Can this be done? (Ver 6.0)

[JerryandLois]

Hi all,

I'm still quite new to using P2E, but love what I've seen so far. Here's what I hope I can create:

I have a set of 400 images, and a single track of music. I want the music to start at slide #10, with the music spread evenly from #10 through the last slide. Said differently, I need to have the first 9 images be silent, or with a different sound altogether.

To be more accurate, I know the beats per minute of the song I want to use, and actually want the slides to change in tempo to the music. Since I know the play length of the song, I know how many slides will evenly fit (assuming the music tempo is consistent, but that's a different problem).

This is a memorial piece, so having the first number of slides play silently is very important.

Many thanks (and any suggestions on sync'ing the slides to the song tempo, which is well defined, are greatly appreciated!!!).

Best,

Jerry

[thedom]

Hi Jerry,

If you want the first 9 slides to be silent, add a silent sound to your playlist (in Project options > Music tab).

To create this silent sound, you can use the free music editor Audacity.

[JerryandLois]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Do you have any suggestions for syncing the slides to the music tempo? The arithmetic isn't working as I thought it would, probably because the recording itself isn't perfect.

Thanks!!!

j

[JRR]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Do you have any suggestions for syncing the slides to the music tempo? The arithmetic isn't working as I thought it would, probably because the recording itself isn't perfect.

Thanks!!!

j

Jerry:

If the math won't work out for you as the beat is not exactly even, then you can spread the slides out as per the math and then manually fine tune/adjust the slide positions by using the TIMELINE at the bottom of the main window

However since you are using 400 images, this might take a little time..

[JerryandLois]

I must be going a little nuts.

I opted to go back to the basics and simply use the "auto-spread", so the slide display times would all be evenly spaced across the playtime of the music.

However...

I cannot get this to work properly. The slides retain whatever display times I initially assigned them, and no matter what I do, I can't make this work properly. There's no "apply" button here.

Example, if I set all the slides to each have a 1 second display, that value persists until I manually change it. The "auto-spread" seems to be disabled, and I don't know how to recover this. It doesn't matter whether I change the values on the slides themselves, or at the project/global level.

Please help!

Thanks,

Jerry

[fh1805]

Jerry,

The "Auto-spread" option is not intended to make permanent changes to your PTE file. Tick that box, then Create the exe file (or Preview it) and you will find that the slides are spread out evenly. If you want the even time intervals to be applied to your project file, go into the Timeline view and click the Timed Points button and then click on Arrange all points. This will spread the points out evenly and apply this change to the PTE file. To get precise "on the beat" changes throughout the sequence you will probably still need to do some manual re-positioning.

regards,

Peter

[JerryandLois]

Hi Peter (and again thanks for the prompt replies!)

Actually, what you've described is the behavior I expected. However, hitting Preview (or Create) wasn't accomplishing this (and I attempted this many times, even after shutting down and rebooting the app).

Similarly, the distribution of slides against the waveform wasn't updating; all remained unchanged.

I finally gave up and assigned the select set of slides a uniform timeframe, after manually calculating what that should be and doing some minor tweaks to get this dialed in.

I also bagged the idea of matching slide cadence to music beats/minute. The waveform isn't definitive enough to really dial this in accurately, and the actual song has some challenging signatures and change ups.

But, now that I have this working manually, things are looking good... 'Til I need to have the app assign the time distribution/auto-spread .

Thanks!

Jerry

[fh1805]

Jerry,

Perhaps I haven't made myself absolutely clear. Using Auto-spread, the slide timings in the Timeline view will NEVER change. This option takes effect only when you Preview or Create. It never shows the revised values in the Timeline display. The Timeline display will ALWAYS show the values that you have set yourself (manually or via Project Options).

The "Arrange all points" option does show the new time values in the Timeline display.

regards,

Peter

[JerryandLois]

Thanks Peter,

Understood. Even with Preview or Create, the actual presentation didn't seem to incorporate the auto-spread setting (I did see the both your comments and those in the app), but bobbled that part with my previous post just now (in terms of the wave-form display).

The hard part, if I wanted to match slide cadence to tempo, and make those manual adjustments, then I would need to see the actual waveform displayed against the slide markers, right? So auto-spread isn't the solution, but rather setting the time-points, as you've said (and what I ended up using).

Cheers,

j

[davegee]

It's more easily done than described!

Take the section WITH music.

If you know the number of bars/beats and the number of slides then calculating the beats to each slide is easy.

If you have 32 bars of music for 32 slides the beats are four per slide.

If you have 64 bars of music for 128 slides then the beats are two per slide.

Etc

You should change the slide every one beat or two beats or every four beats in a 4/4 section.

In a 3/4 section you should change slides every one beat or every three beats.

Etc

You say that you know the length in bars / beats of music for 400 slides? If the one is divisible by the other - no problems.

Put the silent track in to play first and start slide ten at the point where the second track (music) starts - use TIMELINE.

Click on slide ten and the last slide (in Timeline) and use "Arrange selected points" in TIMED POINTS. (The end of the last slide needs to be carefully positioned before doing this).

That's the simple version!

You say that there are variations in tempo and time signature?

Each section will have to be treated individually using the method above.

Time-wise a slide in a slower tempo section is going to have to be on screen for longer than a slide in a faster tempo section but this will be governed by the number of beats/bars in the section.

If the music used has a pronounced waveform then telling exactly where a bar starts SHOULD be easy and allow for manual tweaking if necessary.

My tip (from experience) would be - use NO TRANSITION because you are then making it so much easier for yourself to obtain the sync. The change from one slide to the next is very "indefinite" using any sort of transition.

When I did a similar excercise recently I started with the piece of music and added the slides as required.

DG

When I suggested some sort of method for dividing the timeline into bars / beats some time ago it was not thought necessary because not enough people are doing this sort of synchronisation - I would find it invaluable!

[Guest Yachtsman1]

I have sweated blood doing what you are trying to do, I had a number of conventional slide shows the owner wanted digitising, when he made the originals he used an electronic bleep on the second track of a stereo recording to initiate the projector to change the slide. I had to use this bleep track to change the slides in PTE exactly on the bleeps. Eventually, this explanation was given to me & it worked for me. You haven't said how long your show lasts, the worst instance I had was 75 minutes & 325 slides, its a long laborious proceedure if your show is this length.

Method.

Instructions For setting slide positions on Time line.

1. Select all slides.

2. Click Cut Transition Button.

3. Click Waveform.

4. Either run show in mini player, or manually select each slide.

5. Click new transition button for each new slide corresponding with sound Track.

6. When finished, Click Timed Points Button, and Set End Of Last Slide At End Of Sound Track.

7. Save as is, if successful.

8. Any fine tuning can be done by sliding the timed points in the timeline view, or adding or removing real-time (Secs/milli secs) via customise slide options. It may also be helpful to expand the waveform by dragging the box containing it wider so you can see exactly where the peaks & troughs occur.

Saying all that, its much easier to edit in Audacity using the times in its timeline & transferring them manually to PTE.

The way I do it is to have both PTE & Audacity open together, decide where my first slide time is to change while listening to the sound track in Audacity, then transfer that time to my PTE timeline.

Be patient

Yachtsman1

[JerryandLois]

Thank you all for taking the time to answer!!!!

Incredibly appreciated!!!!

Have a great New Year and beyond.

Best,

Jerry