Pictures 2 EXE in national UK Magazine

[Barry Beckham]

Although I have not seen it yet, I understand that my Yosemite AV is included on the cover CD of the latest copy of Digital Photo. I presume the tutorial is also included.

Igor may see the sales of PTE rise for a week or two, with a bit of luck.

bbdigital

[Ken Cox]

Congrat's Barry, it was a long haul.

ken

[Jim]

Well done Barry! I wonder if that mag is available on newstands in the US. Hope so.

Jim.

[Ken Cox]

Barry,

is this the magazine

http://www.digitalphotouser.co.uk/

ken

[Igor]

Dear Barry,

Thank you! I just read your posting and sent a reply:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...t=ST&f=3&t=1000

[Barry Beckham]

Ken

Considering that Digital Photo are the leading digital UK mag they do not have a web site, only a subscription page here.

https://www.subscription.co.uk/home/subso.a...?m=118&src=fl01

bbdigital

[pegebo]

Hi, I am one og Digital Photos readers in Sweden and I am seriously considering buying PicturesToExe (PTE) because of the things I saw fom Barrys Yosemite slideshow that you can accomplish with the application.

I tried some competitors products but so far the impression is that PTE is the overall better one. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of being able to synchronize the pictures to the chosen music. You can do that in PTE but it takes some trial and error to get it precisely in synch.

Being new to the discussion forum I haven't looked around the forum at all yet (and I will) and with the risk of saying something lots of people already have pointed out I would like to hear from the developers the feasabilty of adding the an "amplitude chart" of the music on the timeline for the synchronization of music and transitions!!??? This would greatly even more improve the usefulness and ease of use when doing the synchronization.

Thanks,

/Pege

[Leif]

Köp den du, Pege! För det priset är programmet nog oslagbart!! Och himla lättarbetat är det!!

OK, folks! Sorry about the Swedish!!

[alrobin]

it takes some trial and error to get it precisely in synch.

.........................snip.....................................................

I would like to hear from the developers the feasabilty of adding the an "amplitude chart" of the music on the timeline for the synchronization of music and transitions!!???

Pege,

Welcome to the Forum!

Sorry, I have to keep my remarks to English!

Yes, just as when you are making one of the old-fashioned slide shows, trial and error is a large part of the process, and always will be.

I agree with you that a music wave timeline would be useful in selecting the transition points, particularly when using "quick transitions", or "cuts". One way, as other members have already pointed out, is to run a wave editor simultaneously with PTE, in order to visualize the accent points, and make a note of their times, which can then be transcribed into PTE.

However, even this would not be the final answer, as I found even with the old-fashioned AV shows, that the music sounds too stilted when the transitions are set exactly to the actual crescendos and beats of the music. This is somewhat similar to the idea of "groove quantization" in MIDI music composition, where the timing of the notes is set slightly off from the precise timing, in order to add character to the piece.

In AV shows, particularly when using long slow dissolves, that if you set the start of the transitions to the beat of the music, they will be perceived by the viewer to happen too soon. This is due to the fact that in a slow transition (particularly a slow dissolve), the next slide takes up to a second in some cases to be noticed on the screen, over the image that is already there, and is starting to fade off. So, even if we can accurately pin-point the transition point in the music, we would want to delay the image transition a bit to compensate for this visual effect.

There are other situations in which one would want to slightly delay the transitions, but these are more a function of the feelings of the AV creator in producing a particular effect.

[think(box)]

Leif - were you saying in Swedish that you think PTE is really great already for timing features?

Al has great advice about how a slide transition has to be positioned in time relative to a musical beat. But Al, don't you think the job would be a lot easier with a visual sound amplitude graph aligned to the timeline as Pege suggests? You will get to know the required timing offset from the beat for various transition effects, visually.

Right now the visual association of timeline and effect duration in PTE custom sync window is very well done, in combination with the ability to play from a spot preceding the transition. But all that you see is the position of the effect against absolute time. The sound beats or level changes, if also visual, could greatly improve developer productivity in setting the desired timing. Everything you need to know will thus be visual. Listening to the segment can be used far fewer times in setting up a given transition. I agree that there is always some trial and error in setting the timing, but I think a sound level visual association would be a great advance for Igor to consider.

I know that Igor considers sound-music synchronization to be an important feature of PTE. Therefore I think this improvement idea should be added to the wish list for future PTE versions beyond 4.10? Al and others, how does this sound to you?

[alrobin]

Hi, Bill,

Yes, I did say in my reply to Pege that:

"a music wave timeline would be useful in selecting the transition points, particularly when using "quick transitions", or "cuts". "

I agree with you that even with slower transitions, one could have a chart that indicated the usual advance in the start of the transition to make the first visibility of it coincide with the accent of the music. (I was merely pointing out the fact, for those not as familiar with the fine-points of putting together AV shows, that it isn't quite as simple as it might sound on the surface.) You're correct, though - a coincident music wave timeline would be handy. (Provided that the magnification required to see accurately the music beats, is not so large as to interfere with the ability to readily follow the cursor on the slide timeline.)

But, even here, the advance in the transitions is not strictly proportional to the length of the transition, for a given transition type, particularly a fade or dissolve. For example, a transition from a dark slide to a brighter one will be visible sooner than one from a bright slide to a darker one, hence adding another variable to the equation. So, in these cases, as you indicated, some trial and error will still be required.

Of course for non-dissolve type transitions, the start of the transitions will likely coincide pretty closely to the beats of the music, regardless of the transition speeds, although, even here, there may be some tweaking required to get it to sound just right.

[JRR]

I have "firmware" for my Arion Wizard (I use it with my 35mm slide AV show versions) that does have the music wave timeline on the computer screen when I am synching.

I use fades for virtually all my shows, and yes the visual music wave is nice to have and does help, but I find I can do my synching in PTE almost as fast.

Most of my shows do not require EXACT timing as I am not doing cuts, so maybe I am biased.

Would you not need to have the time-line very well spread out to get the timing exact from the wave time line. I think the moving of transitions points by milliseconds as per the current version is more than adequate

So yes, the music wave line would be nice, but other items, for my uses of PTE, are a higher priority: e.g.

1. OBJECTS (or something like that) that do not move with different screen resolutions when using the full screen mode.

2. A sound mixer within PTE so we can line up different tracks with particular images. ( e.g. animal sounds mixing with music backgrounds) Currently you have to go back and forth to your sound mixer until you get it right.

3. Output in VCD and SVCD formats (If I have the technical terms right for output that will run on a DVD player)

4. thumbnails in file lists

(I realize I am likely dreaming in technicolour re #2, and perhaps #1)

[pegebo]

Leif, thanks for the encouragement to buy PTE, Still haven't done it but it's a matter of time.

Thanks also Al and others for serious commnts. Nice to see people getting involved.

I believe Al has a good point when saying that trial and error will always be a part of ceating the slideshow. I did find when fiddling around with synchronization that even if I hit the right time for a peak in the music it did not necessarily look perfect in the show because of how we perceive transitions. I only worked with fade transitions though and they are the ones that might be most difficult to synch.

Anyway, I will use the idea of a separate wave editor to use the times there and see how it goes. I still think it would be nice with a built in one, but I realize there might be other features that are more important.