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Xaver/Ken, I recall that, in the past, Tom Court (userid - Tomuk) has posted sequences that include voice-over. My own "Skelton - Then and Now" and "Lest We Forget" which I have posted in the past both included voice-over but I don't know whether they are still on MediaFire. I was doing some housekeeping of my files on that site recently and may have removed them. Their links were: "Lest We Forget" - http://www.mediafire.com/?29c0niyaxyd "Skelton - Then and Now" - http://www.mediafire.com/?4tn2fbgu0jz regards, Peter

Lin, Got it! Thanks for the clarification. Peter

I think I might have grasped what the mask is allowing. It looks like a transition "Circle from centre" but the centre point is in motion across the image at the same time as the circle is expanding. Is this right or am I still missing the point on this? regards, Peter

Igor, I like the 3D look of the Page Curl - very effective! But I couldn't work out what the Masks had allowed you to achieve on the final slide. Were the images taken on your trip to the UK this year? regards, Peter

I raised this very subject (FAQs) with Ken in an off-list e-mail just a couple of days ago. I agree that something of this sort would be useful - but do we really want to distract Igor from his development work? I'm wondering whether this is something that a small group of members could get organised without adding to Igor's existing workload. If anyone feels able and willing to: - make an active contribution to the design of such a facility - participate in the on-going maintenance and moderation of such a facility would you please contact me either via PM through this forum website or via direct e-mail regards, Peter

Boogie, Thanks for the comments. The fundamental problem with this kind of sequence is that it has, by its very nature, to draw upon the stock of images that already exist. For that line of verse I needed an image that conveyed the dual subject of "travel" and "fear". As you might imagine, the first part was fairly easy to satisfy, the second part was much harder. The dugout canoes were the "best fit" I could call to mind from my slide collection. I agree that it isn't as strong as some of the other images. But until I stumble across something better (and I'm not sure I have anything better), it will have to do. regards, Peter

Xaver/Lumenlux, Thank you for your comments. Yes, I know that there are many members of this forum for whom English is not their native tongue. If I was building my sequences to meet the needs of the Forum audience then I would have to take that into account. But I do not build my sequences for the Forum members. I don't build my sequences with any audiences in mind: I build them for me - because I want to take on that particular challenge. If other people find it enjoyable when they see it, that's a bonus. And many people do find my work enjoyable. I have built up a good reputation among local organisations for the quality of my slide shows. (That may simply be a reflection of the general quality of the other slide shows that they see, I don't know). So, I do what I do, the way that I do it, because it give me satisfaction. The end result then seems to give satisfaction to the local organisations that I visit. And so I live by my motto: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Regrettably perhaps, from the point of view of the forum members, I'll continue building the sequences my way. And I'll occasionally post one for feedback. But I will not build a new one or rework an existing one simply to meet the needs of a specific audience. regards, Peter Postcript: With regards to the challenges; all the sequences that I have posted to the forum had one: - "My Camera and Me" - how to use a piece of poetry as the voice-over. The tempo of the sequence was fixed by the tempo of the poetry. - "Kaleidoscope" - how to build a sequence without using photos. - "Whitby Abbey" - how to combine both horizontal and vertical images in a pleasing manner - "Mount Grace Priory" - making the statue float in the air - "Skelton - Then and Now" - how to combine historic photos and modern ones

You can all blame Jeff Evans for this one. It was his response to my posting of the text of the poem that got me thinking about turning it into an AV. (See here for his reply to that original post: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....st&p=55765) The sequence is available for download here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7836f6f...2db6fb9a8902bda As always, I would welcome all kinds of feedback. regards, Peter

If you have version 5 of PTE on both the new and old PCs, use the File...Create Backup as Zip option on each show in the old PC, transfer the zip file to the new PC and then Extract the zip file into the desired folder of the new PC. regards, Peter

Download the latest version, v5.52. You will find that on the Project Options...Main tab there is a tick box "Wait for a key press or mouse click to show next slide". This will give you the same control that you previously had in earlier versions. regards, Peter

Hi Tom, You wrote: I recall this from the last time you posted it. Your music might go well with bjc's image idea. Would you mind if I extracted the music from your sequence? regards, Peter

Hi bjc, You wrote: You've generated some fascinating (and hypnotic!) interference patterns there. I wasn't thinking of doing another pure animation sequence - but with the right music (an instrumental version of "Windmills of your mind" perhaps?) I might just get tempted! Do you have any objections to my "borrowing" your idea? regards, Peter

