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Hi Ian, I'm glad to read your statement, and I'll try to obtain some insider information from the German AV people. In Germany the said SmartScreen problem will not be regarded as a very serious one, as the German AV people normally do not present their work in the Internet (because of GEMA and other organizations). So there will not be that many downloads. Best regards, Xaver

You say above that you use Audacity. You should also have installed the corresponding MP3 Library (Lame 3.99.3). When exporting your Audacity project to an MP3 file you will see an options button, and you will have options up to 320 kbps. Regards, Xaver

PTE supports the following input formats for audio: MP3, WAV, OGG, WMA. Why not using MP3 (stereo, CBR (constant bit rate), 192 kbps or higher)? Regards, Xaver

Yes, I would like to have single executables as an option for special purposes. Best regards, Xaver

This is just my interpretation of the rules of your organization, and I do not regard it as my job to make any clarification, but keeping the organizer informed seems to be the best way to go. As PTE is widely used in the RPS there will be a solution. In the German AV scene the situation is different, PTE is widely unknown (standard tools are Wings and m.objects). Best regards, Xaver

Just a remark on submissions to AV festivals. I have heard that users an AV tool provided by a German competitor sometimes run into trouble as this tool does not allow to export shows as single file executables. If you look at rules of organizations like RPS (see here) or AV-Dialog (German AV organization, see here) you will see that presently shows that consist of 2 or more files are not welcome Regards, Xaver

Copy the image into a layer in Photoshop (better not into the background layer). Select the outside part, and delete or cut the selection. Then save this layer as PNG. In this case the PNG file should include the desired alpha channel which defines the outside part as transparent. Regards, Xaver

You've got your opinion, I've got mine (much more positive ) A simple sequence, blending one image over another one is not what I would regard as modern AV, even if you may think that it is less muddled. In this forum we sometimes see excellent demos of PTE's capabilities, but Jean-Charles' work is miles ahead. Regards, Xaver

Jose, The proposal that I made above will only work in cases where your main subject has a simple structure (e.g. it should not include masks). In your rather complex example, you presently may use a workaround with 4 standard masks Best regards, Xaver NegativeMask-modified.zip

Jose, We should not fight for words (some or many), and if Igor manages to implement useful "negative" masks, I will not complain about them Some time ago, I presented in the German section of this forum a template showing a zooming circle with a constant line thickness, see here. It uses some kind of negative mask. I have modified this example (see attachment), showing that it can be done with a standard mask as well Best regards, Xaver ZoomingCircleWithAlignment.zip

What I would like to see (for example) is a user defined rectangular white mask (with adjustable size and width of blur) having a black circle inside with similar, independent options for size and blur. Best regards, Xaver

Jose, let me start with the remark that I would like to see more flexibility for the predefined masks, as well. On the other hand, just having the inverted versions of the given predefined masks is not what I would consider as very helpful. We should ask for a more sophisticated model. Presently we have predefined white circles or rectangles, where the complete outside part is black (keeping in mind that the outside part of a mask is defined to be transparent). If you ask for the negative mask, you seem to want to see black circles or rectangles whose complete outside parts are white. As I already said, I have my doubts that this will be good for the overall performance, and in many cases the new mask effects can be achieved with standard masks, as we have them today, just by changing the order of the layers. Regards, Xaver

The predefined masks, as they are today, work well by defining the outside part as transparent. What about the outside part in case of inverted versions of the given predefined masks. Should it be defined as opaque? I don't know if this will lead to performance problems? Regards, Xaver

You should keep in mind that images in PTE are now 3D-objects. An image is to be regarded as a rigid body in a 3D-space, having 6 degrees of freedom, i. e. the position of its center (parameters: Pan X, Pan Y, Pan Z) and a 3D-rotation around the center (parameters: PTE Standard Rotation, Rotate X, Rotate Y). Now, if you program an animation, you do it by defining a new position of the center and 3 new angles. Thus, the animation consists of a 3D-Pan, and of a 3D-Rotation, and for each of both parts you just have one set of speed options. It's OK, isn't it? Regards, Xaver

The speed options for a normal Rotate also work for Rotate X and Rotate Y. The speed options for a normal Pan also work for Pan Z. Regards, Xaver

Again my question from March 27: With the new AVI output, will it be possible to create AVI videos that are larger that 2 GB? Regards, Xaver

