Barry Beckham

If you make an Mp4, I think you will find PTE will play it OK

TrailerTrash Select the music first and let that guide and inspire you, that's what I do. The images are them produced from Raw files one at a time

Ralf A tripod is not so good for this type of photography, you need the freedom to hand hold. Set your camera focus to AI Servo, set your drive to continuous and if the surfers are moving right to left, set your focus point on the right. That way you are in control of composition, framing and you can follow the surfers as they move. Just do a couple of test shots with your camera to shutter priority and once you can see from the LCD that the exposures are OK, then forget the exposure and concentrate on panning with the surfers and getting the shots sharp. If you can shoot later in the day, you will get the shutter speeds you need without that real harsh light of midday shooting. Good luck. PS, you will need to shoot 500 to find 50 good ones, if your lucky :blink:/> Some times you get a great sharp shot, but the surfer is too static.

Ralph I expect surfing has more appeal when the sea temp is closer to 24c than 14c :rolleyes:/> I have been amongst surfers in Australia for 4 years, but the conditions need to be right to capture some good shots. You need a bright sunny day, but that gives you exposure problems holding the contrast and highlights, but not all surfers have the skills to make good subjects. Then you need the right location or the surfers are either too far out or always coming straight at you. For a subject that is so common here, I found this show difficult to shoot and create.

This has been quite a battle to create something that matched the subject, without being obvious with the choice of music. Wipeout or a Beach Boys track are those obvious choices I wanted to avoid. Music is a Queen Track called Schools out, Surfs up . Top of this page for PC and Mac http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshows_3.html

Igor Thats got it, well done

Igor Have you picked up on the visual problem I described in the Objects and Animation screen.

Alan Thank you for that.

Disappearing Mouse Pointer in the Objects and Animation screen of Pictures to Exe 7.5 I can now recreate the problem I originally described on 4 separate computers. 2 old desktop PC's about 6 years old. 1 Desktop about 2 years old and 1 Laptop about 1 year old. When I try the same thing on the same computers with PicturesToExe 7. I do NOT experience the problem, which indicates to me the issue is with PTE 7.5 All of our Computers run Windows 7 - 64 bit and all of them operate with a Wacom Graphics tablet. The issue is obviously linked to those and PTE 7.5. Today I updated the Wacom drivers, but the disappearing mouse pointer problem is still with me. Further to what I have said before, it is more widespread than just changes made to the Size Position in Pixels Window. I get the same issue with the text box too. Let me describe it once again so that any Wacom users can see if they experience the same thing. 1. Open any image into the Objects and Animations screen 2. Go to the Common Tab and select Size/position in Pixels 3. In the floating window, select the Original Mode tab and just click into the size box so that you can see the flashing cursor, but don't change anything yet 4. Using your Wacom pen, move the cursor to the centre of the screen so you can see the white pointer clearly 5. Using the keyboard only change the size value to something like 50% and the mouse pointer disappears. - It will not display itself again until I either pass it over the Size/position window (difficult when you can't see it) or I reach the outer edge of the screen and reach the outer window, then it returns. (I know it is there, I just can't see it) I can recreate the same symptoms when creating text. Open text, go to the text box and adjust the word text to something else and the white arrow cursor disappears again. As before it only re-appears when I either move into the text box on screen or reach the outer window If your mouse pointer happens to be along the edge of the window when your making these changes, you may not notice the issue, that's why I have suggested the pointer be placed in the centre of the screen. One other bit of information that may be of value. Today I decided to record a video to demonstrate what I am experiencing on these computers. As I made the recording the mouse pointer disappeared just as normal. Imagine my surprise when I converted the recording into a video file to attach here, that the mouse pointer was clearly showing on the video even though when I recorded it, the pointer was not visible. That may give Igor a clue as what is causing this. Its an irritation more than anything else, but clearly something is wrong and it seems linked to PTE 7.5 and Wacom Graphics tablets. Perhaps the Operating system has something to do with it too. So I would be interested to hear what other W7 - 64 bit users of Wacom tablets find. Later - I managed to fire up a very old desktop of mine that must be 10 years old. It runs Vista 32 bit and has a Wacom Saphire tablet installed. I was able to re-create the same visual problem on that system too. So that is now 5 of my PC's all showing the same fault

Ralf Many thanks, but perhaps there is a problem with something like this that I forgot about. This demo wasn't intended to be downloaded and your computer may pop up a warning when a slide show starts interupting the flow. Of course that wouldn't be there if this was created on a PC and not sent via the internet.