Igor, With regards to your post above (post #19 on page 1)... I've tried your little trick and it does the job very nicely! However, I feel that using two Frames (one to control Zoom and one to control Rotate) is, to me, a more easily understood solution. However, it leaves me with a question which only you can answer: Is there a greater processing overhead involved with the "two frames" solution compared to the custom rotate solution? Or to put it another way: which solution places least demand on the PC's resources? regards, Peter

Hi, Try the info in this post: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....ost&p=48272 I've used the patch utility myself and it does the trick. regards, Peter

Tony, The music came first with this one. Although done in a sort of "new age" style, it reminded me of Scottish Country dancing and, at times, that is what I have tried to animate into the sequence. I agree with your point about the difficulty of precise animation when you cannot see the waveform in the timeline of the O&A window. All the hard snaps are done at a slide change to make life easier. The "pulse" zooms are more difficult but by watching in the mini-player with the waveform on display there I was able to get a feel for how much offset to allow. As with all things, the more you practice the better you get. I found I could usually get the "pulse" points to within 100ms at the first attempt. After that it's judgement based on experience. Basically I build the sequence by trying to stay mostly within my "technical" comfort zone; only taking an occasional excursion into the unknown. For this sequence it was the combination of rotation happening across the "pulses" that caused me most anguish. I've documented the lessons I learned in a separate thread in the Pictures-to-Exe forum. regards, Peter

Igor, Thanks for that advice. How many more little tricks have you programmed into PTE that I don't know about, I wonder? I've solved my problem by using nested frames but I'll give your suggestion a whirl (pardon the pun!). regards, Peter

Peter, Thank you for your comments. Your English is very much better than my German! I, too, was astonished at the difference the grey background made to the overall effect. The two background images were prepared in Photoshop Elements as follows: The cream one from the first version of Kaleidoscope: Set the foreground colour to - R:250, G:247, B:230, H:52, S:8, B:98 (I actually picked out the colour using the palette but these are the values) Select Paint Bucket tool and fill the canvas with this colour Filter...Texture...Texturizer and select Sandstone as the texture The grey one from the second version: Set the foreground colour to - R:203, G:194, B:187, H:26, S:8, B:80 (I actually picked out the colour using the palette but these are the values) Set the background colour to - R:136, G:129, B:124, H:24, S:9, B:53 (I actually picked out the colour using the palette but these are the values) Select Gradient tool and with that select the Linear Gradient Click at top and drag to bottom to get a graduated colour slide Filter...Texture...Texturizer and select Sandstone as the texture Those are the two techniques that I use to create all my background images. The more you are prepared to experiment, the more pleasing results you will find. regards, Peter

Ken, A further thought occurs... If you want to continue to investigate this problem, the images that build up the ring of blue objects are nos.55-66. I recall seeing a post earlier this year that explaained how to launch a sequence starting at a specific image. If you know the technique (or can find the post in your archives) you could try launching from each of these in turn to see if you can narrow it down any further. regards, Peter

Ken, The 1.28 now vs 1.18 previous is explained by the additional 10 seconds at the start for the "health warning". I still don't understand why that particular point in the sequence gives a problem. The programming there is identical to the first twelve images that spell out "kaleidoscope" at the beginning. It isn't failing at the point of most complex animation. The most complex animation in the sequence (in terms of number of components on the move at the same time) is from 1.08 to 1.26. It's almost as though your PC needs to take a big breath after getting through that part successfully! Sorry, but I cannot offer any suggestions (different snake, perhasp?) regards,