Crossfade, I must admit, that I do not like it either, dividing video files into groups like Apple or Windows. What shall poor Linux users do? I also do not like silly questions like: Does this player run AVIs? The typical answer will be: Yes and NO. A Player that runs a video file on a computer (Linux, Windows, or Apple) has to manage at least three tasks. It must be able to handle the video's container (or file) format (AVI, ASF (WMV), MP4, MKV, OGG, MOV, FLV, ...). But that's not all. Inside the container, there is a video part and an audio part. Both parts have their own compression formats (video: MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AVC/H.264, VC-1 (WMV 3), WMV 2, Sorensen, ... ; audio: MP3, AAC, AC3, WMA, Vorbis, MPEG-2, ...). It is quite obvious that the player must have the appropriate decoding properties for audio and video, as well. So, it may happen that a player runs one AVI, but not an other one. Some players rely on decoders that are installed on the system, others like VLC and also PTE do not. Some formats (container, video, and audio) have been developed by Mircosoft, some by Apple, others by other organizations. Nevertheless it is possible to run most of all the videos on all kinds of systems Best regards, Xaver

So, you do not want to tell us, what an Apple-file is Regards, Xaver

The situations that I refer to are the following: 1st, when the blue man opens the iron door; 2nd, when the blue man enters the tunnel, you hear the steps but you see the frozen motion. You may compare the scene of entering with the one at the end of the show, when the men leave the tunnel. Here I like the effect of the steps, you see the light at the end of the tunnel, there is a zoom, while hearing the steps, but you do not see a frozen motion. Regarding your door, you may have a look at "La femme de la chambre 122" by Hervé Séguret and the way he deals with sound effects. I would not regard all this too seriously, but if one likes it one may have that kind of a discussion Best regards, Xaver

This is a very fine presentation. I like the images, but also the audio part is well done. For me, as a none-native speaker, the introduction is a bit easier to understand than the voice of the expert, but the way you do it is the more authentic one (instead of having one speaker recorded in a studio). I like the sound effects coming from the off. There are a few sound effects that indicate motion, while the images show static scenes. I would try to avoid this. Congratulations and best regards, Xaver

It's just a notice to distinguish between ffdshow and FFmpeg ! The difference is essential, and it should not be too difficult to understand PTE does not use ffdshow, it uses FFmpeg, see here or here! Regards, Xaver

ffdshow is a codec to be installed on a Widows system. PTE does not make use of any installed codecs when playing videos in a slideshow. It uses its own FFmpeg library that is contained in the Common folder of the program folder of PTE 7.0. Regards, Xaver

The default video compression format at YouTube today is AVC/H.264, i.e. uploaded videos will be recoded to this format Regards, Xaver

Hi Lin, You should not blame MP4, it is nothing but a container format (MP4). The compression standard AVC/H.264 is said to be very good, but it requires high computer power, if not special HW-support (AVC/H.264). So, it may be that your PC does not provide an appropriate support!?!? The media player in my TV plays AVC videos quite well, but I had one case with decoding errors. This is the reason why I now use Xvid-encoded videos inside the MP4 container. But how to produce them? At present time, AVIs created with PTE cannot be larger than 2 GB. Therefore, I use the PTE's virtual AVI combined with VirtualDub to create an Xvid video inside the AVI container (VirtualDub's AVIs can be larger). Normally, I then use Xmedia Recode to copy the video into an MP4 container Best regards, Xaver

This is a nice play with words, bravo. What about playing this kind of game in the German language. I do not doubt that Brian provided a (local) solution by trans-coding the video. Sorry, but I regard his argument as odd. PTE uses FFMPEG, and it does not need any codecs to be installed on the Windows system. This player inside PTE should be in the position to read this kind of video correctly. If you use (as the program itself proposes) PTE's video converter the said video is trans-coded to an AVI which shows the same timing problems. This is not surprising, as the conversion is also done by FFMPEG. I made another test: Leaving the video inavriant, I just changed the container format to MKV, an the video played correctly in PTE. For me, it is now the second time that the FFMPEG based player inside of PTE has timing problems in case of MP4 containers, while VLC (also using FFMPEG) runs the videos correctly. Regards, Xaver BTW: Davy, I did allow myself to insert blanks behind your commas.