PicturesToExe Deluxe 5.0 Pre-Release

[Igor]

PicturesToExe Deluxe 5.0 Pre-Release:

http://www.wnsoft.com/apr/apr-deluxe.zip (4 MB)

Updated: June 15, 2007

Final Release scheduled for Monday.

New features in PicturesToExe Deluxe 5.0

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4327

What new in Pre-Release

* Fixed bug with slow work of transition effects (Fade in/out and others) in second CPU based graphical engine (when "Hardware acceleration" option disabled, or on PCs with slow video cards). Now it should work as in v4.48

* Fixed bug when slide shows created with previous betas of version 5.0 didn't work under Windows 95/98.

Please post bug-reports in special topic: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6455

[Igor]

Today I discovered that the most popular cracks/discussion forum in Russia (about 2500 new messages every day in various topics dedicated to particular products) contains a topic "PicturesToExe" which is pinned to the top of a forum (no other pinned topics for other products). Cracks published in this topic are not fully workable so it's not a problem, but I think we will see new customers soon. Thanks to this funny "advertisment".

[alrobin]

Igor,

That's good news. Also, glad to hear PTE is so popular - that's a good sign! All the best!

[alrobin]

* Fixed bug with slow work of transition effects (Fade in/out and others) in second CPU based graphical engine (when "Hardware acceleration" option disabled, or on PCs with slow video cards). Now it should work as in v4.48

Igor,

The new pre-release version still doesn't come anywhere close to the ability of v 4.48 in handling close transitions.

I created an animated 3-d text consisting of 400 images, and set each duration equal to 10 ms. In version 4.48 it spins around 360 degrees in 40 seconds (showing each one of these images, at a rate of .1 sec per image), and is very smooth. I numbered them so I could tell how many images I was actually seeing. (The show was non-synched, and no music is involved.)

Then I imported the same demo into v 5, set the duration to 10 ms, disabled hardware acceleration, and made each slide a "cut" (or quick transition). When this version spins I see only about every 5th image and the motion is very jerky. However, it takes only 20 seconds for a complete revolution.

Here's another interesting comparison: the EXE file for the v.4.48 demo is 12.6 Mb, while the file for the v.5 demo (same 400 image files) is 32.5 Mb. Maybe this additional overhead is bogging it down?? Also, disabling "hardware acceleration" doesn't seem to make any difference to the performance in the v.5 demo.

The images are all 1280x768 GIF files, around 35 kb each. No additional objects are used in either version.

[Igor]

Al,

Version 5.0 converts GIFs to 32-bit format (almost as PNG). I suspect that very well optimized GIF smaller than our format. But in other cases size of an EXE file should be same. Slide slide engine of version 5.0 is 276 KB in v4.48 - 250 KB.

Unfortunately it's impossible to create well optimized engine for such different tasks. If we optimized it for Pan/Zoom effects with ideally smooth animation, we couldn't optimize it for fast show of slides.

[Igor]

Al,

I would like to correct my previous posting.

There is major difference in behaviour of version 5.00 and v4.48. In old version if set close interval between slides (say 10 ms) PicturesToExe shown all slides, but duration of slide show was much longer than duration of a slide x number of slides. For example if you show should be 1 minute, it could take 3 minutes.

Opposite version 5.0's slide show works exactly specified time. But if it can't load all slides in time, it skips some slides.

For this reason, (even when Hardware acceleration not used) you may thought that version 5.0 loads slides in 5 times longer that v4.48, but it's not so.

[alrobin]

..........For this reason, (even when Hardware acceleration not used) you may thought that version 5.0 loads slides in 5 times longer that v4.48, but it's not so.

Hi, Igor,

You may be right - in that case, I think the main reason the GIF's were taking longer to load in my trial is the reason you gave earlier - that they are larger images in v.5, as evidenced by the larger "exe" file size. I'll do some more tests with jpegs.

However, this tells me that in order to get smooth video-type animations, I have to stick to small GIF's and v 4.48.

Ciao,

Al

[Igor]

I think overall value of FPS you will reach same in v4.48 and 5.0 (just v4.48's slide show plays longer).

