Experience with timelapse with PTE

[Delicate]

Hi

I'm just a happy amateur, who have spend much more money on camera equipment and high speed tickets on nature photography trips, than ever earned with pictures sent to magazines...

I like to add illusions of movement in a slideshow.

This can be made in many ways, e.g. with 3D-animation in PTE, which the software do quit nicely.

But there are many other ways, where only the imagination puts limits to what can be done.

I have used a realistic looking "zoom"-effect, simply by using two pictures and fade-in transition. Pictures taken with the same view, but where the foreground is sharp in one picture (and the background is blurred), and the background sharp in the other one (with the foreground blurred).

Another very realistic looking effect (you do not see a difference compared to video), is to use pictures with exactly the same view (no difference in the actual graphic of the pictures), but where the lighting change from picture to picture (fade-in transition used between pictures).

A third one is to use "timelapse" or "stop-motion" frames in a slideshow.

I have used these three effects in one slideshow I uploaded on internet, please watch

http://vimeo.com/18584973

Now to my experience and questions conserning timelapse with PTE, and there are two ways:

1. One is to put a serie of pictures in the timeline, using fade-in transition between the pictures.

This allways works, but there seems to be a limit for how fast the pictures can be showed.

I get the best result if each pictures are shown not shorter than 300ms, with a fade-in transition for each picture for almost the same time.

Experience/questions:

- if just a timelapse test is made, then pictures can be showed much faster, e.g. for 40ms - and everything seems to work fine, but when you do a complex slideshow with a lot of pictures, then the slideshow starts to be bumpy. I have used 1620x1080 size pictures in JPG (not even tried with 1920x1080). One can say that this is a question of the platform and performance of a computer. To my experience (well not widely tested), the problem stays with different performace of computers (to my profession I'm doing 3D CAD design, and have tested the slideshows on the PC:s I use)?

- the problem seems to remain with PTE and EXE format, and MP4 format exported with PTE

- well I know that PTE is not made primary for making video, but because I don't know the technology behind PTE, I can't understand why it is not possible for the software to e.g. export bumpy-free MP4, when the software can take all the time needed to render a video

2. The other way is to make the timelapse within one slide (under "Objects and Animation").

I made a test putting almost 70 pictures of 1620x1080 size (JPG) in one slide.

For each picture I made two keyframes to be able to change the opacity between 0% and 100% (a "fade-in" looking effect), this bacause I wanted a smooth timelapse.

Experience/questions:

- in this test it looked, that the pictures could be showed faster, BUT:

- there is a long pause before the timelapse starts, there is the feeling that the software loads all pictures in the computers memory, before the timelapse starts?

- if this timelapse-slide is put in a slideshow, the result is not smooth at all, there is still this pause before the timelapse starts

- same result with PTE and EXE format (didn't try with MP4)

- when I put two different timelapse-slides with 70 pictures in each, the software crashed when run (or becamed at least blocked?)

Comments on method 1 (still having the problems described above):

- easy to make

- not very handy with a lot of pictures in the timeline, mixed with other pictures in the slideshow not beeing a part of the actual timelapse

- 3D effects/animation of the whole timelapse can not be made, like for other pictures in the slideshow (or is very complicated to make)

Comments on method 2 (still having the problems described above):

- much work to make(templates needed to be made)

- in theory a more "professional" way of doing the timelapse, just one slide on the timeline

- would in theory be easy to make 3D-animation for the whole timelapse, because it's just one slide

Finally I would like to say, that I'm very pleased with the style and quality of PTE slideshows.

It's a software that is under development and growing all the time, so I look with interest for comming releases.

If anybody has any good idea how to improve the result of a fast runing slideshow/timelapse on PTE, I would be glad to hear.

Regards,

Jan

[Barry Beckham]

Jan

Nice slide show and the effects looked good too. Love to see the full size exe file, the images looked great quality even in the vimeo video.

