Is it possible to use streaming with PTE ?

[Guy_Paris]

Hello

PTE save the diaporamas in .exe

Do you think that it's possible to upload the file on a website and to view the diaporama in streaming ?

If yes....how to do ?

Best regards

Guy

[thedom]

Hello Guy,

I think the easisest way to proceed is to convert your slideshow into a video and upload it on Youtube or Vimeo (for HD quality => 1280 x 720).

Of course, you need to create an account first if you don't already have one.

Once uploaded on the website of your choice, you can copy the embeded code provided and paste it in your website.

Here is an example on my website : http://www.thedom.fr/share/viewtopic.php?t=238

Hope it helps.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Guy,

TheDom is right on with this suggestion.

PTE 5.6 beta 1 will be released very shortly and it will have some great features which bear directly on this such as upload to Youtube and Vimeo which will make it very easy to accomplish. Look for 5.6 beta 1 to be released as soon as Igor returns which should be the end of this month!

Best regards,

Lin

[Guy_Paris]

Hello Guy,

I think the easisest way to proceed is to convert your slideshow into a video and upload it on Youtube or Vimeo (for HD quality => 1280 x 720).

Of course, you need to create an account first if you don't already have one.

Once uploaded on the website of your choice, you can copy the embeded code provided and paste it in your website.

Here is an example on my website : http://www.thedom.fr/share/viewtopic.php?t=238

Hope it helps.

Thanks Thedom,

Your answer is very interesting because you show an example of the result when we upload a video to Youtube and paste the link to our website.

So you show that it's possible, but i have to say that the quality of the Youtube video is too bad although I think that your pictures have a good quality.

For me the Youtube solution is not acceptable....and i have try another solution with photodex.

I have made 3 examples of streaming with animates photos on my website:

http://www.guy-photo.com/Index-videos-cosp...eos-cosplay.htm

The quality is good ( I could have ask better quality in the Photodex options).... I would like that PTE be able to save in streaming with the same quality.

Best regards

Guy

[Barry Beckham]

Guy

For what its worth I agree. I know that the Dom's original example is very good quality, but the streaming video example of the same show isn't very good. Like you I would find that unacceptable and would not like to put my slide shows up for streaming untill the quality improves. Your streaming videos are much better quality and I assume you made them with PSG.

I abandonded PSG some time ago, when it became impossible to create good quality animations when output to an exe file. (what PTE does with ease) However, PSG does seem to have the edge with streaming video, if in fact it was PSG that you used in your examples.

PTE seems to be moving more in the direction of streaming videos now and the quality will need to improve. I am sure it will.

[thedom]

Guy,

The bad quality of the video is due to youtube compression, not to PTE.

As i said in my previous post, you can use vimeo for a much better quality.

Example with one of my last slideshow : http://vimeo.com/1718521

You can copy the vimeo html code on your website as you do with youtube.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Guy,

As theDom says, the Youtube quality is not because of PTE but simply that low quality is de jure on the Youtube video output.

On the other hand, the Vimeo image quality in the high definition mode is better than Photodex quality for streaming especially if you are doing with your images what I see in your samples. However, if you try to animate with pans, zooms, etc., the Vimeo quality falls short of what Photodex does with their Active X approach. Pans, zooms and certain types of animations just do not do well with Vimeo even though the PTE output sent to them is superb. PTE can output HD quality AVI which is virtually indistinguishable for all practical purposes from the incredible executables but when Vimeo converts them to FLV Flash the animations suffer from "jerky" movements.

On the other hand, Photodex products (Proshow Gold and Proshow Producer) also frequently produce jerky movement even in executables. But for what you are doing with fades and straight forward shows without zooms and pans Vimeo is superior to the Photodex quality of streaming.

best regards,

Lin

[thedom]

Stage 6 was probably the best site for high quality videos (better than vimeo).

Unfortunately it shut down at the end of last febuary.

One of the successor could be Vreel but they are still in internal beta.

The quality should be very good because they will not reconvert Divx, XviD encoded videos, meaning that they will be completely lossless after upload.

Let's see in a month (or two)...

[Guy_Paris]

Guy

For what its worth I agree. I know that the Dom's original example is very good quality, but the streaming video example of the same show isn't very good. Like you I would find that unacceptable and would not like to put my slide shows up for streaming untill the quality improves. Your streaming videos are much better quality and I assume you made them with PSG.

