Barry Beckham

Am I the only one whose eyes glaze over and the will to live ebbs when I see the letters KFSD

Lin After a short while you may have great difficulty looking at the old type of displays. Its amazing how quick we adapt and get used the screen we use daily. I have had a Dell 27in for 5 years and I could not buy one smaller now. It's one of the positives I say to people about using PTE. In early days I would struggle to create good quality 16*12 prints, but here we are now able to see images bigger than that on a vibrant flat screen. I have not looked back to check, but I don't think you had a SSD fitted. We have just had a new PC built for my better half and it's much the same spec as what you have, but we went for a SSD for the C drive and it makes such a difference. Full boot up in under 20 seconds. It makes my PC look steam driven

At the present state of development with Slide Styles a complete newcomer to PicturesToExe should be steered well away from them, because they add a complication they don't need at that early stage. On the one hand it's tempting to demonstrate how Slide Styles could be used to make 3:2 images cover a 16:9 slide show simply and easily. (it could sidestep the usual issues of aspect ratio conflicts) However, introducing Slide Styles that early with the issues they introduce with slide timings could cause all sorts of confusions. Slide Styles at their present development are not something that should be introduced at a basic level because they are not a basic tool

Bert Thank you, but I have picked up an error in the Newsletter. In the PTE for camera clubs section I linked to an example slide show, but linked to the Mac version not the PC version. I have corrected the PDF so the right one is now up on line, but if anyone tried unsuccessfully to download it. You will find the slide show HERE

I have been making tutorials for years and have 100's for PTE. Just cllck the PTE Tutorials link below

I made a short video on the subject in our November newsletter, which may help and it's still available on line at the link to the left. Just look for free video in the November Newsletter, I think I recognise your name as one who has visited my site before.

Noel I am having a little difficulty making the system run. Can you add a bit more detail to this please? Is the problem that you can't get the software to run, or you can, but need to know where to start once it's running.

John Well, that was a very nice review thank you BB

We have created a PicturesToExe Special Newsletter packed with information and the usual video. The subject of the video is Using Collections to prepare images, quick, easy and convenient PicturesToExe 8 Newsletter

I think PTE should decide to make a slide show for me, select the images, resize them, find some music and throw together a slide show. Then let me know when it's done via a pop up on my computer. :rolleyes:/> Then of course it should post the result to You tube because I can't be bothered with the hassle of that. Why doesn't anyone say the obvious that if you want to create anything of merit you have to actually do something. If you just think about the difference between the aspect ratio of the images (3:2 mostly) and the slide show (maybe 16:9) then how would the computer know what part of the image you want. It's handing over creative control to a machine. As long as you don't have your images jumping all over the screen you can use high resolution images directly from the camera. Images from a Canon 21Mp camera are 500k or less when saved as jpegs. They will work fine on all but the oldest systems. You could achieve almost the same ends by making the default in the Essentials Edition "Cover Screen"

My guess would be a recourse issue. I would go down the path you have already suggested and batch size the images so they fill the aspect ratio you need. A 3:2 format image cut back to 1920*1280 will be only 200k at Jpeg Level 8

:lol:/>

Funnily enough I have also been looking at a new computer build for my better half and the spec I came up with is remarkably similar to yours. I don't want an off the shelf one filled up with all the stuff they pile on. Just a new PC and W7 is all I want, the rest I will do myself. (Oh and an extra large start button so I can see it OK ) However, I am going for a 250 gig Solid State Hard drive as the main C drive and then 2 other 2TB drives. I have seen a SSD in action and they do seem to be the way forward, very fast and 250gig is more than enough for the C drive if kept for OS and programs only.. I almost had one fitted in a new PC 2 years ago, but they were still too expensive. A friend here took the plunge some months ago and I am impressed with his SSD. The two other drives will be one for all work created, nothing stored on the C drive and one for immediate backup. That set-up has worked for us for the entire digital revolution without fail.

The Photoshop CC offer is also pretty good Photoshop Creative Cloud Bridge Creative Cloud Lightroom 5 $9.99 a month