In v4.48 you may have difficulties with synchronization of slides to music for this task.

Probably v4.48 better for this task. But in v4.48 you can't use Pan/Zoom effects

[alrobin]

Well, Igor, you still haven't convinced me.

I converted the gif's to small jpegs (actually smaller than the gif files), and ran the two tests again in each of v. 4.48 and 5.0. Each revolution takes 55 seconds (for 400 slides) in both trials. I can see every slide number in the v 4.48 trial, but only about every 2nd slide in v 5, so the latter is much less smooth, even with hardware acceleration disabled in Project Options.

I've zipped and posted the projects on my website in case you would like to have a look at them yourself (and hopefully tell me what I'm doing wrong):

TimeTrial (6.8 Mb)

One thing though, the two files are now almost identical in size.

I'm using this example as a sort of "title" slide. Even though I can't pan or zoom it, I can animate a 3-D object, something which I can't do in v.5. So I'll call it in from another Intro show, let it cycle for a while, and then "Esc" back to the v.5 show. It works quite well, and this way I have the best of two worlds.

[Igor]

Al,

Thanks, I created two EXE files in v4.48 and version 5.0 from your project files. I see identical results in both variants - no skipping of slides and same smoothness.

You can test speed of loading of slides. Start notepad. Type:

effective-av_5-0.exe -log

Save this file as "Log.bat"

Run this bat file, after closing of the slide show you will find log file created in this folder.

Preload time means time spent for loading of a slide.

p.s. please don't forget to use newest Pre-Release version published yesterday. It contains vast optimizations for transition effects when hardware acceleration disabled.

[alrobin]

Igor,

Attached is the log file - only approximately every second slide is shown.

I am using the latest pre-release from yesterday. (By the way, when I tried to attach the log file, I was told the forum would not allow uploading of that type of file.)

log.zip

[Igor]

Al,

Please add additional parameter:

effective-av_5-0.exe -log -frametimes

And send me again log file.

Also let me know what screen resolution you use?

By the way, when I tried to attach the log file, I was told the forum would not allow uploading of that type of file.

Absolutely right because compressed log in ZIP in 4-20 times smaller.

[alrobin]

Igor,

You are right on - I was using the maximum screen res of 1680x1050. I ran the trial again at the same resolution as the images (1280x768), and it ran much more smoothly - still skipping some images, but it looks much better. I think with some fine-tuning, it will be much the same as in v 4.48. Thanks for your time in getting to the bottom of this! (attached new log file).

log2.zip

addendum:

However, at the lower resolution, my 4.48 version of the trial plays through the 400 slides in approx. 40 seconds - no way can I get version 5 to do the same, with the same smoothness.

[stonemason]

Al slightly off your very interesting discussion but did you change your monitor resolution to 1280 x 768 or is there a way of making PTE 5 shows display at the size of the images?

Geoff

[Igor]

Al,

v4.48 renders simple slide with main image faster than version 5.0, because in old version it always fully opaque rectangular image which can be quickly copies to the screen. In the new version slide may contains animated objects, semi-transparent images - rendering of such potentially complex slide a little more long process. We can't write individual codes for every case, we have to use universal code.

Version 5.0 still small 270 KB slide engine with built in support of JPEG, MP3, PNG, BMP, GIF. And two graphical engines. All Pan/Zoom effects and other code in 270 KB of code.

Main purpose of PicturesToExe - displaying of slide show with usual time interval - several seconds and Pan/Zoom effects. And I hope version 5.0 operates well for this task.

p.s. Probably you're still using old Pre-Release build, log file says that it is not latest version.

[alrobin]

Al slightly off your very interesting discussion but did you change your monitor resolution to 1280 x 768 or is there a way of making PTE 5 shows display at the size of the images?

Hi, Geoff,

Yes, I did downsize the monitor, and the results are as above - v 4.48 still comes out on top.

And, yes, you can make v.5 display images at their 'native' size by choosing "original size" in O&A. However, I would have to adjust each of the 400 slides individually (or use "windowed" mode).

