Changes in Slide Duration

[Picsel]

Problem of slide duration

I think to solve this issue (see my previous post) and avoid misleading PTE users it will be simpler to say, once for all, that the duration of video clips must be specified in the O&A editor and this duration is always equal to video clip duration specified + duration of the effect with next slide and to leave only one option for the duration of slides either based on the old method (total slide duration = specified slide duration + next effect duration) either based on the new method (slide duration = specified slide duration - next effect duration) .

Leaving the both possibilities as it is to day will be confusing and misleading, we already had several questions on this subject.

In case of the "Show total duration" option will be maintained it should be moved in Project options/Main tab and the wordings "Slide duration for new slide" should be modified in line with the selected option.

Best regards

Daniel

[Aginum]

The user of PTE can not find this option if it does not know it exists

Suggestion, Igor....

[xahu34]

The user of PTE can not find this option if it does not know it exists

Suggestion, Igor....

This suggestion should have been posted in the comments thread (it does not refer to a bug). Anyway, it is a very good suggestion

Regards,

Xaver

[xahu34]

Problem of slide duration

... and to leave only one option for the duration of slides either based on the old method (total slide duration = specified slide duration + next effect duration) either based on the new method (slide duration = specified slide duration - next effect duration) . Leaving the both possibilities as it is to day will be confusing and misleading ...

I myself am a protagonist of the old concept. It has the major advantage that you can sum up the durations of several slides without counting the transition times twice. So your position would be OK for me, if PTE would leave the slide duration as it has been until today (v.6.5.8). On the other hand, there might be other users who prefer the new concept. So why not offering the choice between the two concepts (perhaps following the suggestion of Aginum on the placement of the options inside the menus).

Regards,

Xaver

[Picsel]

This suggestion should have been posted in the comments thread (it does not refer to a bug). Anyway, it is a very good suggestion

Regards,

Xaver

Xaver

I think that Aginum proposal is linked with the slide duration problem we discussed before on this thread.

Aginum

Yes, Aginum exactly what I suggested in my previous post if both options are maintained for slide duration.

I would agree with this proposal if the "Slide duration for next slide" mention could be changed depending on the option selected because with one of the option it is "slide duration" and with the other it is "Total slide duration including next effect duration"

Personnaly I would prefer to simplify all of this (see my last previous poston the subject) which remains, confusing, misleading, and tricky for a "standard" PTE user.

As it is to day, the fact that (when "Show total slide duration" is selected) PTE automaticaly changes the slide duration without notice to the user when the slide duration is less than the sum of previous and next effect duration is a serious drawback not really a bug.

Best regards

Daniel

[Aginum]

This suggestion should have been posted in the comments thread (it does not refer to a bug). Anyway, it is a very good suggestion

Regards,

Xaver

Sorry .... It was related to the message of Daniel ...

I created a separate topic Here with another suggestion

[Igor]

The user of PTE can not find this option if it does not know it exists

Suggestion, Igor....

I think these two options placed here will vastly complicate the program. Most users will not understand purpose of them. And majority of users even need not change these modes at all.

I'll reply on Daniel's posts today later.

[aplman]

There has been much discussion about the change to the handling of Slide Duration. It seems to me that there are still problems associated with the new way.

Although I have less experience with PTE than the many experts who frequent this forum, and do such a fabulous job of assisting the rest of us, I see one aspect clearly that I don't believe has been discussed adequately.

If my understanding is correct, prior to the more recent betas of version 7, "slide duration" meant the time between the beginning of the introductory transition, and the beginning of the next transition. In other words, "slide duration" included the time of the introductory transition, but not the time of the concluding transition. Why one and not the other? Why is the relationship of a slide with its "before" transition more special than the relationship of a slide with its "after" transition? I expected, when I was new to PTE, that the duration would be exclusive of both transitions. That seems to me to make more sense to a new user.

I understand that the new scheme means that the specified slide duration includes both before and after transitions. That causes problems when the specified duration is not sufficient to include both transitions. It also means that the time a slide is clearly shown is less than the specified duration by the sum of its before and after transitions. I don't like that at all!

If it's not too late for version 7, may I suggest that it would be far more sensible, more intuitive, and far more convenient, if the duration specified excluded both transitions? That would mean that any positive number of seconds would be acceptable for slide duration (and that makes sense to me), and any change to transition time would have no affect on slide duration.

It has been mentioned that a benefit of the old scheme was that the overall show time could be derived simply by adding up all the slide durations. Surely we don't have to do that addition for ourselves? The total show time is already on display. In the scheme I am suggesting, the show time would be the sum of all the slide durations plus the sum of all the transitions. That makes good sense, does it not?

Does anyone agree?

What does Igor think?

[Lin Evans]

It does get a bit confusing, doesn't it? Actually, there are technical reasons why it had to be changed which have to do with video. Igor has explained it in other posts.