A question I received recently I will be giving a talk at our photographic society and I will be using Pictures To Exe in manual mode to show my images. By that I mean I will set it so that it waits for a key press before moving to the next image. Having said that there are certain groups of images which I would like to show automatically ( an automatic AV). I know I can do it as an AV but as my talk has to last about 40 minutes I want to control the show manually with just two or three sequences in it. Is this possible or am I asking too much? Being at a loose end I answered the query and created a demo for interest. Unzip the folder and run the manual show not the auto ones http://www.mediafire.com/?ad2npb9z2dm5atu

This is why the icon needs to be UP FRONT AND CENTRE All those options will eventually be found, but not straight away when you need them. Experts are too close to the wood to see the trees.

Gary I think I have what your looking for as large screen videos. Its a disk I have made about 4 or 5 times now over the years called PicturesToExe Starter Its presently up to date for PTE 7. Take a look at this page and you can download the intro video. That will give you an idea of the video size, along with sound and visual quality. You can go directly to the Pdf contents HERE For a demo like this you need to keep things basic and simple or you can easily frighten people off if you make things too complex. So, you could use just the sections you want from this disk to add to your talk. If this is something that would help, please email me your address and I will send a disk to you. All I ask in return is a small plug to your members about who created the disk and our web address.

Ralph Glad it hit the spot, don't let the zipping debate sidetrack you. Some just have to have difficulties don't they

My my, you are a bitter man arn't you.

No Eric I wasn't suggesting any version of PTE is crap, but you do seem to have a lot of ways to zip or archive a file. I can see Winzip, Express Zip, Tar archive, TGZ archive. My suggestion was that one of those installs has stolen the file association and that is why you don't see the simple, yet effective extract all that was already apart of your operating system. My point is that you avoid PTE 7.5 like like the plague (even though it won't overwrite v7) , yet you have all that other CRAP installed. Sorry, but that logic escapes me.

Put the speeded up video through PTE optimization and I am guessing all will come good. This is the issue I experienced in the early days of beta testing PTE when video was introduced. Not until the video was optimized would it run correctly. Used straight from the Canon 5D the video looked like the keystone cops

Eric For someone who is nervous about installing PTE 7.5 you certainly have loads of other crap on your PC for zip purposes. I am sure that when one of those installed it did the usual thing and took over and robbed you of the basic extract all command Like Mick P has demonstrated it has been this was for as long as I can recall

I made the show and created it a "Safe Executable File for the Internet" Its a new option in PTE 7.5 to overcome the annoying anti virus issues we sometimes have. When you unzip the file you need to keep the two files together

Gary If you have Audacity on your computer, try taking one of those tracks into Audacity and re-saving it as a new Mp3, then slot it into that slide show. See if that clears the log jam. That may tell if it is a bug or one of those annoying sound issues we see from time to time caused by the Mp3 itself

Over the years I have done hundreds of demonstrations and I always include PicturesToExe, even if that is just breaking up a Photoshop session with a brief respite and a short slide show. One thing that became clear to me from an early point was that a destop and a laptop of so called equal power do not perform anywhere near the same. For years I used a desktop to do demos, because laptops were just not up to the high end photography and then the animation possibilities with PTE. I notice that we seem to be reaching a turning point and my latest laptop and our clubs laptop are capable of playing Hot in the City and the PTE promo smooth as silk, but there are still lots of laptops that will struggle, especially when we throw in video too.

I think that slide show says a lot about PTE because the majority of the images were created at 2560*1440 (16:9) and 4 or 5 were 3000*2000 and yet it plays well even on our club laptop. No delays at all, no hesitation in the animation despite the quick fire nature.

Roger Good Point I don't believe you can, but it would be useful to have that option.

Lin. Unless I am the only one who ever wants to see their slide show full screen from a selected image, then yes it should show as a default and in a convenient position. I am suggesting it is such a basic tool for slide show production it should be big, bold and convenient by default. We have an odd situation where the Navigation bar that is used by few is shown as a default, yet starting the slide show from a selected image, which is pretty basic slide show operation isn't.

Igor I would like to ask you to re-think your decision to hide the icon away that will easily start a slide show from any highlighted image. I have been making a couple of slide shows recently so I have been putting 7.5 to a good test. As usual I find myself wishing to do a full screen preview from a cetain image dozens, if not a hundred times during the production. Am I unique in doing this? I doubt it, but the button to allow that does not even show untill you access the options to display it. Yes, I appreciate Ctrl+R does the same thing, but I make this point for others, not me or the faithful. Although, having said that, when you work with a graphics tablet rather than a mouse. A button to tap is sometimes more convenient than Ctrl+R In my view, that button to start a slide show from a select image should be big and bold and up front where even the most innexperineced user will see it. Our main working area is along the bottom third of the screen and that is where it should be along with the main preview button. IMHO of course :rolleyes:/>/> PS. there still seesm to be a visual issue with the mouse pointer in the Objects and animation screen. There has been little mention of this so I am unsure if it is work in progress or it's been missed. I have recreated it on 3 separrate PC's and reported it in another thread.