I abandonded PSG some time ago, when it became impossible to create good quality animations when output to an exe file. (what PTE does with ease) However, PSG does seem to have the edge with streaming video, if in fact it was PSG that you used in your examples.

PTE seems to be moving more in the direction of streaming videos now and the quality will need to improve. I am sure it will.

Thanks bbdigital,

I agree with you....PTE is great to make good quality animations....like you i hope that good quality streaming will be possible in the future with PTE.

Guy

[Guy_Paris]

Guy,

The bad quality of the video is due to youtube compression, not to PTE.

As i said in my previous post, you can use vimeo for a much better quality.

Example with one of my last slideshow : http://vimeo.com/1718521

You can copy the vimeo html code on your website as you do with youtube.

Thanks Thedom

Of course I know that the bad compression is due to Youtube....I have upload one time and will never do the same....too bad

Thanks for the link to vimeo, I have never heard of this web site before....you are right the quality is best...but your wonderfull flowers would merit best.

Best regards

Guy

[Guy_Paris]

Hi Guy,

As theDom says, the Youtube quality is not because of PTE but simply that low quality is de jure on the Youtube video output.

On the other hand, the Vimeo image quality in the high definition mode is better than Photodex quality for streaming especially if you are doing with your images what I see in your samples. However, if you try to animate with pans, zooms, etc., the Vimeo quality falls short of what Photodex does with their Active X approach. Pans, zooms and certain types of animations just do not do well with Vimeo even though the PTE output sent to them is superb. PTE can output HD quality AVI which is virtually indistinguishable for all practical purposes from the incredible executables but when Vimeo converts them to FLV Flash the animations suffer from "jerky" movements.

On the other hand, Photodex products (Proshow Gold and Proshow Producer) also frequently produce jerky movement even in executables. But for what you are doing with fades and straight forward shows without zooms and pans Vimeo is superior to the Photodex quality of streaming.

best regards,

Lin

Big thanks Lin

Wow....i see that you are really expert in video....congratulations

I am just a novice and i will make some test with vimeo because it's take much more time to build a video with Photodex than with PTE.

Best regards

Guy

[quietstorm]

Here is another alternative..

FLV and I think the video and audio is great!

There are several players that are free and can be used on websites to show videos.

I am in the process of adding it to my web site so the members

can upload a video and the members can view it online instead of downloading it.

You need a lot of bandwidth, because videos do take advantage of this.

Hope this helps!

ENJOY,

Bart

[Lin Evans]

Hi Guy,

I put up a quick slideshow just to test quality using only a 3 second fade and with no pan, zoom, or rotate. Here's a link:

http://vimeo.com/1825512

Actually, the image quality is superb. It's when there are slow transitions that Flash has lower quality so for pure image display quality right now Vimeo is tops.

Best regards,

Lin

Big thanks Lin

Wow....i see that you are really expert in video....congratulations

I am just a novice and i will make some test with vimeo because it's take much more time to build a video with Photodex than with PTE.

Best regards

Guy

[1colibri]

I Guy_Paris

You can see an exemple here :

http://fotodiapo.free.fr/dream/video01/index.html

This is and exemple base on a FLV file created directly from PTE thru an flv encoder.

If you need some help for that just ask for:

Jean-Claude

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jean-Claude,

I suspect you need to put a "preload" on your FLV output. Even with a very fast broadband it starts and stops frequently. About 15% should allow the average broadband enough headstart to keep up.

Best regards,

Lin

[1colibri]

Hi lin

You are right for the preload time.

The exemple I offer to watch is placed on a personal page server, offer by the FAI which is realy à bad place to get performance.

The expérience I got whith my tutos (FLV file) in terme of performance is satisfactory . But I use a dedicated server.

Jean-Claude

[dpearcePNG]

May I ask what you folks are using to convert your movies to FLV and perhaps some of the settings (size, frames per second, bandwidth, etc.)?

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

I primarily use On2 Technologies' Flix Pro (Flash 8) and set the FPS to 29.97 with a preload of 15% with 640x480 on average as appropriate for average consumer broadband bandwidth.

