multiple syncs per slide show

[Daveo]

I have had a couple of instances where I am trying to sync multiple songs to their own set of photograhs within a slide show (lyrics fit with a specific set of photos). My most recent example was for a friend where he chose 9 different pieces of music. He wanted a certain set of photos to line up with photos for each song but have them all connected into the full slide show. I struggled greatly trying to move the photos through "project options", "custom syncronization". This took me untold hours and quite a bit of frustration. What I wanted to do was to designate a batch of photos and then tell them to start and finish with one song, link to the next batch of photos which would sync to another song and so forth. I even thougth that maybe the solution was to write 9 short slide shows and see if I could link the .pte files so one would boot as the prior one finished. I determined this would be slow and would not flow seamlessly enough.

There is probably a solution that is easy here but I don't know what it is. How have others of you done this? I hope my somewhat rambling message makes a bit of sense. Thanks again, Dave

[LumenLux]

Yes Dave, your desire makes sense - as many of us have desired the same capability. As I understand it, the current "best" possibilities are (in no particular order.)

The latest PTE version 4.10 (4.11) makes your idea of several strung-together shows work fairly well. Not quite like all in truly one show, but really quite good. The slight difference may not be a problem at all if you are using vocal music that maybe can use a break instead of cross fading anyway.

The other method, is to try Al Robins "Adjuster Model" utility. I have used Al's nifty program for other features but have not tried this aspect. He is also very helpful if you need additional understanding of how his program might accomplish your goal.

As for "untold hours and frustration" - you are always in good company here. In spite of the outstanding PTE which we all so much appreciate.

[alrobin]

Hi, Dave,

I would use Adjustor for this (it's available as a Beechbrook Cottage download). It won't help you directly sync the slides to the music, but it will help you spread the slides out so that the individual music selections coincide with the appropriate slides.

In a nutshell, set up the music in PTE first, and make a note of the times where one selection merges into another. If you are showing the music selections individually in the music player list, then a blue vertical line will show up on the timeline at the start of each selection. If you have merged all the music together into one selection, then play it on the timeline and make a note of where the breaks between selections occur.

Also, make a note of the slide numbers for those which you wish to have coincide with the music interval times. Next load the .pte file into Adjustor. Here you will be able to readily make adjustments to the overall timing whereby whole blocks of slides can be moved until the selected transitions occur at the desired times.

If you wish, you can also "pin" these times, and then automatically distribute the intervening slides evenly across each individual song, thus making fine-tuning of the file back in PTE a simpler process.

Hope this helps - if you need more-detailed instructions, please don't hesitate to contact me or post another message here.

If all else fails, if you send me the .pte file (without music or image files) as well as the exact music interval times and slide numbers associated with these times, I can easily set the show up in Adjustor for you so that you can then put it back into PTE for fine-tuning.

Good luck!

[Daveo]

Thanks very much to both of you for your ideas and suggestions. Al, I think I will go and download your "adjuster model" and see how that might help me out. Is the software pretty intuitive or will there be a steep learnng curve to get the utility from it? Thanks in advance for your help here. Regards, Dave

[alrobin]

Dave,

Adjustor is an Excel spreadsheet model, which is automated using Visual Basic for Applications. So, the only real necessity is that you have MS Excel 97 or 2000 installed on your pc.

It also helps if you are familiar with spreadsheets - you don't need to know VBA.