Suggestion for Future Version beyond 5.0

[Lin Evans]

The non-linear zoom is really fantastic with lots of great versatility, but one issue has come to mind which could be solved in future versions of PTE beyond 5.0.

When using non-linear animation for PZR, only the first and last keypoints are meaningful. Consider the following scenario:

The user wants to first zoom in on a portion of a subject, pause, then pan across the subject, then zoom back out and again pause. With linear zoom this is a piece of cake. Just set a keypoint, drag the bounding rectangle to the desired end of zoom point, clone the keypoint and drag to the end of pause, set another keypoint and again drag the image to the point of next pause, clone the keypoint and slide to desired location, set another keypoint and size the rectangle once again to get the zoom out. Can be all done quicker than the explanation.

But what if you want the exact scenario with "soft" non-linear landings? To do this one must insert the same slide into the slide list three times. On the first slide set customize feature to "quick, no transition," then set ending keypoint for the zoom in and drag the rectangle to the desired zoom, next go to the next slide and insert the identical pan, zoom, rotate numbers found at the end of the zoom on the first slide, next set the custom feature for this second slide to "quick, no transition, then set the keypoint where you want the pan to end, then go to slide three and set custom again to "quick, no transition" and again match the identical PZR numbers for the start of slide three to the last keypoint of slide two, set the next keypoint to the time where zoom out ends and drag the image to the desired zoom.

Not so easy but primarily because you have to copy and paste the pan, zoom, rotate numbers for the begining of slides two and three. So, the feature:

Have a check box which simply automates the process of "match" previous or "match" next slide. When checked, this would automatically insert the PZR values from the previous ending keypoint into the present slide and thus save a tremendous amout of time allowing much easier use of the non-linear PZR effects when doing more than a single animation in a single slide.

Best regards,

Lin

[frets3]

Lin,

I hope I correctly understand your concern. I think the programmers provided a practical one-slide solution: Using the "setting up" feature, at the top of the speed-options menu, one can click the scissors to create break points. Between two break points, you may create a special speed effect that is confined to that particular segment. It becomes as though you were applying varios effects to different slides.

Hope you're recovered from your PVD. I'm also experiencing it.

Best wishes,

David White (frets3)

[thedom]

Lin, unless there is something I didn't understand in what you want to achieve, I think David is right, the "setting up" feature can do the job perfectly.

As he mentionned, one in the "speed options" window, click on "seperate here" and customize your speed between each keypoints as you need.

No need of those "match" previous or "match" next slide options ? What do you think ?

[Lin Evans]

Hi David,

Thanks, hope the PVD doesn't last too long - mine is up and down but much better than before.

You may be right about the break point - I'm still doping it out - it's not too intuitive for me to see exactly the relationships with break and glue and how this breaks down for an individual keypoint.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

I hope I correctly understand your concern. I think the programmers provided a practical one-slide solution: Using the "setting up" feature, at the top of the speed-options menu, one can click the scissors to create break points. Between two break points, you may create a special speed effect that is confined to that particular segment. It becomes as though you were applying varios effects to different slides.

Hope you're recovered from your PVD. I'm also experiencing it.

Best wishes,

David White (frets3)

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dom,

I think I'm missing something about the way that's supposed to work. I'll have to play with it some more and see if I can duplicate the effect I'm looking for made with multiple slides.

Thanks,

Lin

Lin, unless there is something I didn't understand in what you want to achieve, I think David is right, the "setting up" feature can do the job perfectly.

As he mentionned, one in the "speed options" window, click on "seperate here" and customize your speed between each keypoints as you need.

No need of those "match" previous or "match" next slide options ? What do you think ?

[frets3]

You may be right about the break point - I'm still doping it out - it's not too intuitive for me to see exactly the relationships with break and glue and how this breaks down for an individual keypoint.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

Lin,

At first, I puzzled over the effect of non-linear speed criteria at specific keypoints, too. But after exploring the "setting up" option, the problem became non-ambiguous: the interval between two labeled keypoints is bracketted, so your selected speed option appleis to that entire bracketted interval. So, if you have three keypoints, you can have two intervals (each with its own speed option).

So after my initial immobility, the above realization allowed me to get moving :>)

Best wishes,

David White (frets3)

[Lin Evans]

Hi David,

Here's a sample of what I want to do. This one done with a slide copied on the slide list three time and each with "smooth" non-linear.

I guess I'm dense today, but I can't seem to achieve this with a single slide using the cut/glue feature, Anyone who shows me how to do it will be greatly appreciated.