Hi all, I feel that some of the lessons that I've learned whilst making the sequence "Kaleidoscope" are worth documenting for the benefit of all. A link to the current version of the sequence can be found in this post: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....ost&p=55906 So, what have I learned? 1. You don't need photographs to build a sequence using PTE. The seven images used in Kaleidoscope were all created using Photoshop's Gradient tool, Paint Bucket tool and the Texturizer filter. All you need is the idea. In my case it was the music that gave me the idea. 2. The more you think through your idea before starting the build, the more likely you are to get the desired result at the first attempt. 3. Doing "trial and error" during the build can end up leaving inconsistencies in the techniques used. 4. Copying and pasting objects from one image to another can propagate unwanted keyframes. These can then have unwanted results. 5. After copying and pasting an object, check for and remove unwanted keyframes before adding any new keyframes. In particular check for end-point keyframes from the previous use that are now beyond the duration of the current slide. 6. If you want to have an object rotating and panning or zooming at the same time use a structure of frames. The "wheels" in the Kaleidoscope sequence were made up of four rings, each ring having twelve objects. For each "wheel", the frame structure that I ended up with was: Zoom-Control-Frame Rotate-Control-Frame Ring1 Frame Ring2 Frame Ring3 Frame Ring4 Frame This allowed me to program the Zoom activity without having to worry about where the rotation had got to. 7. If you are building up complex objects, such as the "wheels" forget about doing any fading in/out of these objects. At present an object cannot inherit Opacity values from its parent. I firmly believe that this is a major shortfall in the product. Let's consider just one scenario. On the slide in Kaleidoscope where I have twelve mini-wheels circulating around a central wheel, I would have liked to have faded in and faded out the mini wheels one at a time. Each mini-wheel is made up of 52 objects (four ring frames and 12 items per ring). So, the circle of mini-wheels has 624 separate objects. I would have had to program two keyframes onto every one of these objects to program a fade in or fade out of each wheel. All I should have needed to do was program two points for each fade on each wheel. 8. Previewing your sequence in the mini-player is not giving you the same result as previewing it in fullscreen preview. At one point I had some very complex animation that was previewing perfectly in the mini-player. When I came to do the full-screen preview of this same animation it was jerky and erratic (clearly I had stressed the graphics card beyond its capabilities). 9. Build the complex nested objects "backwards". By this I mean, build the full circle wheel first. Then, if you want the sequence to build it up one piece at a time, clone it twelve times and remove one item at a time off the cloned copies. This guarantees that all the individual objects retain precisely the same position throughout the extended animated sequence. 10. Panning an object along a diagonal track that is itself aligned on a point in another object is not an easy task. The animation where the four corner wheels move inward towards the centre wheel was the most difficult piece of programming to get right. I also learned that, because I made some of the mistakes I'm warning you about above, I became frustrated and angry. And I took my anger out on Lin Evans when he tried to help me. I've apologised to him in the relevant thread but I do it again here publicly. I'm not proud of my behaviour that night. My frustration and anger was neither a valid reason nor a valid excuse for what amounted to shouting at Lin in my replies to his posts. Finally, don't be put off by what might seem like a complex project. Kaleidoscope uses just a few basic "building blocks" repeated over and over again: - a ring of twelve objects - four such rings nested together to form a wheel - rotation of a wheel - zoom of a wheel The apparent complexity comes from changing the colours of the twelve objects in each ring but this is very straightforward to do. It's just time-consuming. regards, Peter P.S. Final apology to Xaver (xahu34) and all other members for whom English is not their first language. This post has had to be lengthy in order to explain everything.

I've just completed a re-work of "Kaleidoscope" to get the animations just as I wanted them. I've also changed the background image - and this one action has totally transformed the sequence. The new version is available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7836f6f...2db6fb9a8902bda regards, Peter

Xaver, Lin and all, You're not going to believe this. In the first half of the Kaleidoscope sequence I used nested frames to keep the rotate programming separate from the zoom programming without realising the significance of what I was doing. The solution was already there in my sequence. I just didn't realize it! Thanks for helping me arrive at this new state of enlightenment. Tomorrow I set about introducing consistency into my programming of "Kaleidoscope" - something I should have done right from the start! Sorry to have been such a pain. regards, Peter

Xaver, I really do appreciate all the helpful suggestions that are coming from folks on this one - but I don't think yours is the answer to this particular problem. Consider this: I have an object that is set to rotate through 1440 degress in 30 seconds. At 4500, 4550 and 4575 milliseconds into the rotate I want to program a Zoom (increasing the size between the first two of these keyframes; and returning it back to its original size between the second two). It's simple to set the keyframes at those time offsets. It's simple to set the bigger zoom value on the middle one of the three keyframes But what rotate value should each of those three keyframes have in order that the rotation continues without any pause, speed increase, or speed slow down? The problem is all about having the rotate value calculated for these three keyframes by PTE so that there is no apparent change to the rotating object other than the brief flash up to a bigger size and back again (a "pulse" as I think of it). Wait a minute! You're a genius, Xaver! Whilst sorting out my thoughts to argue this point with you, I've just realised what the answer is. The rotating object needs to be set on two nested frames. I use one frame to control the rotate and the other to control the zoom - I think!. Now I know what I'll be doing in the morning! Indeed, I'm so certain that this will solve the problem that I'm going to go and pour a glass of red wine to celebrate! I'm off the air for the rest of the night, everybody! Thanks, pal! Peter

Lin, Thanks - and sorry if I got a bit "het up" in that last post of mine. I'll PM Igor and ask him to have a look at this thread from the point of view of giving us an option to have PTE calculate the rotation value in the way in which I need it - with manual over-ride, of course!. regards, Peter

Ken, Now you'd better book an appointment with your optometrist or whatever you call them in Canada! Glad you're now seeing it as I intended - subject to the debate I'm having with Lin in my other hot thread! Peter