny distance closer is to manually enter the values. I think by expanding the view it might make dragging the keyframe (for convenience) much easier. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mick, Please get youself a few rewritable DVD's to use in the future when testing. They can be written on, erased and used over and again and you won't waste your money on coasters... It would be nice to find a solution to this problem. Sometimes these things can leave one scratching their head! Best regards, Lin

Lin

Hi Jeff, Great soljourn through El Morro and Inscription Rock. I love that little teardrop camper - it's perfect to keep the rain off if the weather turns and light enough to get it into places which would destroy conventional trailers. I've seen some which are designed for off-roading with super heavyweight suspensions and big, stong tires and wheels. Sorry about the "pigs" who left the mess in the campground. They were only feet from that dumpster - what nonsense to leave that mess behind.... Sammy appeared to be thoroughly enjoying herself. Did she sleep in the bed too? I took an 8,000 mile plus trip across the US in 2010 after my wife Sherry died. I pulled a 21 foot trailer and many times wished I had a little one like your teardrop. I had a couple pups with me - about 150 pounds between the two of them of lab mix mutt and big pit dog and it was crowded in the bed but still lots of fun. I lost a wheel at the New York/Pennsylvania border and ended up having to have both axles, all four wheels, brakes and such replaced. Cost me more than I had with me. I had to borrow money from a friend in California to bail me out and wait three weeks while they ordered upgraded axles and such but finally got it all back together. There's lots to be said for simplicity, that's for sure. I'm moving to Cimarron later this year - probably six months or so. Colorado is getting too crowded for me. Enjoyed your show as usual. Thanks! Lin

Sorry Julia, but you can't convert EXE files to video with Total Media Converter or any other video converter. Exe files are not videos. Exe files are instruction sets which require a CPU and GPU to play. Video files are quite different and contain rendered images which are stored on the media and played back via various players and codecs. The only way an Exe file can be converted to video is via a screen capture tool and there are no screen capture tools which can do justice to an Exe file which contains sophisticated animations. Best regards, Lin

Hi Mick, This won't help with the current problem, but buy a small quantity of rewritable DVD's so you don't waste good one's experimenting. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jeff, this brought back years of nostalgia. When I was a young pup I spent my every available hour in those mountains. I climbed Whitney multiple times and back in the late 50's and early 60's you didn't need a "permit" or have to sign-in and out or get on a waiting list. I worked summers as a wrangler for Brown's Cow Camp out of Monache Meadows and hoofed it scores of times between Kennedy Meadows and Monache Meadows back before there was a Jeep trail. In the early 60's I owned a little Aeronca Chief with a 60 hp "A" Continental engine and I flew many times into the forest air strip, fished the south fork of the Kern River for Golden Trout and had months of fond memories of the entire area. I suspect Sammy thoroughly enjoyed her soljourn and perhaps it won't be her last. I recently took my old dog Honey (14) to Bryce, Zion and Monument Valley. She loved it - sniffed out a cougar in Bryce Canyon Campground and was disappointed I wouldn't let her tree it - LOL. Thanks for an enjoyable memory! PS - I see you have Street Atlas USA with the old yellow GPS receiver. Excellent choice! Best regards, Lin

PTE likes sRGB but neither Adobe RGB nor other RGB settings will give the type appearance in PTE which you were seeing. CMYK will produce exactly that effect in PTE. RGB color spaces will affect intensity of colors primarily, and they will look different in PTE than in your browsers. CMYK will produce this: Best regards, Lin

There are two or more ways to handle this depending on how many images you need to convert. If you have a modern computer which will run Photoshop CS6, you could download and install a trial version of Photoshop from Adobe which is good for 30 days. Use it to convert these from CMYK to RGB. You could zip all the images and upload them to a file sharing service or to your own website if you have one. Provide a link to the zipped file and I can convert them for you and provide you with a link to download the converted files. You could purchase an inexpensive tool to convert - just Google CMYK to RGB Converter. You can use a free online CMYK to RGB converter. Here's a $19.95 Total Image Converter - I haven't tried it myself but it probably is fine: http://www.coolutils...onvert-CMYK-RGB If you're going to quote me, quote everthing - don't cherry pick... Best regards, Lin

Hi Erik, What will he convert it to? If it's already a jpg, what good will it do to use IrfanView to convert. How will he convert it with IrvanView? If you simply convert one of your own jpgs to CMYK and load it into PTE you will realize that it's not an "assumption." The images look exactly as a CMYK colorspace image does in PTE. Perhaps you could then try to use IrfanView to correct the colorspace and report back on your success? Did anyone recommend "spending?" I didn't. I said there are free web conversions and that if the OP zipped and uploaded them with a link I would convert them for him. Best regards, Lin

Hi Erik, We are dealing with colorspace - not a file format conversion. AFAIK neither IrfanView nor Fastone nor Gimp have a CMYK to RGB converter... Best regards, Lin

There are two or more ways to handle this depending on how many images you need to convert. If you have a modern computer which will run Photoshop CS6, you could download and install a trial version of Photoshop from Adobe which is good for 30 days. Use it to convert these from CMYK to RGB. You could zip all the images and upload them to a file sharing service or to your own website if you have one. Provide a link to the zipped file and I can convert them for you and provide you with a link to download the converted files. You could purchase an inexpensive tool to convert - just Google CMYK to RGB Converter. You can use a free online CMYK to RGB converter. Here's a $19.95 Total Image Converter - I haven't tried it myself but it probably is fine: http://www.coolutils.com/Convert-CMYK-RGB Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, A DVD is subject to the NTSC or PAL aspect ratio. Most modern televisions are not designed for these aspect ratios. There are multiple considerations here. First is what type of television are you using? Some television displays have aspect ratios amenable to DVD while others are designed for wide screen, etc. Are you using the same television now as when the image filled the screen? There is no reason to use 1920x1080 unless you plan to create an MP4 h.264 and play it on your television via the HDMI port or on a USB flash drive, etc. With an MP4 h.264 you can have a 16:9 aspect ratio and HD resolution, but on a DVD in the UK you are using 576i for resolution and aspect ratio. This will not fill the screen on a 16:9 aspect ratio display unless you lose part of the image. The link below may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-definition_television Best regards, Lin

Hi Igor, I don't think the same logic applies to audio as to a still image. The assumed purpose of "fit all slides to sound track" is to make the audio track end in synchronization with the end of the last slide. When an audio track is replaced, the assumption of that feature has not arbitrarily changed. What possible value is there in preserving the audio run time of a non-existent audio track? I think this feature is used to quickly adjust the display time of slides to coincide with the run time of an audio track. Users who are matching specific audio timings to specific image portions would, in my opinion, never use this feature. Best regards, Lin