Newbie needs help

[Mike]

Hi everyone and thanks for taking the time to read this.

I am new...like you all were at once...so bear with me please.

#1 I am a scuba diver with about 250 beautiful underwater shots that I want to put to synchroizied music, some of the files are pretty big. Does anyone know a way that I can "shrinK" the file sizes down with photoshop at once, to a reasonable size? What would a good size be for a sharp pic and not too big for a slide show, and is there a way to do them all at once rather then resize all 25O pics at a time?

#2 My cam takes short mpeg videos too which would be beautiful if I included them. Can I do that with this p2exe, or do I need something like ULEAD's video studio? Which I did NOT like cause I can't get my pics to play full screen without looking blurry. The clips would be very impressive.

#3 Can these play on dvd's as well.

That is it for now. and thanks again to you for reading my post.

Mike

[Truelight]

For batch-resizing a group of photos, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better (or cheaper - it's free!) too than Irfanview -- IrfanView

PTE will make a nice show from these photos and can handle the music sync better than most. If you want a show that will also play in a DVD player, my choice is Xatshow

Xatshow

As for making a show using video, you might take a look at Medi@show

Medi@Show

At present, there is no "one best" program that does it all. Fortunately, most of these programs are relatively inexpensive and all have free demos.

Let us know how you make out!

[RudiRe]

Mike,

make sure NOT to put bmp files in your PicturesToExe presentation, for they would really make your presentation big, bring you tons of MBs and it would be an ordeal to transport such a presentation via the internet.

Your question regarding "shrinking" can mean two different things:

1.) Shrinking picture size (not file size), let's say from 1280x1024 to 800x600.

2.) Converting to a a smaller picture format like jpg or gif.

Which one of the two did you mean?

Anyway, for both methods, the austrian/yugoslawian program IrfanView is really a fine batch conversion tool. If you happen to have ACDsee (from 3.1 upward), you even might get some better results.

Your mpeg videos so far can not be implemented in PTE. I guess that's why they call it PicturesToExe and not VideoToExe.

[Mike]

Thank you for your responses.

By "shrinking" my picture size I mean that I took them at Large resolution and superfine compression with my Canon powershot s 40. (GREAT camera by the way), so I can print them and frame them.

All files are jpg format

My file sizes are HUGE! So what I mean is that I want a picture which will fill my whole screen, look sharp and be a very small file size. So by shrinking, I mean to make my final show size smaller. Any suggestions or tips?

Is 800x600 what is recommended?

Does XATSHOW have as good a music synchronization as does pictures2exe? Is it possible to have a cd disk that will play on BOTH comptuers and DVDS?

And finally, I looked at media show...that saves it as mpegs, correct? wouldn't the file sizes be enormous? And is the picture quality as good when you play full screen?

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

[RudiRe]

Mike,

if you want a slide to fill your whole monitor screen, then you have to give it the same resolution as you are using at your monitor. Find out, which screen resolution you are using.

"My file sizes are HUGE!"

What do you mean by HUGE? Tell us more. Which resolution do your slides have so far and how large are your picture files? Or maybe, send me ONE of your images and I have a look at resolution, file size and conversion possibilities for the utmost compromise in resolution vs. compression ratio.

800x600 is a good resolution for a PTE presentation, when you want others to be able, to see your images.

The reason for that is the following:

Let's say, you have a screen resolution of 1280x1024, and you made a PTE presentation to fill your whole monitor resolution, meaning, you sized all slides also to 1280x1024. I for example do have a screen resolution of 800x600 (as 60% of all computer users are still having). Your 1280x1024 presentation would appear on my monitor squeezed. It would not look the way as you intended. So to be on the safe side, when you want to use a PTE presentation on another monitor than just your own, always use 800x600 (in windowed mode without frame), to be on the safe side. Otherwise, your PTE objects also end up in positions, you never wanted them to have (having them in the ungrouped mode).

Therefore, after you made your first PTE presentation, it is a good idea to check it first on another computer with another resolution, before loading it up the net. This way, you still can get rid of some beginners faults, before others see them.

Another possibility of how to cut down on your presentations file size is by not using all 250 images, but rather selecting the really great ones. Sometimes, less is more.

"Does XATSHOW have as good a music synchronization as does pictures2exe?"

The music synchronization of PTE so far is the best, and in 3.90, which will be released very soon, it will even be better.

"Is it possible to have a cd disk that will play on BOTH comptuers and DVDS?"

I can't answer your disc question, for I don't have DVD.

"And finally, I looked at media show...that saves it as mpegs, correct? wouldn't the file sizes be enormous? And is the picture quality as good when you play full screen?"

Yes, the mpeg file size would be tremendous. The full screen quality depends upon the resolution quality of your original material and therefore cannot be answered in general.

Always keep the following in mind:

As long, as you make a PTE presentation just for yourself, the file size doesn't really matter, as long as you run it always and only from your harddrive or CDrom. But as soon, as you want to put it on the net for others to be accessible, file size does matter very much. So it's always a good idea, figuring your needs out in advance, for they will have quite some influence upon your work with PTE.

I hope, I could answer your questions.

[Guest guru]

Like Rudi, I too ask you what do you mean when you say your image files are "huge".

As far as I know, most of us use pictures having 70-100 KB size when their pixel size is 800 x 600. Only somebody extremely demanding reaches 180-200 KB. At 1024 x 768 the size in KB almost doubles, at 1280 x 960 becomes about three times larger than 800 x 600.

I guess your pictures are too large in KB because of the little Jpeg compression. How do you save them? If you are using Photoshop 5.5 or later, a good compromise is a 6-8 compression (medium - high quality). Even better, use "Save for Web" function. I got excellent results this way, either in quality and in size.

[Truelight]

In answer to your other question - "Is it possile to have a CD that will play in both PCs and DVD players?" - Yes.

Xatshow will create a CD (using a CD-R disc), which will contain both an .exe file (for playing in a PC) and a VCD show (which will play in many stand-alone DVD players). The show will play in whichever machine you insert it.

As others have said, PTE give much greater control of program creation and the music sync capabilities are unmatched, but in my book Xatshow offers much greater versatility. I keep both programs on my computer and use whichever best fits my needs for a given project.

I will say again (having said this more than a few times already)...Igor and the gang really do need to add a VCD-show capability to PTE. I'm not asking for the ability to insert video clips, animated gifs, or to create an .mpg file as output. I just figure if the folks at Xatshow can do it, the brains at WnSoft should be able to as well.

[Ken Cox]

see

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...act=ST&f=2&t=88

for my experience

JVC also have a dvd player now that will play jpgs i am told

ken