I think part of the issue of understanding is this: Let's consider first the old way where we have the transition from say slide one to slide two. What if we had selected a four second 3d swap transition for slide one and a four second fade-in, fade-out for slide two. The 3d swap belongs to slide one, but the fade-out, fade-in, is shared between slide one and slide two. So we have the issue of actual full slide display time being settled by subtracting the 3d swap time from the display time for slide one and subtracting the the fade in time from slide two. Had we set the duration for each to 10 seconds, the entire 3d swap, display, fade-out, fade-in, display would occupy 20 seconds. So adding up all the transition times plus actual display times equal the cumulative times set for display for all slides. A benefit of this was the ability to cross-fade by pulling the keyframe from the beginning of slide two into the time frame for the ending of slide one and pushing the keframe for the ending of slide two into the beginning of slide two. This could create some very nice and interesting cross fades which were not one of the "transition" choices. For this reason, many wanted to preserve this way of doing transitions.

In answer to your first question, the actual full display time for any given slide in the above scenario is six seconds. The chosen display time minus the chosen transition time. Slide one continues to be seen as a fade-out, when slide two begins to be seen as a fade-in. Slide two then has a full, uninterrupted by transition time, display time of six seconds. The time of partial visibility could be affected then by pulling and pushing the respective keyframes into the adjacent slide time frames.

The reason then, that the time included the transition in and not the transition out was because the transition out was shared between the two adjacent slides.

With the inclusion of video there became a technical issue with doing this and I'll leave that for Igor to explain, or possibly link to the explanation.

Best regards,

Lin

[David Porter]

Simple me finds it easy to understand that (assuming all sides are the same length) total show time = slide duration x number of slides. Transition times are irrelevent and I've checked the box to give me this.

[Igor]

Daniel,

I'm working with your posts above. Please give me some time to read throughly and perform all experiments.

APLman,

Thanks for your suggestions!

But I really don't see the ideal solution yet.

There are 3 different way to show slide duration in the slide list:

1) ProShow Producer.

This software displays pure slide duration and you have to enter separately slide duration and durations of transition effects.

Try a little experiment in ProShow Producer. Start a new project, add one video clip to the slide list. Everything is OK at this point. Add more pictures to the slide list and set different durations of transition effects. Now move this video clip to another place in the slide list. Here you'll see a problem. Your video clip will be cropped or will freeze during playback. Because the program doesn't care about required full duration of this slide with video clip. When you move a video clip in the slide it, the software moves only pure slide duration + outbound transition effect. But this slide will receive different inbound transition effect and unpredictable total full slide duration after re-arrangement.

Same problem will occur with a slide which has a complex animation on the slide. Objects which have several keypoints (keyframes) customized for particular time. If you create complex animation you exactly imagine what duration should be for this slide. If duration will be changed the animation will look incorrectly.

See Figure 1 below.

2) PicturesToExe 6.5 and earlier versions.

The software displays pure slide duration + incoming transition effect.

You don't see full slide duration and you don't see pure slide duration. The more I think the more I find this mode useless. However we didn't remove this mode completely. You still can activate this mode in the program (uncheck the two options in the main menu | View | Advanced options | "Show full slide duration" and "Keep full slide duration").

3) PicturesToExe 7.0

The software displays full slide duration (pure slide duration + inbound and outbound transition effects).

The program cares about correct duration of slides with video clips or complex animation if you re-arrange slides in the slide list.

There is no problem with duration of video clips which may occurs in competing slideshow products.

I find this mode more suitable for described reasons.

This new mode is not ideal, but on my opinion it better suits for all features of PicturesToExe and has less problems than other variants.

Figure 1. What happens if move a slide with complex animation to another place in the slide list in previous versions. This problem doesn't occur in version 7.0

[xahu34]

... The software displays pure slide duration + incoming transition effect. You don't see full slide duration and you don't see pure slide duration. The more I think the more I find this mode useless. However we didn't remove this mode completely. You still can activate this mode in the program (uncheck the two options in the main menu | View | Advanced options | "Show full slide duration" and "Keep full slide duration") ...

Let me say that I remain a supporter of the "old" system, and I do not regard it as useless. In the new system, if you have slides with varying transition times, a reordering of slides (or just a movement of one slide) in the slide list can induce changes of the start times of some slides. In a sequence with a strict synchronization this is quite awkward

So please keep the option to use the old system, also in future versions

Regards,

Xaver

[Barry Beckham]

Those who are confused by the slide time need to try adding video and then you will see that it is the logical choice. That time value must me no greater than the length of your video clip, unless you want the clip to come to a crashing stop before the video leaves the screen. A video clip of 15s needs 15s from when it starts to appear, until it is fully gone. This is what is currently shown to us

INHO there is no point whatsoever in adding a video clip of 15s and a value in the box under discusstion of 20s, or your video sits there doing nothing for 5s. Now the art of AV is creating a smooth flow from image to image, be they stills or video.

