What is the Answer

[Barry Beckham]

Someone made an interesting point in another thread by asking what the effect on the image will be if zoomed in PTE.

Will we need a higher resolution image to be able to do this and retain the quality we all like ?

Another question I have thought about lateley:- Will higher resolution matter anyway now that PC power is generally so good, I havn't tried making a show with higher resolution pictures to see the effect, I suspect someone has?

I saw a slide show recently done with Proshow gold using the zoom transition, I have to say looked pretty good to me, but I don't know what file size the effect came from. However, it was smooth and looked fine.

Barry

[JRR]

Barry:

A friend of mine does his PTE shows with images right out of his DSLR camera. the images are 2-3mb each.

They work just fine in PTE (on his, and several other computers that are relatively new).

Based on the experience I have with ProShow Gold (some members of our AV group use it) the pan and zoom is a little shaky at times and the image falls apart if zoomed in too much. They are using 1024x768 - we suggested they use use larger images, but have chosen not to for now....

[Ian]

Zooming in/out of an image in GFX Composer I find that its only sharp when the size of the image matches its true resolution. During its zoom the quality is not a big issue as the eye is fooled to some extent by the "motion". The final static image has to be 1:1 however for it to be acceptable.

If Igor is able to get PTE to re-sample the file during the zoom then it should stay sharp throughout. Continuous scaling like this would probably need a reasonably good 3D graphics card to run the file smoothly though.

Ian

[mbskels]

I do hope I have not dragged in a red herring! My original comment on the other thread was based purely on surmise - I have no practical experience.

Ian - Personally I hope that a higher res image will suffice for pan and zoom. Part of the attraction of P2Exe has been that most PC's have been able to play the slideshow irrespective (within limits) of graphics card, processor etc.

Or perhaps it is unrealistic to expect this type of manipulation (pan and zoom) without assuming some minimum performance is available from processor, graphics card?

Malcolm

[DaveG]

When "trying out" programmes other than PTE and looking at their Zoom facility I always worked on the assumption that when producing a 1024x768 show then the part of the picture which is on screen when at MAXIMUM zoom should be 1024x768.

If I was trying to accomplish a 2 times zoom then my image size would need to be 2048x1536 to maintain the same quality when zooming in to 1024x768.

The compression I would normally use to produce a 2048x1536 JPEG would produce (roughly) a 600KB file.

DaveG

[Ian]

Hi Dave

My guess is the same. We'll just need to see how it pans out in practice (groan)...

Some people will have seen "Prince Ice and the Time" by Erhard Hobrecker at last year's Supercircuit. This used the occasional zoom to great effect, with startlingly high image quality and zoom speed. I think it was a Wings Platinum file, but the flipside was that the filesize for a 10 minute show was something like 1Gb!

Ian

[Barry Beckham]

I suppose the only issue we need to be aware of if we increase resolution is when we need to show our AV on a laptop. Otherwise, given the power of our desktops it probably wouldn't matter much as JRR says.

Many people do take their images straight into the software and get away with it. My son uses Proshow gold and takes images from a 2 megapixel camera straight in and his shows are pretty good, including video inserts.

Laptops are a different matter though. I have just started looking for a new laptop and the processor speeds and ram is generally not that great, with the majority still being in the 1.7 megawhatsit region.

I want something like 3 megawhasits, am I looking in the wrong places perhaps

Barry

[Igor]

Currently we consider that Geforce 3, or Geforce 4 MX 440, or ATI Radeon 8500, will be quite enough for absolutely smooth Pan/Zoom/Rotate effects even in hard 1280x1024 screen resolution.

For 1024x768 it will enough Geforce 1 or Geforce 2 and maybe even Riva TNT2.

Opposite, it won't require modern CPU, it's absolutely enough even Celeron 900 Mhz. So if you plan to buy new notebook, choose any CPU, but prefer models with NVIDIA or ATI video accelerators.

It will possible to use large photos 1600x1200 and maybe more for enough quality of Zoom effect. I suppose the only limitation for larger photos will be more long time between slides.

Also as I've tried with earlier tests of our new graphical engine, photos looks *much* more sharp and with more details than in some another product mentioned above. It was *very* difficult task.

In any case any slide-show will work on any PC, even on Windows 95 and with very old video card 1 MB of video RAM.

Also as usually 1,5 MB of PTE and instant run of a slide-show and PTE.

[JRR]

Igor:

Sounds as though you are a magician, more than anything else...

Congrats ......

But did you get your vacation ??

[potwnc]

I think it was my post about image size that started this thread.

I guess we'll all know more once Igor releases the first beta... and I don't want to seem like I'm speaking for him (I'm not!). My concern that prompted my original question was that I'm working on a lengthy (90 minutes) production that I eventually want to render to HDV format. So my own concern in posting that question was not with the performance of a .exe show on "average" PCs. I scan to 48-bit TIFF at 3840x2160 pixels, which is way too large (48MB files, uncompressed) for current PC technology to render in real time with current graphics cards. In fact, I don't plan to produce a .exe of this in the foreseeable future, only a video version (DVD then, later, HDV).

I've started working with other software, but not because I fear PTE won't handle my image sizes (Igor assured me in the other thread that it will), but only because my deadline is too close to risk PTE with pan/zoom won't be ready in time for me.

Unless you have a deadline like I do, wait for the first beta and then, as always, experiment before drawing conclusions.

Ray

[LumenLux]

Ray, hopefully you can tell us what type of production you are doing that will be 90 minutes! Sincere interest here.

[potwnc]

It's a documentary about indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia. If there's interest, I'll announce on here when the trailer is released (2-3 weeks from now).

Ray