automatically synchronizing slide duration with the corresponding audi

[scotts2junk@gmail.com]

I have a show that is very straightforward--a series of slides with audio, with a one-to-one correspondence... one audio file for each side.

what is the easiest way to adjust each slide's duration to match the duration of its audio file? Here is what I have been doing... is there something easier?

a. My images are in a directory by themselves, with sequential filenames. (e.g., slide 1.bmp, slide 2.bmp) I do 'add all files to project', and based on my file name convention, all the slides are in the correct order in my show.

b. The corresponding audio files are in a directory by themselves with sequential filenames. I do 'add all files to project', and all the audios are in the correct sequence in the show, and adjacent to each other, but of course are not correlated with the slide timing.

c. I do 'fit all slides to soundtrack' and the slide durations are adjusted such that the last slide ends when the last audio ends.

d. I now need to manually drag each slide duration starting with slide 1 so that the slide duration corresponds to the audio duration.

Is there a less manually intensive approach to accomplish this?

[Lin Evans]

The absolutely "easiest" way is to use the "Customize Slide" feature to add your audio rather than adding through Project Options. This way each audio clip is assigned to its individual slide. Then after observing the time for the audio clip, click on the "Main" tab and match the time of the slide to the time of the audio. Use seconds if the slide runs for over one minute. That is 1:04 in the audio would equal 64 seconds in the Main Tab for slide display time. Then if you move the slides in their positions, the audio will accompany each slide and not be separated. You "may" have to slightly modify the display times for each slide to account for the transition times, but this is a minor task. Note: Doing it this way, the audio will not appear on the timeline, but this is inconsequential because it is "locked" to its individual slide.

The "next easiest" way to approach this is to write down the actual time for each audio clip so that you have a log of the audio timings in the proper sequence.

Next determine the amount of transition time you want between slides. Then simply set the time for each individual slide via the "Customize Slide" feature to correspond to the time of the audio for that slide plus the transition time. This should get you "very" close.

The other way would be to go to the "timeline" view and visually "drag" each audio clip so that it "fits" within the visual display time for the particular associated slide.

The "problem" with these last two methods is that the slide and the audio are not locked together.so that if you position a slide in a different place, you will need to move the audio.

Best regards,

Lin