[alrobin]

Igor,

I noticed something else interesting. In the v 4.48 trial, if I set the slide duration to 135 ms (same as for the v 5.0 trial), the cycle slows down to about 75 sec. duration, even though it has been demonstrated that the program can handle much shorter duration times. (The same duration in v.5 is 55 sec.)

[Igor]

Al,

It's because in v4.48 slide show ignores time for loading of images (not synchronize mode):

Loading 1st slide + time of slide + Loading of 2nd slide + time of this slide, etc.

In v5.0 slides show exactly specified time as you see on the timeline.

[alrobin]

Igor,

So, in other words, the maximum speed of an animation like this is similar to that achieved in the "synchronize slide" option in v. 4.48. In that case, animation speeds are somewhat less than can be achieved in the "non-sync" mode.

For a good analysis of this subject, and some useful tips for adding music to an animation, see Ian Bateman's article on the Wantage Camera Club website, under "AV Group / Animation".

[Igor]

I just published a little updated build of Pre-Release with minor changes and new language files. It should be final code.

Final release will be on Monday.

[stevehurst]

Having read the above discussion with interest, does this mean that with V5, we can no longer take an avi file, decode into individual images and then run them through at 34ms (original video was 30fps) to re-create the video in PTE like we could in 4.48?

[Lin Evans]

Hi Steve,

No, it doesn't mean that at all. You can still run decompiled video as indivirual frames to simulate a move. What it means is that because of the necessary support for many other facets important to version 5.0, the operation isn't quite as "efficient" as with 4.48.

I've run many instances of decompiled video with version 5 betas and they work quite well. If you try to set the frame rate to an extremely quick (10-25 ms) sequence, frames will be dropped, but even if a few frames are dropped as evidenced in an activity "log" it's not usually noticeable at all in the actual presentation. Remember, we are often feeding much larger files to PTE in video mode than true DVD NTSC or PAL resolutions.

You should actually "try" it to see how it works. Often you don't need a full 29.97 frames per second to get nice smooth video. Movies have done very well over the years with 24 frames per second. A lot depends on the individual video. Make no mistake, the video's won't be as "smooth" in 5.0 as they are in 4.48 because it's not possible to support the extremely fast frame rates such as 38 frames per second - there will be dropped frames if the rate is much faster than about 75 frames per second but you will have to try it for yourself. Also, it works much better if you turn off hardware acceleration - at least it does for me. Of course this presents other issues so perhaps best overall to create an executable of the AVI in 4.48 and call that file via the object handling in 5.0 if you want really smooth video of any decent size.

Best regards,

Lin

Having read the above discussion with interest, does this mean that with V5, we can no longer take an avi file, decode into individual images and then run them through at 34ms (original video was 30fps) to re-create the video in PTE like we could in 4.48?

[alrobin]

Having read the above discussion with interest, does this mean that with V5, we can no longer take an avi file, decode into individual images and then run them through at 34ms (original video was 30fps) to re-create the video in PTE like we could in 4.48?

Steve,

The short answer is "probably not". But, there is no definitive answer to this - so much depends on image type and size, as well as the equipment you are using. You really have to experiment yourself - plus, Igor has given us some information above as to how to maximize the efficiency of v.5 in handling fast images.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Al,

I think you can avoid adjusting your sildes individually. Just "select" them all in the slides list and whichever attribute you assign should be assigned to all unless I'm misunderstanding what you are discussing. \

On second look I see what you mean. You want to set the original size for all the images, but if you do it via the Project Options then you would have to change it individually for each other slide not in the "video" sequence. On the other hand, that might be quicker than doing it for all the video sequence individually. No good solution.....

Best regards,

Lin

Hi, Geoff,

Yes, I did downsize the monitor, and the results are as above - v 4.48 still comes out on top.

And, yes, you can make v.5 display images at their 'native' size by choosing "original size" in O&A. However, I would have to adjust each of the 400 slides individually (or use "windowed" mode).

[Kalain]

Hi,

(pre release 15 june)

In project below :

http://kalain.pierre.free.fr/pte/Project1_...07_13-43-54.zip

In O&A, look at 2nd image, last key point 08:500 (opacity =0%) is located in 3rd image effect and have some (opacity) effect in 3 image transition.

Seems to be a bug.

Alain