How to start music at 2nd or 3rd slide?

[red]

Is it possible to start background music on the second or third slide?

I'm trying to get my title slides including transition fades in before the first portrait that my client sees, so the words to the music can come in as the photo arrives. Up to that point silence is good. Also, when a new song plays, I want to shorten the gap between the two songs. I've been placing my own timing points and I realize that they can't be placed too close together because strange things happen!

I'm also having a problem with the transitions after I burn it to a cd. On the actual slideshow, before burning, it has perfect timing and fades...as many times as I want to play it.

However, as soon as I burn a copy for another computer, that new copy is different!

Even when played on the same computer! Two slides (consecutive) keep re-playing twice and my timings are different when the slides appear.

What's up with that?

[alrobin]

Hi, red,

Welcome to the Forum!

The ideal (and only reliable) way to synchronize the music with the slides is to use the timeline to position the image transitions where you want them to occur relative to the music. Then, if you create a single music file, and add a suitable length of silence before the music starts, you can arrange to have the music start on the precise transition where you want it to occur. In a sound editor such as Audacity or Audition, etc., you can also combine two or more sound files into one so that you don't need to worry about the transitions occurring in the interval between music selections.

[red]

Thanks for the response! Everyone has been so welcoming in this forum!!!

That sounds like something that I'll have to spend a bit of time on. I'm trying to spearhead these presentations through (get them ready) by tomorrow. I just bought the Canon 1ds and used it while I had the guts...without thinking of the presentation side of things!!!

Now I need to present slideshows and be able to sell frame-by-frame where I once used a slideshow projector(...so much quicker before). I have to look forward though!

Is there a photographer out there with advice on using this software for a sales tool?

I used to run the slides in the slideshow and then one-by-one take out the ones that my client didn't want and then compare the remaining. Any techniques for "tagging" or comparing one with another?

Also, any advice on the slideshow changing after I burned it to cd? It ran so perfectly before burning!!!!!! Should I throw it against the wall???

Thanks,

Michelle

[Guest Techman1]

Michelle,

You spent all your money on a 1ds and now you don't have any left to purchase a sales software tool!?!?! Just kidding, PTE can be used to some degree in this fashion. What I've done in the past is to put together a slideshow to music (as your doing now) and I also create one that has no music and is set in manual mode with the file names showing. This can all be done also using PTE. On my CD, I create an autorun.inf file to play the automatic version and then after they have seen that and are crying then we play the manual version to let them select. Just have an order form ready with space to put the file name and the size desired.

I've also used Kodak ProShots after the slideshow and have used it to create orders for clients. It is structured more like what you are probably wanting, but you would have to get it setup, learn how to use it and pay an annual fee. Another option that works very similar to what you outlined is called "Pixort". I believe I saw a link in this forum the other day on this software. It's free and allows you to do a side-by-side comparison of images. It also allows you to rank them 1-5 and it then places your images into folders (called 1-5) so you can then look through your number 1's and decide which ones to keep. It may take a little to get used to, but it is much quicker than learning ProShots. Since your sell is tomorrow, you may want to just use PTE in the manual mode (as described above).

Regarding the differences in PC's and playing from a CD vs. your harddisk. As Al indicated, you should be creating your slideshow using the synchronized option. This allows your shows to play the same (or it should) on almost any PC out there. Some CD players (older ones) may cause problems, but not too many. You could always look at copying the EXE file onto the harddisk prior to playing. If you do a search, you'll find numerous references on this forum as to how to do this. Also, Boxig "Granot" has numerous utilities that also help in this area and many more (again do a search and you'll find his web site).

Regarding your music files; using Audacity is a very good audio tool to merge multiple files together and minimize the silence between songs. Since Audacity is free, you might want to download it and give it a try. It really is very easy to use and works extremely well. As recommended here by many, merging all of your music files into one MP3 file and then running in sychronized mode really does help.

Anyway, I hope I have helped a little and didn't confuse too much. Good luck with your sell tomorrow!

Fred

[red]

Wow Fred!

