Slideshow Creation Techniques

[jevans]

A recent comment by DG that, with the availability of Version 8, he could abandon his audio editor, suggested to me that there might be some interest in various methods forum members use to create a show which includes commentary : something most of my shows tend to include.

With previous versions of PTE, my method has been to write out the commentary and then record it in a single pass so that the resultant audio file contains the entire commentary. I then insert this file into my audio editor and insert silence sections between each individual commentary section to match the images to which the commetary referred. (I appreciate that inserting total silence sections can be distracting but generally these are disguided by the accompanying music). For example I might have a 15 second commentary on the first 3 images. Then 2 images without commentary. Then a commentary section for the next image. So I insert a length of silence equal to the desired time to show 2 images after the first 15 seconds. Whilst this has worked well for a long time, it is rather inflexible if you want to make timing changes later on, as you have to alter images timing in PTE and then correct the composite commentary file in the audio editor, then re-export the alterd commentary file.

Now with Version 8, all this difficulty has disappeared. I still record the overall commentary in one pass and insert the resultant file into my audio editor. However now I cut out each commentary section and save it as a separate file which can be inserted into PTE and associated (linked) to a specific image(s). The flexibility this gives is wonderful as it allows timing changes to be made at any time in a very simple manner. Also being able to change volume levels and introduce fades on the fly is a huge advantage. So my audio editor is not quite redundant yet (it can be used remove unwanted sounds from oriinal site recordings - I recently removed a baby's cry which was messing up some recorded speech) but is just used to cut up the originally recorded clips.

I would be interested in amyone else's experience and methodolgy in making PTE presentations with commentary.

[davegee]

Hi Jeff,

A couple of things that you might want to consider:

Following a discussion earlier Igor has promised to look again at the whole business of Audio Comments after the release of V8.

A new feature in the Audio Tab (Options) is "Convert Tracks to MP3". I take this to mean, with respect to your point above, that you could record your commentary as you have in the past and insert it multiple times to line the various comments up with their respective slides - I would think that this would need just a single Track. Using the Start, Duration and Offset controls for each section would give the required "silence" between clips and also give you the facility to make timing and Volume adjustments later if necessary.

When you are satisfied and press the "Publish EXE" button PTE will mix all of the various tracks into one MP3 for you thereby reducing the overall file size and your Audio need never have to be subjected to secondary sampling in Audacity, Audition or Soundbooth etc. Even if you do not use the "Convert to MP3" feature using the same single commentary file multiple times will not add to the file size.

I have assumed from your comments above that you use a recording device which outputs a WAV or MP3 file?

DG

[gogs]

Hi Jeff

The method I used in the past was very similar to that of yours. I recorded my commentary in Audacity in one pass and then split the audio track into sections and adjusted these on the time line. I did this by opening both PTE and Audacity at the same time and matching where each section of commentary should be in the slideshow. I then added the music and reduced the volume behind each section of commentary. I then saved this as a project file just in case I had to go back and edit. I also then compiled an mp3 track of combined commentary and music and added it to PTE. It has always worked out well for me although as you say if there is a change in the slideshow it was a bit fiddly re-editing the soundtrack.

I have not as yet put together a full slideshow with version 8 yet but can see it making things an awful lot easier. The ability to link audio items to specific slides and move these together if necessary will make adding commentary that much easier but the ability to adjust volume directly in the time line is just going to be invaluable to me.

There is one area however where I don't think my version of Audacity will become redundant quite yet is the use of the channel input level meters. I wont be able to decide this until I have tried recording directly into PTE.

I have seen a few slideshows at my Camera Club by people using other slideshow software and recording commentary directly into that and have always thought that the voice levels were too low.

Gogs

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Jeff

I use a similar method to what you initially described, using Audacity. Then it all depends on the type of show. When the music is just elevator type music with no specific high & low points. I compile all the tracks into the finished article, leaving out the VO. I then add the music track to PTE & run a trial to see how it fits, & adjust the slide timings by two or three different methods, one of which I came back to after a 2 year break, adding the slide key points on the fly. However, doing this way you have to be fully conversant with where you want the slides to appear corresponding to the background & in the correct order. Then I take a note of where I want the various section of VO to take place & set the VO track in Audacity to those times. Then, with both sections together I set the fades. One thing I've found with a VO, unless it's a song or poem, more is too much, in other words the fewer the better & let your audience use their imagination & don't distract them with too much information. IMO the waveform in PTE is not accurate enough to consign all my sound editing to it, & have asked for it to be put back to what it was in previous versions where you could drag the waveform to whatever width you wanted for accuracy. So to sum up, I will be using my existing method at least 80% of the time, for the time being.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

[jevans]

Thanks Guys for your comments. Pleased that the post resulted in some responses.