Fast moving animation is not something I have done, but I have an idea about it. If you shoot your time lapse images from a tripod, perhaps you could use inset images, smaller pictures, via the Objects and Animation screen for the time lapse. So, you use the whole picture as a base, (1629*1080) but those parts that move, make them much smaller and overlay them over the base image. They could be far smaller and maybe easier and quicker to display. Registration may be an issue, but I suspect it won't be too difficult, given what you did with your slide show.

If you don't shoot from a tripod, but want to try this idea, you could try the Align Images option in Photoshop, which I have found very good at aligning a series of hand held images. If you take care and shoot on continuous, the slight movements we make can often be handled by the Align Images option. I have used it a lot.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jan,

Barry has a good idea, but some discussion below to give you some background.....

What you are doing requires, primarily, the power of the video card. PTE, unlike most presentation slideshow products, uses hardware rendering. You may be already familiar with this, but if not, a short explanation. Though the power of the CPU is important, primarily the memory and GPU in the video card are used to render complex animations smoothly and quickly. As you know, when an executable file is played by a system, the computer creates the stream of images on the fly. So even if you have an extremely good video card and create a very smooth slideshow with complex animations, if the executable file is played back on a system with a less than optimal video card, the motion can be jerky and stuttering.

Video creation is limited to either 24 or 30 frames per second in most cases, while the executable code frequently creates over 60 frames per second. Therefore, certain types of motion in an MP4 h.264 simply won't be as smooth as with an executable file. This is especially noticeable on the leading edge of objects in motion. In the movie industry, there are some really complex algorithms used for "smoothing" these otherwise "jerky" motions by using various blur techniques. Unfortunately that technology isn't yet available to presentation slideshow developers. Because of the need to adhere to Direct X protocol, the absolute best sequence rate in current presentation slideshow software is around 150 ms per frame. On the much older versions of PTE before Direct X issues, it was quite possible to sequence at speeds of up to 10 ms per image which made it possible to animate timelapse and even exceed the results with pro video. Unfortunately, with the new versions, this is no longer possible.

It is possible, however, to do opacity blending between frames to mask some of the jerk between frames, but it's a "lot" of work and with the forthcoming video clip drop-in, I doubt it would be worth the time it would take for you to do this except on very short clips. Even so, the problem remains that not all systems you play your show back on will be able to run it smoothly. As for the smoothness of MP4 h.264, you will find that the same show played on a computer with rather "jerky" motion, may very well play quite perfectly when played on a wide screen LED or LCD television via either the USB port or with one of the newer media players. It seems that televisions are optimized to play these mp4's while the software available to play them on computers is less than optimal in most cases.

I've made several shows which use opacity blending to give smooth motion to objects, but I have kept the objects small so as not to overtax the system. For example, I'll link you to one I did a year or so ago which uses a variety of techniques. It was a "demo" of the abilities of PTE and the particular part where opacity blending was done was a sample of the earth rotating on its axis while rotating around the sun. Take a look at it and then I can answer question you may have. There were over 600 separate views of the Earth in rotation used for the short sequence. These consisted of small PNG transparencies with opacity blending between frames.

Another possibility you may want to explore until we get the first beta 7 with video clip drop in (it's due very shortly) is to explore using animated GIF's. It's very possible to convert video to animated GIF's and PTE runs them very well. I'll also link you to a couple shows where I've used animated GIF's in lieu of video.

http://www.learntoma...emoshowfull.zip (about 95 meg download) Windows Executable zipped

http://www.learntoma...showfullmac.zip (about 97 meg download) MacIntosh native executable zipped

Now for the animated GIF's:

http://www.picturest...showtopic=12809 (gif animations using cube)

http://www.picturest...showtopic=12935 (flying Bald Eagle using animated gif)

Best regards,

Lin

[Jean-Cyprien]

Hi Jan

PTE load the files for the two views that follow. If all the files are loaded when the next view is seen, there is no delay between the views. If not, there is a « pause » between the pictures – not for the sound.

But PTE makes also (I think) calculation for the animation of these two following views, and the results of the calculations are loaded just at the beginning of the view and this is a other reason for a pause(for a more or less long time) between the views.

If the files and the calculation are not to big – for your computer - there is no problem.

