Pan & Zoom

[Marcovelo]

I would like to push out the idea of Stigt in his post on Feb 2 regarding "Pan & zoom" feature, as a separate thread (I was surprised the discussion died on this important point).

I'm really really really interested if this feature could be added to PicturesToExe, and in my opinion, this will make PicturesToexe the best slideshow software (if not yet !), with no rival.

Yes, we all love P2E for its outstanding dissolve, and high quality "statical" image show features.

But imagine introducing panning and zoom ! This will make your show like a real movie, just using statical source images. It's like breaking the traditionnal slideshow idea, not only displaying a picture (even with transition effect between pictures), but making the picture live !

I think this is one of the main reason for me about choosing numerical slideshow vs classical slideshow (with projector, as projectors still provide better dissolve and fade !).

GlobFx offered a solution, but it is not maintained anymore.

Igor, you said on Feb 3 you were really interested and completing tests: what about results ?

Is it technicaly possible with actual P2E architecture ?

What about CPU or graphic card requirements ?

What do you mean Guru by saying "both pan and zoom should demand movie-like images, very difficult to have with a really high picture quality" ?

Who has an idea how to add this feature in actual P2E interface ? (this is not exactly a transition effect between 2 slides, but 1 slide with animation)

I have time for doing tests if needed (I'm programmer), can I help you Igor ?

Any idea folks ?

Marcovelo

[Guest guru]

Hi Marcovelo, and welcome aboard!

I agree, pan and zoom could be two outstanding effects, but to work smoothly the image have to change at least 15-20 times per second (this is the explanation of my expression "movie-like"), as now happens in fades, changing the brightness of the picture.

But pan and zoom require that picture itself changes. For this reason I think these effects could be more difficult to do, and anyhow need a fast machine if we want to keep a good picture quality.

But let's wait for Igor's final answer...

[Ian]

Panning shouldn't be too difficult to implement - all that would be required is a "slide" transition to move one image on to the next. Mediashow has this feature, and if you slice up a panoramic image into seperate pictures you can achieve a pan effect just by 'sliding' from one image to the next.

Ian

[Marcovelo]

Thanks Guido and Ian for your reply.

I will have a look on Mediashow with my 3 years old graphic card (GeForce 256, older than GeForce2) to see how it runs.

Does Mediashow requires powerfull 3D Graphic card ?

I've already tried GlobFx, and it runs Ok on my P2 + GeForce 256 (your Xmas card is great Ian, it is animated and with very nice effect !)

Like Ian, I'm wondering if zoom/pan are so demanding for "actual" graphic card. I mean, we are all using pictures, Photoshop or PSP or equivalent software, using audio editors, etc.. and our PCs, even old, are almost all equiped with 3D card now.

Today, all computers are sold with very powerfull 3D graphics, and even more than necessary for us.

Which PC cannot run Open GL apps today ?

I know the goal is to make shows that run smoothly on all computers, with synchro, but we can also imagine an option like "enable Pan/zoom transition" (only for "fast" computers, even only for unsynchronized shows ) ?

Or a new special "object" ?

May be this is a big task to implement this in P2E (using Open Gl or DirectX or direct win32 primitives ?), but this would be a revolution for this software.

I'm sure Igor can give us more answer about this point.

Marco

[HaroldB]

FWIW, PowerPoint had the capability of flying text or a slide into the main picture ages ago. And it didn't require any kind of fancy hardware, either.

OTOH, it didn't look as good as PTE's shows do, either .

Harold

[Azmi]

There is a program call Imagematics Still Motion Creator which allows you to zoom and pan stills and then output it as either in the swf or Avi format. You can try the trial at www.imagematics.com.

The program is very simple to use.

Regards

Azmi

[Ian]

Does Mediashow requires powerfull 3D Graphic card ?

No it doesn't, but its big limitation is that it only outputs 800 x 600 resolution, and doesn't have a synchronisation feature. Its okay for some uses - eg screensavers, small shows and webshows etc, but not for anything more demanding!

Ian

[Marcovelo]

Ian,

I've tried (quickly) Mediashow, and in my opinion, the "push effect" wasn't so good on my computer (flichering). Proshow (already discussed in previous thread) seems to be really better on this kind of transition effect (smooth and better resolution). But this is not really "panning" or "zooming", this is "push" from 1 slide to another, like many slideshow programs.

I was dreaming on some effect like in GlobFx, where you can define speed of the pan, direction, zoom amount (and with audio synchro !)...

The problem is that Globfx is not really designed to work for big show (100/150 slides), and not maintained anymore (and no great forum like this one !).

I really don't want to promote GlobFx or any other software vs P2E (my prefered), as this is P2E forum, but if somebody want to have an idea on Pan/Zoom possibilties, you can try it (http://www.globfx.com/downloads/composer) and see tutorial examples (200 ko .exe output file).

Imagine such features added to PicturesToExe ! My dream !

Azmi,

I've also tested Still motion Creator, but this is "video software", with video output format, large files, very long encoding process... This is not Slideshow, but video program !

Guido (and others), did you tried this program (GlobFx) ? What do you think ?

Is there any idea we can pick up ?

-> I'm interested in your reactions.

Thank you Igor and everybody for this great forum !

Marco