Here's a link you can test which pretty well pushes the envelope as far as FLV size, etc., goes. This one is a 27 minute slideshow and you can expect anywhere from 45 seconds to three minutes of wait time for the 15% download. The percentage is displayed as a countdown:

http://www.lin-evans.net/ctml/ctml.html

Though I use Flix Pro, which is a fairly expensive product, Flix Standard is quite acceptable. It doesn't have two pass encoding and has fewer features but is plenty good for most purposes. Sorenson Squeeze, and Wildforms Flair are other great products.

Best regards,

Lin

May I ask what you folks are using to convert your movies to FLV and perhaps some of the settings (size, frames per second, bandwidth, etc.)?

[dpearcePNG]

To answer my own question ("May I ask what you folks are using to convert your movies to FLV..."), I had previously used FFmpeg (available only on Linux) and my results were rather poor, but I didn't know any better.

Yesterday I converted a PtoE AVI file to FLV using Avidemux (http://www.avidemux.org). I converted it at 375 Kb/sec and am very happy with the result. The file I created with Avidemux is about the same file size as the FFMpeg and the quality is so much better.

An example can be seen here: Flowers of the Eastern Highlands in Papua New Guinea

Yes, it's kind of small, but I didn't want to lock out the people with slower connections.

I'll be converting the rest of the "videos" on my site through Avidemux in a few days.

I just want to say I am quite happy with Avidex (and it's free).

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

The results look very good. Do you know which iteration of Flash is being used (5, 7, 8, 9, etc.) and what language the screens are in (English, German, etc.,)?

Best regards,

Lin

[dpearcePNG]

I don't know what version of Flash it is using. I don't have any programs that indicate this. Avidemux appears to be an English only program.

But it seems to work well and it's free. Documentation is pretty much non-existent.

Dave

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

I downloaded and installed it and it is a very nice combo. As you correctly discern, documentation is essentially non-existent other than the most vague references so not simple to initially understand.

It's a real shame that with all the work which has gone into this that no one has written a user guide because the less technically inclined will simply delete it and buy something which is actually less powerful but ultimately easier to understand.

I'm always surprised when I see something like this which has obviously taken a lot of work by a very dedicated and "savy" video person but which has almost no documentation. Such a product demands at least a rudimentary user guide. I suppose when someone is so intimately familiar with not only the product but the process they forget that the majority who will be using it haven't a clue how to proceed. I've always felt that the best way to proceed with such a product would be to take a simple example and go step-by-step with loading a video and converting it to another format. Do it for something simple such as input an AVI and output Flash. Reasonably savy people can always extrapolate how to proceed with other formats when they see it done with one. Of course this product is much more than a video "converter" so perhaps that may be why there has been a dearth of documentation.

I'm still trying to sort out whether it outputs any embedding HTML syntax. If not, I suppose the user could modify code from Youtube or Vimeo to embed or use some commercial web software to design a custom page to drop in FLV code. Also I could find no way of setting up a preload which would be highly desirable for the end user who wants to embed the FLV on his/her website.

Still, it's an intriguing free converter which appears to work quite well.

Best regards,

Lin

I don't know what version of Flash it is using. I don't have any programs that indicate this. Avidemux appears to be an English only program.

But it seems to work well and it's free. Documentation is pretty much non-existent.

Dave

[dpearcePNG]

I completely agree. It's amazing to find such a diamond in the rough, but frustrating that documentation can sometimes be so poor. However, since I am a programmer, I realize that sometimes you create a program for limited uses and by the time your are done with it, you are beginning to hate the program now and the thought of spending more time on documentation is a rather hateful idea.

This program is strictly a converter and a little bit an editor. It outputs no supporting HTML. I used the fine JW FLV Player (available here) on my website.

[goddi]

Hi Dave,

I downloaded and installed it and it is a very nice combo. As you correctly discern, documentation is essentially non-existent other than the most vague references so not simple to initially understand......

Lin

============

Lin,

I downloaded the program and tried it. I was able to Open an AVI file and play it in their window. Another AVI, only showed a green screen. I am assuming that I should be able to open an AVI and convert it to a FLV file??? I know it is not your job to explain someone else's program but, if you can help, what can I do with this program??? Seem neat but I just don't seem to get it. I selected Output and chose FLV...but what next?

Thanks for any insight you can give... Gary

[dpearcePNG]

Since I mentioned this program...

You "Open" the file, then under "Auto", you select FLV. Now you have a "Configure" button that you can use to change the bitrate.

Dave