For example, for my Christmas present

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12699

for the first movie made by the brothers Lumière, I've several ( 8 ) views of 2.4 seconds each with 60 pictures of 640x480pixels, 30+/-1 ko (each one of 40ms duration) > about 1800ko per view.

With an animation at the beginning of the movie.

To be done, the first view takes some time to put the 4 Keypoints for each picture but after that it's easy to replace the picture names with the aid of Excel for the following views.

Several pictures per view, or one picture with several views... it's similar : PTE needs enough time to load the files, and this depends of your computer. Here you have a succession of pictures. Video is different.

P.S.1 as your profession is doing 3D CAD design, I hope you'll find my AV a interesting one,

P.S.2 do you know well the last song ?

Jean-Cyprien

[Delicate]

Almost nothing is static in this world, it is the nature of man to have an interest in movement, like now talking about slideshow and video.

Thank you Barry for your tips. It would certanly help to use just a base picture, followed by PNG-tranparencies of smaller image size.

Regarding alignment og pictures, it's quit easy to manually align pictures on the timeline (using the grid under Objects and Animation). Thanks for the tip to automatically align pictures in Photoshop.

... and I must congratulate, the slideshows on your website is one of the most artistic ones I have seen made by PTE.

Thank you Lin for taking your time to explain the technology behind PTE. The key word seams to be "hardware rendering". My experiences with PTE regarding fast picture sequences are quit equal to what you are saying here. And I agree, it will help when there will be a possibility to ad video on PTE-shows, video or timelapse made by other software. I have already material waiting for some projects ...

Jean-Cyprien, what a cool slideshow you have made! It must have taken a long time to make! I saw it for many times. And you have included picture sequences the way I would like to do. I watched it with the same computer I have been using, and I just think that you have managed to make faster sequences than I have done? Well, the explanation must be that I have tried to use 1620x1080 size pictures, and you say you used 640x480 size. And I think you scaled up your pictures to full view.

Re: P.S.2: What nice to end your Christmas present with a finnish Christmas carol. I'm honoured...

Going into detail, I see a small difference in Lin's and Jean-Cyprien's response, regarding "several pictures per view (pictures on the timeline)" and "one view with several pictures (multiple pictures in one slide)". Maybe the conclusion could be (note my amateur thinking), that for the "multiple pictures in one slide"-case, all pictures are loaded in the memory before the sequence starts, and that would explain why it seems to work yerky-free, but have a pause before it starts? On the other hand, pictures that are put on the timeline needs to be loaded on the fly, which could cause a jerky-behavior, if the sequence is too fast?

Tip?: Maybe the "pause" before the "multiple pictures in one slide"-case could be used as a bluf to be a part of the earlier pictures showtime?

Thank you all for your responce.

Jan

[Jean-Cyprien]

Hi Jan,

Supposing each file is of 30ko and of 40ms of duration.

If I put one file per view, every 40ms PTE has to load 30 ko during the duration of the view. (The loading has to be done in less than 40 ms). As I've said, PTE examine the two following views - not more, not less.

If I put 60 files on a single view of 60x40ms that is 2400ms PTE has to load 60x30ko = 1800ms in less than 2400ms. I imagine it's not very different with the same loading rate. In this last case it's +/- easy to make animation, but not in the previous one.

Perhaps the "dimension" (in pixel) is important (for the quality, certainly), but the main problem - I think - is the weight of the files (in ko) to be transfered and loaded in the memory (not considering the possible animation).

If the movie is very short (some seconds...) I think heavy files could be "stored" in advance(if my memory is correct)

Jan, I've send you a PM.

Have a good day

Jean-Cyprien

[Delicate]

Hi

I thought I should make a picture sequence test, so I did.

I made the test the easier way, putting the pictures in the timeline.