I understand the basic principle of animation between keypoints, I just can't get a combination of snip and glue (or just snip in this case) to do the job.

thanks,

Lin

http://www.lin-evans.net/pte/shark.zip

Lin,

Lin,

At first, I puzzled over the effect of non-linear speed criteria at specific keypoints, too. But after exploring the "setting up" option, the problem became non-ambiguous: the interval between two labeled keypoints is bracketted, so your selected speed option appleis to that entire bracketted interval. So, if you have three keypoints, you can have two intervals (each with its own speed option).

So after my initial immobility, the above realization allowed me to get moving :>)

Best wishes,

David White (frets3)

[dpearcePNG]

Lin,

Using the "setting up" feature, at the top of the speed-options menu, one can click the scissors to create break points. Between two break points, you may create a special speed effect that is confined to that particular segment. It becomes as though you were applying varios effects to different slides.

I hope some one writes a tutorial on this powerful feature.

If you are wondering about how to get to the sissors and glue stage of things, create a slide with several keypoints, then choose "Setting up" under Pan/Zoom/Rotate. Once you press "Separate here" for a time segment (the section of time between two keypoints), you can set the speed options for each segment.

So you can pan, keypoint, zoom, keypoint, pan, keypoint, zoom, then add the smooth option for each segment (and separately for pan and zoom and rotate) and get a fairly fluid motion.

Dave

[thedom]

And you can even have several pauses in the same slide...

Shark_thedom.zip

[frets3]

Hi, Lin,

I applied all of your motion to one slide, but it appers that TheDom, Tom, and Dave are way ahead of me. None the less, I will send it to you if you'll give me an address.

frets3@sbcglobal.net

Regards,

David White (frets3)

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dom,

The effect works just like mine, but the bottom line is I can't create it with a single slide and my copy of beta 10. I can only tell which non-linear effects you have placed on keypoints by analyzing the slope of the curve or not. The captions all say "custom" so if there were mixed smooth, decellerate, accelerate and pauses there would be no way to quickly tell which had been used at any keypoint without opening the settings on each keypoint and then only by analyzing the curve depicted at a given "bracketed" area.

I suspect my copy of version 10 isn't working correctly on my development computer because no matter how I set the cut points, the program ignors all keypoints between one and end and just makes a single smooth animation which begins with the start keypoint status and ends with settings placed on the final end keypoint.

This explains why I've not been able to understand what's going on with this setup portion of the program. For whatever reason, it's simply not working on my system. I have had some video driver issues which I've discussed with Igor. The video works perfectly on Beta 9 but with beta 10 has been very irregular so I guess I'll have to wait for beta 11 to see where to proceed.

Thanks for the demo. I does show that it's working for most - just not on my system. I'll have to try it on another computer.

Best regards,

Lin

And you can even have several pauses in the same slide...

[frets3]

Hi, Lin,

If your computer were malfunctioning and/or your program corrupted, that would explain why you were stymied. How frustrating!

If my remarks seemed patronizing, I apologize. It's obvious from your many informative posts that you know your way around a computer.

Best wishes,

David White (frets3)

[Lin Evans]

Update:

I've installed beta 10 on another of my systems and the separate/glue feature works normally on the second system.

There is a problem with my video driver or sound card (i'm working with Igor on this) which is making some strange things happen on video animation only with Beta 10. It works fine if I disable my audio card. I'm going to disable the card and see it that corrects the problem on my development computer with Beta 10 and the separate/glue feature.

After working with it for a few minutes I see that in any animation where any amount of zoom and pan are "both" included it's necessary to independently separate the keypoints for "each" feature (pan, zoom and rotate if there is any). This is powerful but not simple to do - actually it would be MUCH quicker for this particular animation to simply match the end keypoint on one slide to the beginning keypoint on the next slide with a checkbox. It would not be a "powerful," but it would be much easier and faster. It also would allow the slideshow producer to easily know which linear or non-linear feature they had used without actually clicking on "setup" and observing the wave histogram. This is necessary not only in one place, but for each of pan, zoom and rotate.

I'm sure this particular feature (separate/glue) is going to be one which will cause lots of discussion in the future. I'm thinking that the default should be to have each keypoint immediately separated rather than glued as they are now when any non-linear function is selected. This way one could simply choose the desired non-linear feature and use the program exactly as they do with linear zoom "unless" they want to mix non-linear features on a single slide. It seems to me that the majority will simply choose something like "smooth" for most purposes and will rarely mix and match.

Best regards,

Lin

[Lin Evans]

Hi David,

No problem, it's good to have the reason for my confusion clarified. If you read my last post (update, above) I've been able to get it to work on one of my other computers. I have some thoughts on it expressed there.

Thanks to all for the discussion because it's helped me find the problem on this system.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi, Lin,

If your computer were malfunctioning and/or your program corrupted, that would explain why you were stymied. How frustrating!

If my remarks seemed patronizing, I apologize. It's obvious from your many informative posts that you know your way around a computer.

Best wishes,

David White (frets3)