Hello Lapiovra I received your DVD today and the effect your seeing on the TV is definitely the Moiré effect. It's not a fault of the software and it's a phenomenon that is well known and its not exclusive to a DVD. It just seems to be enhanced by the DVD creation process. Do a Google search and you can read all the technical stuff you want about Moiré. If you have ever watched an old western, where the wheels of the coach appear to be stationary or even going backwards? That is the Moiré effect. In our Slide Shows it has a number of causes and knowing those will help us to avoid it, or at least limit it to acceptable levels. 1. The effect will be seen far more on high contrast subjects, bright leaves against a dark background are a good example, so if you can avoid excessive highlights that will go a long way to curing the problem. Don't overdo contrast in sunlit images or you may make matters worse 2. Sharpening images is another direct cause that can also make the moiré effect worse. I am not suggesting over sharpening, but that will not help either. As the image is intended for animation, try to avoid sharpening your original image. This will go some way to help reduce the Moiré effect. 3. Probably the biggest cause of moiré is using images for your animation that are far bigger than they need to be. If you're using a slide show aspect ratio of 16:9 (1920*1080) and you want to zoom the image, you actually don't need that much extra size in your images. (depending on the zoom of course) I made a test that you can download from below. http://www.mediafire...0test%25201.zip The slide show Aspect Ratio was set at 1920*1080 and the image size was created at 2560*1440. With these sizes you can see the extent of the zoom, which is quite enough in my view, even though the image is only 600 pixels longer than the show size. If we use high resolution images the moiré effect shows up more when the size of the image is small on screen. Its like all the pixels are crammed into too small a space. So, another solution to defeat the Moiré effect is to resize your images so they are not far bigger than they need to be for the animation you want to create. If I were creating a panned image for example: I would use my image editor to crop and size the image in one operation. This will allow me to retain an image of no higher than 1080 pixels, but I can add a few hundred pixels to the width, say 2300*1080. This gives me the ability to pan, but I don't have any excess pixels I don't need. 4. Some animations will make matters worse, so if you have a pan left to right followed by a zoom and the moiré effect is bad. Try changing the animation a little. For example make them both gentle pans or both zooms. Often I have been able to defeat the moiré effect that way. 5. Within PicturesToExe we do have some way to deal with the Moiré effect. Select an image that shows the moiré effect and open the Objects and Animations widow. Go to the properties tab and you will see a sharper smoother slider. –100 is the default setting, so slide it to the right to –80 and try the slide show again. You will need to move the slider gradually and you will soon find a setting that suits your images and style. The trick is to only go as far as you need, so you don't soften the image too much. Its not a great idea to watch a preview in the Objects and Animation screen because you're only seeing one image. You need to make a judgement based on one image as it's animated and faded over another animated image. To help show up the moiré effect and simulate a DVD. Try temporarily viewing your slide show smaller. To do that go to your Project Options > Screen tab and change the size of the slide window to 720*576. It may be an idea to do this before you move that smoother slider so you have a visual record of the before setting. Don't forget to reset it back afterwards though. 6. Some of your animations seemed just a little rushed to me, but I appreciate what you sent was a test and not the final show. However, gentle animation is nearly always a good option and it's another small step to defeating the moiré effect. I have found the crucial causes of the moiré effect are Image size too large, high contrast and over sharpening. Other forum members may be able to add to this list. I hope that helps a little. Regards Barry

You're welcome :rolleyes:/>

Eric It is frustrating when we get these issues, but when you have a PC built I think there can be a difference with the configuration. Rightly or wrongly there is an assumption that the user will take it the rest of the way once the parts have all been hooked up. I think it's a bit different to one you buy off the shelf, that is already configured with all those unwanted programs that pop up for a month afterwards asking you to trial them or buy them. Take a deep breath, it will all come out in the wash and valuable experience will be obtained along the way.

You can dran and drop a slide or group exactly where you want them, but I guess you know that

Gary I have done exactly what you are doing on two previous purchases of laptops. I wouldn't touch a laptop that couldn't run a slide show from a USB stick. I wouldn't want the power so close to the wire that a slight upgrade in software and the laptop cannot cope. Here is what I have also discovered. Pound for pound laptops are not as powerful at a desktop and it's why for many years I carried a desktop to do talks and lectures. I use a laptop now for demos, but under duress. What the sales people say sounds nonsense to me. In theory a desktop and a laptop of the same spec should work the same, but in my experience they do not. I have a powerful laptop, but it can't handle Huge Raw files as Smart objects and multi layers with masks as well as an old desktop that is 6 years old. The Laptop is quad core, 64 bit with a dedicated graphics card but it's not like my desktop of a similar power. Not even close. What I also found was that it wasn't always the most powerful laptops in the store that could handle the animated slide shows I took to the store on a USB stick. The most expensive laptops didn't always out perform those of lesser power and cost. Keep going until you find one that runs your shows from the stick.

Sorry, I missed you're reply. I would wait till you have the new one up and running then format and start from scratch. Use the old machine as a test bed, you might find a clean sweep clears the problems

PTE needs either a streaming video or downloadable video on PTE's main page that takes new users through the basics. Something simple that gets them to the viewing of their first slide show as quickly and as painlessly as possible and without heaps of learning and absolutely NO technical stuff. 20 minutes maximum in length will do it.

After seeing you're first reply and reading the other thread more fully, it reminded me that I had downloaded beta 9, but not installed it. So, I did install it and went straight to a right click of the wave file. No replace command there :unsure:/> . I looked everywhere and started to get frustrated :angry:/> Eventually I had to go back to the threads to find out where it was and you're second post came in and I followed that. Yes, I think you are right. This sort of thing needs to be much easier to find than that. It's as though its deliberately hidden. Right click on the track you want to replace is where a "Replace Track" should be.

Thanks, I never read that thread

Igor Yesterday I was putting together a camera club presentation with a long section of comments all stitched together. (one file) It wasn't until I got right near the end that I picked up an error (bad practice on my part :rolleyes:/>/>/> I made a mistake) I could correct the sound file reasonably easy, but thought it would be nice to be able to exchange one sound file for the other leaving the fade in and volume levels untouched. However, I am not sure how practical this is because the new sound file was slightly longer than the one I wanted to replace it with. Just an idea. When I corrected the music I had the individual takes stitched together as an Mp3 in Camtasia, but I allowed the new sound file to be converted directly into my working folder. I used a different file name so it could be created alongside the one I wanted to replace. PTE showed that music stitch with a big blue flag saying it was damaged. I have sufficient experience to know what it was causing the warning and I ignored it. The sound file could be dragged to the timeline and was fine. Of course closing and re-launching PTE will cure that flag, but it you didn't know what had caused it and that the sound file was in fact perfectly OK, it could cause some frustration for a user.

Excellent AV. You have createdsomething different, good quality and you have captured an atmospherewith the mix of poem and music. One to be proud of I think? The music was very nice and I waslooking forward to a credit to it. Can you say who/what it is