Description:

- all pictures were placed in a sequence on the picture timeline

- the test was saved in a executable EXE format for PC with PicturesToExe version 6.5.2

- first there were 7 pictures (of a seagull) showed for 1s with 900ms fade-in transition (pictures of appr. 330 kb file size)

- then there were a sequence of 29 "moving mum doll" pictures

- then the same seagull pictures were showed again

(I did put the segull pictures before and after the "mum" sequence, because I wanted to make the total slideshow test more memory consuming)

So I did 7 different tests:

TEST 1 The "mum" sequence with 300ms interval, 1080p size pictures, file size appr. 220kb (ko)

TEST 2 The "mum" sequence with 150ms interval, 1080p size pictures, file size appr. 220kb

TEST 3 The "mum" sequence with 40ms interval, 1080p size pictures, file size appr. 220kb

TEST 2-1 The "mum" sequence with 150ms interval, 1080p size pictures,

file size appr. 72kb (compressed low quality picture, but still of 1080p size)

TEST 3-1 The "mum" sequence with 40ms interval, 1080p size pictures,

file size appr. 72kb (compressed low quality picture, but still of 1080p size)

TEST 2-2 The "mum" sequence with 150ms interval, 360p size pictures,

file size appr. 80kb (low resolution picture of 360p size)

TEST 3-2 The "mum" sequence with 40ms interval, 360p size pictures,

file size appr. 80kb (low resolution picture of 360p size)

The result for this test with two PC:s of mine, was that TEST 1, 2-2 and 3-2 did work jerky-free, the others not.

So this test gave the result, that it's the picture size in pixels that is of importance, and that the file size in kb (ko) is of less importance. Or in other words, in TEST 2-1 and 3-1 the sequence was jerky when the separate "mum doll"-picture file size was 72kb (and picture of HD-resolution), but in test 3-2 where the picture resolution was smaller and the file size was 80kb it was jerky-free.

This could be explaned (i think) with the fact that the JPG-files have to be uncompressed before being showed, and that the degree of compression doesn't influence the result.

Well, this was at least what I find out with my test.

Quit interesting to do this kind of small experiment...

Regards,

Jan

[Johnwnjr]

I have found the replies and examples to this topic fascinating and have viewed most of the links in Lin Evans examples and Jean-Cyprien and of course the original Vimeo. On a new computer I have everything played beautifully, and smoothly. I then tried the more advanced sequences of Lin Evans and Jean-Cyprien on a laptop which is about three or four years old, and has in the past played any more advanced sequences I have examined. It would not play Lin Evans PTE show display, - it got as far as the waterfalls and gave up. It would not play the Jean-Cyprien "Avent" sequence at all. Is this a sign of the times, that the advancement of PTE possibilities that are now being explored are proving difficult for older computers and therefore members will find older equipment redundent and have to buy new computers to handle the advancing technology? Some may not be willing to do this and it could effect the progress of sales of PTE.

John

[Picsel]

First of all I would thank Jean-Cyprien for his very impressive and accurate slideshow. I missed it last Christmas. Bravo!!

I must say that I haven't seen any problem playing Jean-Cyprien and Lin's slideshow on my "old" PC(Intel dual core first generation)

To come back on this interesting topic, after reading the last post made by Jan, I have made a very simple and quick test. I put 30 slides (1440x1080 370ko) with 40ms duration and no effect. PTE did not succeed to play each of the view. So I replaced them by 30 slides (800x600 240ko). PTE could play each of the view only by increasing their duration to around 100ms. If there is a larger picture in position of view 1 or 2 there is no problem but if this larger picture is in the middle or at another position, PTE preview stops.

So it seems that there is a condition between minimum duration and picture size (which is in line with Jan's test results), and the fact that there is no problem when the larger picture is in position of view1 or 2 seems in line with what Jean-Cyprien said about PTE downloading two pictures in advance. But what is the contribution of PC's performance and PTE's calculation??

That was just for the fun!

Daniel

[Delicate]

Hi

Re: My fast sequence "mum" test described above

I did still do some testing...

I thought, that if I use Indexed (256 color) BMP "mum"-pictures instead, would the sequence be faster?

For an indexed BMP picture of 1620x1080p size the file size is 1710 kb (ko).

But because a BMP-file is unpacked, would the sequence be faster?