DG : David I do not think your suggestion would work to add the commentary file multiple times. When you record the commentary from the script file, invariably you make mistakes. Rather than start again, I just say "correction" and then re-record that bit of commentary. So there is some editing to do before it is suitable for adding to PTE. Also the commentary duration is generally the total length of the show. So it would be difficult to add multiple times on a single track. Putting the file into Audition and then cutting out each track is fairly quick, but I might experiment with actually stopping the recorder between segments and saving each as a separate file to remove the requirement to cut up the whole file in Audition. My recorder is an HS2 and records in wav and mp3. I just use mp3 for the voice recording. As all my sound files are put into PTE as mp3 files, I do not think there is any saving to be made is using the "convert to mp3" function.

Gogs: Your method is almost exactly the same as mine and I also agree with your comment on sound level meters. That is a facility I miss in PTE 8 as, previously, the music and voice files were all in Audition and my standard approach was to make sure that the music level was -20db below the voice level. Getting the right levels between the two is critical and now in Verion 8 is much much easier to achieve as you can fiddle about with both the voice and music clips on an individual basis. This is a HUGE improvement.

Yaghtsman1 : Again you method mirrors mine. However I have seen a number of comments about the need for absolute accuracy in the forum and I just don't get it. Maybe it is the type of show that I do but I find that I can position image or sound files where I want them. I suppose if you are doing a show which requires image or key frame positions to be exactly in line with the audio file then maybe there might be a problem. But I have done a short show where I wanted each image to change exactly on the beat and found it very easy to do. After all the end result is being judged by ear and absolute millisecond accuracy seems unnecessary. However maybe you can convince me.

Regards all

Jeff

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Jeff

The type of show I'm referring to, that in my opinion is where there is an up-beat sound track with quick transitions, if a slide is slightly off, it stands out a mile. Also when adding sound effects such as a door slamming or the shot of a gun. In a recent show I had to co-ordinate a lightning flash & thunder. If you haven't done this sort of thing it may be difficult to understand. & finally, lip synching, often when an original voice from a video is used, it has imperfections that can sometimes be removed by using a dedicated sound editor, getting the repaired track into perfect synch can be very difficult, sometimes impossible. I have yet to see an example done using PTE sound wholly. I don't want to dwell on this too much for obvious reasons. One example of co-ordinating sound & movement I've done was "Last Tango on Lord Street", I'm not sure if the first or last version is on Mediafire if you want to look.

Eric

Yachtsman1.

[JEB]

Hi Folks,

I just thought I would add my penny worth!

I have to say that I am delighted with the improvements that have been introduced in recent versions. I used to work in a very similar method to you Jeff. In the early days I would have Audacity open on my lap top and PTE on the desk top and run them side by side in an effort to match the voice over to the slides. Then while still in Audacity add the music/sound effects on separate tracks, adjust the volumes and then merge the tracks, insert into PTE and tweak the slides. A nightmare!

My present method is much more flexible. I use Audacity to record my V/O from a script that I have previously read out loud to myself while running the PTE sequence, noting where the major silences are. Then when making the recording on Audacity I tend to make individual clips based on the identified gaps. If I make an error I pause and start again just before the error. I will then mostly delete the offending segment while still in Audacity. I mostly use the "multiple version" option of a clip in PTE to eliminate undetected errors or when I make a last minute adjustment to the image content and find I need a silent segment I hadn't anticipated. Very useful!

I tend to use the "Amplify" facility on my V/O's before exporting from Audacty in order to get maximum acceptable consistent volume. This I find particularly useful if I have to make a new or additional V/O at a later date. It seems to improve consistency.

As a rule of thumb I tend to reduce the Music track in PTE down to about 10 or at most 20% (depending on the music) and then raise it appropriately during the V/O silences.

I have recently made a short sequence using particularly rhythmic music where I wanted quick transitions to come in on the beat and found that by expanding the timeline I was able to place the images very accurately.

Overall I am very pleased with the latest improvements. I can't see me wishing to record directly into PTE as I think it likely that there would be considerably less control of the quality of the recording. Horses for courses is the phrase that comes to mind.

Cheers

John

[jevans]

John,

I am interested in your remarks below and I do not follow the last sentence. Does this imply that you do all of the audio work in Audacity and then export a complete single file into PTE? That is the method I used before Version 8. However with a single audio file, you can only link it to one image. Of course you can add duplicate copies on another track, but this seems rather clumsy. Since using Version 8, I split up my original audio track into separate file segments and then add them to a single "commentary" track. This means that I can link each segment to its associated image(s). Now at any stage I can move the image/commentary without messing up the rest of the timeline. Of particular benefit is to be able to either, move an individual slide or to move a group of slides.