So, the setting works when you start to use video

[SheilaG]

Hi,

Just a thought ............ have you tried off-setting the start of the video and having the video at zero opacity for the transition period? You could then bring the video to full opcacity, for its start time, as the transition is completed. Obviously, this would require an appropriate background 'still' to be visible behind the outgoing slide during the transition time.

Regards,

Sheila G

[Barry Beckham]

Ken (APLman)

When your putting a slide show together, what is it that determines for you how long your slide/video will be enjoyed (assuming we are talking here of the image once its fully revealed and before fade out)

Can I also ask, do you use the time line at all when putting together a slide show?

[davegee]

I think that Sheila is on the right track.

You don't have to rely on transitions to fade out an image. It can be done using keyframes so that the incoming video could be in a slide with no transition or offset in a slide with a transition.

The tools are there to do just about anything that we want.

DG

[fh1805]

Ken,

I assume you have the following:

Slide A

Slide B carrying a video clip

Slide C

and you want the transition of Slide A to Slide B to complete before the video clip on Slide B starts running.

Simply add a second copy of Slide B in front of your existing one - but without the video clip. Transition to this copy of Slide B and then use a "Quick" to transition to the second copy, the one that has the video. The transition from Slide B to Slide C you can control by having that copy of Slide B run longer than the video so that the video isn't obscured by the onward transition.

PTE can do pretty much whatever you want it to do. It's just that sometimes, our thinking isn't "out of the box" enough to allow us to find the solution.

regards,

Peter

[aplman]

APLman, Thanks for your suggestions! But I really don't see the ideal solution yet.

There are 3 different way to show slide duration in the slide list:

1) ProShow Producer.

...

2) PicturesToExe 6.5 and earlier versions.

...

3) PicturesToExe 7.0

...

Igor, thank you for the detailed explanation - much appreciated.

2) PicturesToExe 6.5 and earlier versions.

The software displays pure slide duration + incoming transition effect.

You don't see full slide duration and you don't see pure slide duration. The more I think the more I find this mode useless.

I suppose it's not "useless" if many existing users are familiar with it and rely on that behaviour. I agree it's not logical to regard one transition as belonging to the slide, but not the other. I have a new thought on this, which I will put in the "Ideas for future versions" section.

Anyway, Igor, thank you so much for continuing to look for the best way!

Ken (APLman)

[aplman]

Thank you, Shaila, Dave, Barry, Peter, for your helpful suggestions.

However, my comment was meant to be not a plea for help, but rather a suggestion as to how PTE 7 might be made even better. Probably it should have been under "Ideas and Suggestions for New Versions", but I was hopeful of influencing version 7. Too late now, I suppose!

Ken T (APLman)

[aplman]

Ken (APLman)

When your putting a slide show together, what is it that determines for you how long your slide/video will be enjoyed (assuming we are talking here of the image once its fully revealed and before fade out)

Can I also ask, do you use the time line at all when putting together a slide show?

Barry, thank you for your interest.

Your first question is an easy one ... My own judgement on the importance and interest of each slide. I do not like having the same uniform duration, slide after slide.

I suspect your second question is very insightful. I tend to use the time line only when I'm adding music. Perhaps I do not yet fully appreciate the timeline's benefits - but I'm open to ideas.

Thanks again

Ken T (APLman)

[Barry Beckham]

Ken

I wil probably upset some members here, but needs must. Many AV enthusiasts, including many here miss the obvious in my view when making slide shows. They do not match their images to the music they have chosen. Its rather like a visual track running alongside a sound track, but where they line up is trusted to luck. I have lost count of how many people have said to me why don't you leave your images on screen longer. Well, you can't if your matching the images to the music, which is the point, surely. Imagine standing next to someone who is clapping to music, but they are clapping out of time, that is what many people do with their slide shows. Attending to just that one thing will make their show, so much more appealing.

In the timeline view, you can make your slide show on the fly, in other words you press play on the mini player and add the images/video when the music's ups and downs dictate that you should. This is difficult to put into words, but there are some places in a piece of music that you just can't have an image in screen doing nothing. The style of the music will be crying out for the image to change and if it doesn't the flow of the slide show is lost. Its the music that largely dictates when the slides should change.

Try the timeline and work that way for a short while. I can't see how you can effectively put a slide show together without the timeline to be honest. Its what it was designed for or there is little point in having it.

[Picsel]

Several strange new problems with slide duration

(v7.0 _ PC-CPU T5200 /XP )

Problem n°1 bug?