(by experience from a map-software, which loaded indexed BMP-maps much faster)

When started on PTE, the software first announced that "PNG, BMP and GIF pictures will be packed".

When run on PTE there were no difference in the test result as describe above.

So I think, using another picture format makes no change...?

But I would also like to add, that when TEST 2 and TEST 3 (the setup with the best picture quality, see above) was exported with PTE to MP4 (H.264), then these clips did run jerky-free and just perfectly. Well, loosing a bit of the high quality that a executable EXE file has...

Having these experiences in mind, and remembering Jean-Cyprien's rule about the 2 following pictures beeing loaded in the computers memory, it might be easier to plan fast picture sequences in a slideshow.

I hope I'm not sailing now on ground water ...?

Jan

[thedom]

Just to laugh, a funny timelapse sequence.

I am sure Lin, you will like the subject.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dom,

Dang, I can't see it - I just get this:

[nobeefstu]

Jan Frojdman,

When started on PTE, the software first announced that "PNG, BMP and GIF pictures will be packed".

...But I would also like to add, that when TEST 2 and TEST 3 (the setup with the best picture quality, see above) was exported with PTE to MP4 (H.264), then these clips did run jerky-free and just perfectly. Well, loosing a bit of the high quality that a executable EXE file has...

Since you are searching for the best possible speed formula ... you may possibly gain a few ms if you disable from the main menu View | Advanced Options ... Crypt Images/Music against extracting from EXE file. You may also want to disable Lossless compress of BMP images if they apply.

Its also possible not to use the UPX file packer when compiling the EXE. Go to the PTE program directory and find the \All\Components\UPX folder. Rename the UPX folder to another name ... this way PTE wont automatically pack the slideshow EXE using the UPX.exe packer.

The result will remove your slideshow internal image protection and also create a larger EXE file ... however, it may gain you a few ms bonus in speed. I wouldnt expect too much speed gained in the result ... since PTE is developed as slide show software.

See attachment.

[Delicate]

Wow, learning always something new.

I will have a try with these options...

Thank you!

Jan

[goddi]

Greetings,

I recently purchase the Mercalli V3 SAL (standalone) for stabilizing my videos that I include in PTE shows. Still trying to learn the best way to use it. But it seems to have positive results.

I just visited their site and took a look at another product they have called 'ReSpeedr'. I took a look at a demo/tutorial of it and it seems to be pretty neat. I think most of the discussion here has been for timelapsing still images. But for those who are also wanting to speed-up and slow-down video, this might do the trick. One nice thing is that you can place the effect (slow-down or speed-up) in the middle of the entire clip, so the clip shows the normal speed, then the effect, then back to normal. Take a look at this demo:

Then, I am thinking. What if we put single images (perhaps intended for timelapse) into a PTE show, and outputted it as an MP4 or AVI, and then used this ReSpeedr to do the processing for speed-up or slow-down of the video? Takes care of not having to so a lot of math!!!???

Just another interesting way of dealing with images or video for PTE???

Gary

[tom95521]

Hi Gary,

Very nice. The video tutorial for Respeeder also appears to show video stabilization capability. I will put it on my wish list.

Thanks,

Tom

[goddi]

Hi Gary,

Very nice. The video tutorial for Respeeder also appears to show video stabilization capability. I will put it on my wish list.

Thanks,

Tom

Tom,

I was just about to purchase Respeedr. The download site shows it to be a 64 bit program. There was a warning that HD and 4K video needs the 64 bit version. My desktop is a 32 bit system. But ProDad gave me a site to download the 32 bit program. So I downloaded their 32 bit trial version. I tried to run a video clip from my Nikon D7000 and my GoPro, but the 32 bit program would not take them. I got a warning that the 64 bit version was needed. See attached. I was able to process a video clip that I had digitized from an old Hi8 camera. It really worked well.

So in order to used the 64 bit version, I would have to do an upgrade by installing the 64 bit OS, which would require me to re-install all of my programs. Not something I want to do at this point. I might put the 64 bit version on my 64 bit laptop in the future. But just a warning to others who might still have a 32 bit OS.

Gary