PTE Panorama

[Ken Cox]

Ken Nickles

sknickles@sbcglobal.net

has posted a pte panorama at the cottage -- real neat

congrats Ken

ken

[isabel95]

Ken Nickles

sknickles@sbcglobal.net

has posted a pte panorama at the cottage -- real neat

congrats Ken

ken

I really enjoyed the demonstration...now how do we achieve this effect? :-)

Isabel

[ronwil]

By using the "Push effect". A two slide "panorama" is smooth whereas there is a hesitation when adding a third which cannot be timed out no matter how much you try. The original panorama is created in a picture editing programme, such as Photoshop and cropped into the sections required. I start with a canvas slightly more than 2 or 3 times 1024 pixels width and 768 pixels high and build my panorama on that. I then crop in a set of 1024x768 sections and finally resize each to 1025x768 so you cannot see the join. Most of this I learned from an article by Ian Bateman in the RPS AV News.

That is my way but no doubt Ken Nickles will respond in due course.

Ron [uK]

[Peter Coles]

I enjoyed watching the demo and it has been used in several Sequences I have seen. I would be even more interested if a dissolve could be achieved during the pan. I find the jerky ending of the pan quite disruptive to "flow" in a Sequence. Can the rate of pan be adjusted? If dissolve can be achieved whilst panning, can one image be panning one way whilst the next is panning the other?

I thought the panning of the group photograph was effective - they all look so extremely happy don't they ? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[nickles]

Smart Ol' Ronwil,

Thought I had created a unique deal...and can't believe a UK'ers "beat me to the punch".

I've packaged up all the image files, PTE files, and a PTE Panorama_help.htm file with the slideshow and uploaded to Beechbrook this morning, that explains the process. It will be renamed PTE Panorama w/PTEfiles at Beehbrook. It should provide anyone who wishes to play around with timings, etc., with my pre-made images.

Ron...maybe Ken Cox beat you to the punch...he earlier mailed me that I used the "push effect".

By using the "Push effect". A two slide "panorama" is smooth whereas there is a hesitation when adding a third which cannot be timed out no matter how much you try.

Hope Igor reads this, and figures a way around this momentary pause!

sincerely,

ken

[The Image Suite]

Hi

Was very impressed with the panorama 2 or 3 slides, no matter which. It is the first time I have seen it successfully accomplished in pte (I must get out more) but interesting enough I have often achieved the same effect with a single image using a rival French show software.....and it will achieve the fade/dissolve that you seek Peter. The software also undertakes the zooms that everyone is requesting to be included in the next version.

Anyway, well done to the author.

The Image Suite

[ronwil]

Peter

The rate of pan is adjusted by the timing of the push slide effect. As regards your other queries I do not know the answers other than that the fade into the next slide is governed by the effect chosen and its timing. Best wishes. Must exchange some more sequences sometime.

Ron [uK]

[d67]

Was very impressed with the panorama 2 or 3 slides, no matter which. It is the first time I have seen it successfully accomplished in pte (I must get out more)

Just have a look on these 2 slideshows, both from Daniel Laugier

White is white

Icarus' Waltz

Daniel is gratifying us from time to time with very impressive and smooth panoramas !

[nickles]

Just a Note:

I tried the PTE Panorama on a computer with a high-rez LCD screen that’s set at the native(but non-standard) screen size of 1280x1024. I noticed the vertical pan ends up with a black bar between the vertically panned photos. It would work if the panned photos had been cropped at 1280x1024. I then set this monitors screen resolution to 1024x768. This fixed the black bar problem, but distorts by stretching the vertical height.

This brings up a good point and one of my pet peeves. The new flat screen monitors typically have a native screen resolution that gives an aspect ratio of 5:4. This presents a dilemma as most PTE slideshows are created at an aspect of 4:3. If you play a slideshow that was created for a 4:3 aspect ratio in full screen mode on a display with a native resolution 5:4, distortion may result. The same goes for creating a show at 5:4 resolution and playing on a 4:3 monitor. I don't think the display manufacturers thought this out very well

I hope Igor gives this incompatibilty some thought if he designs pan and zoom into PTE.

ken

[isabel95]

By using the "Push effect". A two slide "panorama" is smooth whereas there is a hesitation when adding a third which cannot be timed out no matter how much you try. The original panorama is created in a picture editing programme, such as Photoshop and cropped into the sections required. I start with a canvas slightly more than 2 or 3 times 1024 pixels width and 768 pixels high and build my panorama on that. I then crop in a set of 1024x768 sections and finally resize each to 1025x768 so you cannot see the join. Most of this I learned from an article by Ian Bateman in the RPS AV News.

