AV Technology

AV production is probably the most creative and artistic area of photography.  To create a successful artistic AV sequence one must incorporate in an effective way both photography and/or graphics with suitable sounds and/or music and/or narrative.   This can be very demanding of one's creative muses, not to mention spare time, but can also be extremely satisfying, not only to the producer, but also to the viewers.

AV production can be equally demanding from a technical point of view since it often requires the latest state-of-the-art programs and computer gear, as well as high-quality audio and visual equipment (microphones, recorders, amplifiers, mixers, cameras, scanners, lighting equipment, etc.)

This page will address mainly the computer software considerations, and touch only briefly on the hardware.  For several years I have been using a most ingenious and affordable PC program called "PicturesToExe", or "PTE" for short.  It is developed by a small company in Russia by the name of "WnSoft Inc".   Apart from their success in putting together excellent-quality software, WnSoft distinguish themselves by their responsiveness to complaints, queries and suggestions, and the continual ongoing development of the program, despite the small size of their organization.

PTE can be downloaded from the WnSoft website (a trial version is available for 30 days).   Each show created in PTE is a free-standing ".exe" file.   No special player is required to run an AV show once it has been created.   Unfortunately for some, PTE is designed only for MS Windows, but some people have reported that they have been able to successfully emulate MS Windows on the new Intel-based Mac's and use them to run PTE.

Click HERE for a sample of the main window from PTE v.48, with definitions of some of the components. HERE is an example of the "Object Editor";  HERE is a typical view of the "Timeline" used for synchronizing shows to music. PTE V.5 is still in "beta" format, so will not be described here until it is officially released (expected very soon).

The "Adjustor Model" is a handy MS Excel spreadsheet for examining PTE parameters in tabular format in order to better view the relationship between images and transitions for both synchronized and non-synched slideshows. You can download the original version for Excel 97 HERE, and a revised version for only Excel 2000 HERE.

I made several transparent grids to assist in lining up objects in the PTE v.4 "Object Editor",
and for testing various PZR animation effects in PTE v.5 "Objects & Animations".
They are all zipped together in a file which you can download from HERE.

Grid consisting of squares, 50 px by 50 px (in "transparent GIF" format)

One of 4 grids for lining up and measuring PZR effects in PTE v.5 projects (in "PNG" format)

A simplified version of Adjustor for PTE version 5 can be downloaded HERE. With it you can: a)view your "duration", and "transition" timing parameters in tabular form; b)identify which slides contain more than one keypoint; c)rename your slides; d)spread the transitions over the total time; e)pin certain times and spread the slides evenly between them; f)manually input actual times at which transitions occur, and have the other timing parameters recalculated accordingly; g)manually input new slide durations and transition times, and reflect these in the project timing; h)transfer new timing and slide names, etc., back to PTE project file format, and confirm the results in PTE.

The following is a list of various demos and examples I put together to test and illustrate some of the new capabilities of PTE v.5:

a) Child/object test

b) Fireflies

c) Nuclear effect

d) Mask demo

e) Rectangle test

 

This page was last updated on:  02-Jun-2007
© Al Robinson, 2007, all rights reserved