Advice please

[glazzers]

I am a new user to this software and have a few questions for the experts.

I wish to put lets say around ten or fifteen slides at certain points along the timeline and then have the programme put the other slides (up to two hundred) around and in between them.... Possible or not.

Once I have the pictures on the timeline is it possible to change the order on the timeline by using the timeline screen(drag and move) or must I go back to the original screen and change the order there ??

If I use the synchronise to music length then can I change the length of individual pictures themselves or do I have to deselect the former.

Thanks for all the advice to a novice.

[alrobin]

glazzers,

When using the timeline, there are two main methods for synching your slides:

1. spread all the slides evenly across the total time (using "Timed points / Add arranged points"), and then go back and readjust the times for individual slides.

2. add the slides one by one by starting with the timeline "empty", and clicking "New transition" whenever you come to a place in the music where you want the next transition to occur. This is the method I prefer, as it generally takes only a few "runs" at it to have the last slide end up at the end of the music. Then you can go back in and readjust as in method 1.

My "Adjustor" model (available on Beechbrook) may help you in visualizing the timing of the slides overall, and in making adjustments to the times of individual slides. Once you have the slides positioned roughly on the timeline, you can use Adjustor to "pin" certain ones, and divide the time evenly for the slides in between.

Re changing the order on the timeline, this is only possible in the Slide list on the main screen.

You can change the length of individual picture durations on the timeline by clicking on the blue rectangle representing that slide and "dragging" it with the mouse to the left or right. If you double-click on the little blue rectangles, you will bring up the menu for changing the transition times.

Hope this helps.

[glazzers]

Thanks Al

[iceberg]

Could I perhaps add a suggested improvement to sync options.

Suppose I have created a show, it looks OK so the next stage is to make some titles. The timing for these might be critical so I use the Customize-Slide option to set the timings (and effects) and adjust until it looks right. Then I introduce the soundtrack and in Project_options set synchronize-slideshow-to-music and go to the timeline. If I click on Timed-points, then all the slides default to the same on-time and the timings set earlier are ignored. Yes, I can reset on the time-line but if there are some critical timings later in the sequence, it gets rather messy. The only option here is to use the Excel Adjustor.

May I suggest that when yout first go to the timeline under these conditions, the software takes account of any slides with customized timings, adds these timings together, subtracts this from the music time and then allocates what is left over the non-customized slides and then calculates the timings for the timeline taking the customized times and the now default times into account.

[HaroldB]

Iceberg,

Why don't you just work on the timeline right from the begining?

Harold

[iceberg]

Yes I have done this, Harold. It's fine if you only have a handful of slides but if you are dealing with 100+ you run the risk of your click-finger getting RSI. It's is also not easy to keep track of which slide is next and exactly where you are on the timeline (and how much time is left) - a few mistakes and you end up with a lot of shuffling to do.

I would like to take my suggestion a step further and be able to set the on-times for a sub-sequence of slides all to the same value with another sub-sequence to a different value thus varying the pace of the transitions for example to better match that of the music.