I open a new project n°1. The 2 options Show and Keep full slide duration are selected

I drag and drop 4 slides on the Timeline

The indications of duration are as it follows (by default) :

2/7 ; 2/7 ; 2/7 ; 2/7 (a/b a = effect duration, b = slide duration)

I decide to modify durations inside the project options (4/9 set for existing slides), it comes

4/11 ; 4/11 ; 4/11 ; 4/9

should have been : 4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9; 4/9

It seems there is a memory effect. Where is the bug?

NB : I made several tests, and sometimes to times the durations by default are either 2/5 either 2/7 (more likely)

Problem n°2 ( inconsistency rather than a bug)

New project n°2. The 2 options Show and Keep full slide duration are selected

I specify durations 4/9 inside project options / main.

I unchecked "Show slide duration"

If , I need to check the duration of one slide I will get

- project options / main => slide duration = 9s

- customize slide / main => slide duration = 5s

this situation is very tricky for beginners : under the same wordings there are two different values !

Problem n°3

New project n°3. The 2 options Show and Keep full slide duration are selected

I specify durations 4/9 inside project options / main.

I drag and drop 4 slides on the Timeline

The indications of duration are as it follows (by default) :

4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9 (a/b a = effect duration, b = slide duration)

I decide to modify duration parameters for n°2 (6/15) and n°4 (2/9) then it comes

4/11 ; 6/15 ; 4/7 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration selected) or

4/5 ; 6/11 ; 4/5 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration unchecked)

Applying the new method we should have got

4/9 ; 6/15 ; 4/9 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration selected)

4/3 ; 6/11 ; 4/7 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration unchecked)

Why such discrepancy, is there some logical explanation?

Once again it seems that there is a memory effect, but...?

Problem n°4

New project n°3. The 2 options Show and Keep full slide duration are selected

I specify durations 4/9 inside project options / main.

I drag and drop 4 slides on the Timeline

The indications of duration are as it follows (by default) :

4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9 (a/b a = effect duration, b = slide duration)

I decide to modify duration parameters for n°2 (6/15) and n°4 (2/9) then it comes

4/11 ; 6/15 ; 4/7 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration selected) or

4/5 ; 6/11 ; 4/5 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration unchecked)

then I moved the slide n°2 in third position then it comes :

4/11 ; 4/10 ; 6/15 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration selected)

4/7 ; 4/4 ; 6/13 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration unchecked)

It seems very strange, how to explain this result ???

Applying the new method we should have got

4/9 ; 4/9 ; 6/15 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration selected)

4/5 ; 4/3 ; 6/13 ; 2/9 (Show full slide duration unchecked)

Daniel

[davegee]

Daniel,

That's a long and complicated post, but taking "problem" #1 first you need to recognize that when you add just four slides to a project that last slide has no outgoing transition time which you need to take into account. Changing the transition times of all four slides does not affect the outgoing transition time of slide four because slide four does not have an outgoing transition.

Secondly you need to recognize that (with the new arrangements) if you alter the transition time of slide 2 it will alter the overall time of slide 1. This is because the first slide is made up of its own transition, its original time between transitions and the incoming transition of slide two.

Keyframes placed in slide one at the begining and end of the incoming (slide 2) transition maintain their RELATIVE positions regardless of any changes made to the transition time of slide 2.

I think that the best view for adjusting individual slides is the O&A view.

DG

[Picsel]

Daniel,

That's a long and complicated post, but taking "problem" #1 first you need to recognze that when you add just four slides to a project that last slide has no outgoing transition time which you need to take into account.

Secondly you need to recognize that (with the new arrangements) if you alter the transition time of slide 2 it will alter the overall time of slide 1. This is because the first slide is made up of its own transition, its original time between transitions and the incoming transition of slide two.

Try adding 5 slides and making adjustments to the timings of the FIRST FOUR ONLY.

I think that the best view for adjusting individual slides is the O&A view.

DG

Hi Dave,

I agree with your comments if you unchecked "Show full slide duration"

Let me consider only the problem n°1

with "Show full slide duration selected" the indication of slide duration given on the time line includes the effect duration so starting a new project

it will comes by default

2/7 ; 2/7 ; 2/7 ; 2/7

but if I decide to modify duration parameters inside project options let say 4/9, I should read

4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9

and not

4/11 ; 4/11 ; 4/11 ; 4/9 as it is today

but I agree with you if I uncheck "Show...."

4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9 ; 4/9

should became

4/5 ; 4/5 ; 4/5 ; 4/9

....but you can see it is not the case!

I know my post is a bit complicated I should have shared it in several parts but I thought the different parts could have a common link.

Daniel

[Picsel]

Several strange new problems with slide duration

(v7.0 _ PC-CPU T5200 /XP )

NB : I made several tests, and sometimes to times the durations by default are either 2/5 either 2/7 (more likely)

It appears that after PC reboot, the default values for duration are 2/5 and not 2/7

but closing a project and opening a new one, the default values become 2/7 and remain up to the next reboot (or restart).

Perhaps a memory problem....

Daniel