That is my way but no doubt Ken Nickles will respond in due course.

Ron [uK]

Thanks for explaining how to do this! I will work on learning the technique today!

Isabel

[The Image Suite]

Thank you Patrick, I shall............

The Image Suite

[alrobin]

I then set this monitors screen resolution to 1024x768. This fixed the black bar problem, but distorts by stretching the vertical height.

Ken,

Very nice demo of this interesting transition. Well done!

However, I don't understand your comment about distortion. Since your images are all 1024x768 except one (but it's ratio is 3/4 too), why would there be distortion in the vertical on a 1024x768 monitor?

If Igor implements "pan and zoom", I would hope it would be applicable to a single image of an appropriate size, and viewable properly on any monitor configuration.

[nickles]

Alrobin.

Thanks for your kind comments.

However, I don't understand your comment about distortion. Since your images are all 1024x768 except one (but it's ratio is 3/4 too), why would there be distortion in the vertical on a 1024x768 monitor?

There isn't distortion if you play a 1024x768 slideshow on a conventional 4:3 or 1024x768 monitor. The distortion comes about if you play the same 1024x768 slideshow on a 5:4 LCD flat-panel display that has been set to 1024x768 screen resolution. If you set the LCD's resolution to its native 1280x1024 screen resolution, you get black bars on the top and bottom during the slideshow, but no distortion. Unfortunately, this black bar appears between the slides during a vertical pan. The horizonatal pan is okay and has no bars between the photos.

The bottom line is that if you prepare a 1024x768 slideshow and desire to run it on a LCD panel you must set the LCD panel for 1024x768 screen resolution. The distortion isn't that much, about 7%. If you plan on making a show with a vertical pan for running on a 1280x1024 (5:4) panel, I suggest you use a slide size of 1280x1024....but, this 1280x1024 slideshow may not run well on a 1024x768 monitor...I may try this and see what happens.

Hey...this is sort of sounding confusing to me...if you have access to a 1280x1024 flat panel...I suggest you run PTE Panorama on it...the problem will quickly become obvious to you....just hard to explain. Hope this makes sense and doesn't add confusion.

sincerely,

ken

[alrobin]

OK, I think I understand. The part I was missing was that you were running on a WXGA monitor. I was still in the world of 3x4 video technology.

[DaveG]

Hi all,

I tried this method of creating a panning panorama on my computer with 1280x960 LCD monitor.

I then told PTE to create the show in 1024x768 format in a window. This solved the problem of the black bar and allowed the panning panorama to work very smoothly abeit within a 1024x768 window on a 1280x960 monitor. Presumably this will now work on any size monitor (including a 1024x768 but no smaller).

I have, in the past, had problems with setting anything less than 300ms duration of slide (when synchronised to music). I wonder how setting a 1ms duration AND synchronising to music will effect the smoothness of the show???

More later.

DaveG

[Ken Cox]

synchronising to music will effect the smoothness of the show???

Dave i tried a standard sync and it threw pictures out of screen position.

here are my notes i sent to Ken

Ken

converted your midi to mp3 added to your show removed midi and made avi/dvd burned to disk and looks great on the 29" standard tv -- i think it is even a bit smoother -- the original mid has a few burps and they did not get any better )

the school pict was a bit wide , thus i lost 1/2 the girl on the right side, but she comes back on the close up

thks for the material for experiment

ken

I used windvd for the dvd process

[DaveG]

Hi all,

I have tried this effect (all combinations - right to left; top to bottom etc) with some slides of my own and can confirm that it works with synchronised music. I reduced the gap between the slides to the minimum possible (<50ms) and it still played OK with NO glitches.

I used the 1024x768 format and divided each picture into 4 equal parts in PS CS and there were absolutely NO joins visible - magic!

I have burned a DVD (using ROXIO EZ7) and still no glitches.

Many thanks, it is something I will use in my shows.

DaveG

[nickles]

Hello DaveG,

Glad to here of your success.

Did you try a pan that required more than 2 pans of crops in one direction. For instance, the old feed store, was three crops that were panned in the horizontal direction. I got the "momentary pause", when the middle crop was fully panned into view. This occured when panning left and then right. It's not obious on the last panned crop, as it must pause anyway.