Regards

Jeff

"My present method is much more flexible. I use Audacity to record my V/O from a script that I have previously read out loud to myself while running the PTE sequence, noting where the major silences are. Then when making the recording on Audacity I tend to make individual clips based on the identified gaps. If I make an error I pause and start again just before the error. I will then mostly delete the offending segment while still in Audacity. I mostly use the "multiple version" option of a clip in PTE to eliminate undetected errors or when I make a last minute adjustment to the image content and find I need a silent segment I hadn't anticipated. Very useful!"

[PGA]

The technique that I used on "Secret of the Snakestones" was as follows:

The background to the sound track was assembled in Audacity as a series of "ambience" mixes. Each mix, exported to WAV file, combined three or four individual location recordings (captured using my Zoom H4) to give the different ambiences that I needed.

The voice-overs were recorded on the Zoom H4 on two different days in my study. I recorded Robert voicing Louis Hunton first. Having decided which of his pieces I was then going to use, I had to do a minor re-write on the script of the narration before I recorded that. I took the masters of both those sessions into Audacity and cut out the mistakes. I then Normalized both sessions in Audacity so that the peak levels in both were the same. This would guarantee that both voices had the same "loudness" when taken into PTE. I finally exported each piece of voice-over as a separate WAV file.

When it came to assembling the soundtrack in PTE, I first dragged all the voice-over material into two tracks: the narration on one track and Louis Hunton's words on a second. I then adjusted the timing of all the slides and the voice-overs to fit together in the manner that I wanted. I then assembled the background ambiences onto track 1 and adjusted their start positions and lengths to give me the relevant location sounds alongside the location images. The ambiences were all allowed to cross-fade one into the another.

Finally, I mixed the voice against the background ambiences by adjusting the volume envelope of the ambiences on track 1.

The images were all prepared in Lightroom if they were originals of my taking and then exported as TIFFs. These, together with the historic images which were acquired as JPEGs, were than processed in Photoshop Elements to a crop size of 1920x1080 for a whole image or "1080 high" for those files intended to be used as objects. These were exported as either JPEG quality 8 or PNG, as required.

So, as you can see, I prepare my images in Lightroom and Photoshop Elements and my sound files in Audacity. I then use PTE to assemble the components. It all boils down to utilising the strengths of each program.

regards,

Peter

[JEB]

Jeff,

Sorry, I have not made myself clear. What I do is record in Audacity each segment of my V/O and then export them to a working folder. I then import them to a track (V/O Track) in PTE placing them at the appropriate position under a slide. Just as you do I think. I don't very often directly link them to a slide as on most occasions i prefer the flexibility of being able to drag the audio to start at any point of time on the slide/s duration. I think we are doing much the same thing, though I do on occasions duplicate a clip if I find I need to insert silence or even remove something. Yes I do mostly edit any error out while in Audacity if I have noticed it.

One thing I used to do in Audacity was to cut any clicks that appear at the start or end of a recording. I don't bother now as I can more easily "hide" them by dragging the ends in PTE.

Hope that clarifies things.

John

PS The rest of my workflow is a bit like Peter's but I use Aperture rather than Lightroom and Elements when necessary.

[JEB]

Jeff,

I have just realised that perhaps I have not given as much attention to your specific question regarding my last sentence.

If you can think of a clip made up of say three sentences of V/O that had been recorded in Audacity and you at a later stage realised that it would be better to leave some time between the second and third sentences to permit the inclusion of an additional image for example.

In the past I would have gone back into Audacity, made a copy of the original clip and deleted the first two sentences from that copy and the last sentence from the original, saved them both and re loaded them into PTE.

What I would do now is load the original clip in a second time into PTE and "hide" the third sentence by dragging the end of the clip in to the end of the second sentence. I would then do the same from the front of the copy clip "hiding" the first two sentences. I would then position each clip to wherever I wish them to start playing thereby creating silence between them.

Hope that explains it in more detail.

Regards

John

[jevans]

Hi John,

Thanks for the explanation which is clear. It's interesting that hearing how others construct their sequences gives one a fresh view on one's own techniques. One final point. You mentiond that you're do not link audio clips to imges. But no doubt you have noticed that, even if you link a clip, you can still move the audio clip relative to the start of the associated image whilst still maintaining the link.

Regards

Jeff

[JEB]

Hi Jeff,

Yes I think I was aware of that. I did play a bit with one of the early Betas. I sometimes find that there are occasions where I have a group of say five images associated with an audio clip and I sometimes move them about so that for instance slide one becomes three so linking has no real advantage till I have finally decided on what I want to do. I'm always tinkering and going back to sequences, sometimes months later!

As you have said hearing how other people skin the cat can be valuable so no doubt I will revisit this technique.

Cheers

John