Just wandering if you might have found a solution to the "momentary pause".

I've never used a midi on a PTE slideshow before...I noticed it blurped a few times. When the midi, BKNUSA.mid, is played on my PCs music player their was only one blip at the absolute end of the midi. I converted the midi to MP3 and used it for the PTE Panorama slideshow and it didn't burp. Maybe PTE has a problem with midis?

ken

[DaveG]

hi Ken,

I did not try a three way crop. I don't think you will get rid of the blip and it would annoy me probably more than it would annoy the viewer.

I will take another look to see if it can be done. It might be possible without music but every time I try to set a gap of less than around 300ms with music it does not like it.

Likewise the the MIDI - never used it.

Perhaps you or someone else could comment on the amount of compression you use when creating MP3 files?

DaveG

[nickles]

A French Canadian PTE user emailed and asked if I had tried a 360 degree panorama with the PTE panorama technique. Of course I hadn't, but it got my curiosity going. I remembered experimenting with 360 degree panoramas a couple of years ago and fortunately I had retained one in my photo files.

The panorama was not equally exposed in all frames but good enough for a test and fortunately the end frames matched up very well. The panorama was originally made with Canon's "photo stitch" program, that does a pretty reasonable job of matching seams, and shot with a Canon G2 camera.

The panorama is quite large, 10617x1536 pixels. The hard part was determing how to crop. For a slideshow display size of 1024x768, I decided that seven(7) crops would work nicely. As 7x1024=7168 pixels, I resized the panorama to 7168x1037 pixels, which maintained the original aspect ratio. Next, I did a major crop of the photo to obtain a final panorama of 7168x768 pixels.

Now I precisely cropped the seven slides, to be used in PTE, to a size of 1024x768. I put the 7 slides into PTE with a 15000ms left to right push effect and 1 ms slide duration. I also setup to "repeat show" so that it would pan forever until I hit <esc>. I included some MP3 background music...and ran the show...it worked the first time. Of course there is still the momentary pause between slide transitions but not bad.

Sure wish Igor could fix the momentary pause between transitions.

I remember back when I was experimenting around with panoramas, I decided that this is useless as they are to wide to print and there was no good way to display them. This little experiment has regenerated my interest, as PTE can do a reasonable job of displaying them.

Just thought a few people might be interested in this little test.

Update:

For those interested I've uploaded this test slideshow here:

360degree Panorama

I won't guarantee that the link will work, Yahoo! briefcase has admitted to a intermittent problem. Just keep trying and you might get there.

NOTE: I uploaded to Beechbrook Cottage this morning. Bill should be posting when he awakes. What a nice service he provides. I hope he gets a little support from users.

ken

[Michel]

For the moment , with a DVD it's perfect with no pause. For the future, I agree if posible but I'm not sure (seak read of the hard disk...).

Perhaps in the next version will appear another way to make panoramas.

[nickles]

All:

In case you missed, I edited my previous post and added a link to "360degree Panorama.zip".

NOTE: I uploaded to Beechbrook Cottage this morning. Bill should be posting when he awakes. What a nice service he provides. I hope he gets a little support from users.

ken

[LumenLux]

I was wondering Ken, why you didn't post it.

It is interesting. Better than I might have expected. Your losing interest earlier was sort of the way I felt last time was at all into the panaoramas. It was fun to try but what was there to do when one was accomplished. But like everything in digital world - change is the word. Thanks for showing us.

[nickles]

Lumenlux:

I think I'm to much of a perfectionist, although I'm far, far from perfect. I didn't post because of my misexposure when I shot that 360 panorama. Thought I might try another photo shoot of a 360 panorama with better exposure. What may appear as seams are mainly mis-exposure.

hmm...may not have the time for a reshoot...may post at Bill's place anyway.

NOTE: I uploaded to Beechbrook Cottage this morning. Bill should be posting when he awakes. What a nice service he provides. I hope he gets a little support from users.

thanks for your comments,

ken

[ronwil]

Well done Ken. You have shown perfectly what is achievable if only we can get rid of that smallest of pauses between frames. The only place where the join was noticeable because of brightness variation was at the end of the pan and moving on to the beginning again. As it is unlikely that one would go round again in a presentation, this may not be a problem after all. Roll on (excuse the pun) that extra bit of fine tuning and then the zoom.

Ron [uK]