How can I repay you for that response? Don't you realize that I spent all my money on the 1ds???? I'll tell the kids that we don't have to panhandle tomorrow because I'm going to make some money!!! HA HA HA!

Seriously, you really gave me a lot of great advice. Thanks.

I want to use Proshots eventually. Millers, my lab, gives a lab credit for it (250.00?).

I agree about the learning curve. I remember that WPPI or PPA gave classes for it. I just wanted to keep a little "mystery" with my clients and not have them watch the retouch or cropping proceedures. Doesn't Proshots have a slideshow too? How would you campare it to PTE?

When you say to manually run the show, how do you show the files? I guess I only know how to create a slideshow by making a .exe file (create file as) under the file menu. How do you make the autorun.inf file?

Also, I timed the show under customized synchronization and set up the timing points along the line, trying not to make the grey transition points within .5 seconds of each other...did I read that right in the old forum notes? I think that was where the "blinking" was coming from. I can't figure out why the duration of each slide would change and some, not all slides needed a mouse click to transition while others moved fine. I thought I chose to keep the mouse off!

Is this nuts or what???

Thanks again,

Michelle

[Alan Lyons]

Hi Michell,

Welcome to P2E Forum. You had a reply from Al Robinson on this thread. If you visit the link in his signature you will find a turorioal on this programme. Relax, sitck on the coffee, grab a mug full and watch this excellent tutorial. You can watch it through or run the sections you need to. It is a handy reference to have onyour HD when using P2E. The sync. problems you are having are caused by the rom drive being slow to load the items onto the HD.

Alan

[alrobin]

Hi, Michelle,

Nobeefstu, one of our more creative and knowledgable members, once created a utility designed to provide just the sales features you describe. The Forum reference is HERE .

Another possible way to use PTE in selecting images with your client would be to use the non-compiled (project) version of PTE. You could provide the compiled version on CD to the customer to review on his or her own, and then when you are sitting down with your client, you could use the preview option in the ".pte" or project version of the show to review the images, deleting any images not wanted, and then "re-creating" the show at the end of the session if desired. This way you would preserve any fancy introduction titles, music, and information slides and burn a new show with only the slides selected, if you and your client wanted to preserve the image selection in a slideshow format.

Hope this helps some.

[Guest Techman1]

Michelle,

Hello again. Let me try to answer a couple of your questions;

Miller's like several of the ProLabs does credit you the cost of using ProShots when you use their lab. The slideshow in ProShots is fine, but PTE is much better and more flexible. ProShots for showing customers images and actually showing them where crops will occur is nice so that there are no surprises later. Totally agree about touching up photos in front of a customer. Some changes are extremely easy and you don't want them to get the idea that everything is that easy. I haven't been using ProShots for a while now because I changed labs and my lab doesn't use it. But, now I have a better lab so I'm okay with that. BTW, I use WHCC (White House Custom Color) they are a 100% digital lab and know what they're doing (excellent quality, service and turn around time).

Regarding changing your slideshow to run in manual mode you will need to do the following:

In Project Options - Main tab, click on the "Display each slide for" button turning it off

In Project Options - Advanced tab, click on the dropdown to "Always show mouse cursor"

click on the "Show Navigation Bar" (Customize if you wish)

In Project Options - Music tab, click on the "Play background music" tab to turn it off

In Project Options - Comments tab, click on the "Set comments for all slides as" and select either Filename or SlideNumber depending on how you want to process these.

I believe that it's it. You might want to save both under different project names. This gives the customer the ability to look through the photos on their own time and select the ones they would like to have enlarged. Or you can run through this together pointing out anything special to the customer that you see as an artist/photographer. Or as Al suggested, just manually run the show for the customer going through each photo.

Regarding the autorun.inf file, basically you create a text file (but it has to have .inf as the extension). You can use Notepad or some other basic editor to do this. The simple format is these two lines:

[autorun]

open=MySlideShow.exe

Where MYSlideShow is the name that you selected when you created your .exe file in PTE. This would be your slideshow with music and that automatically runs. Then when you burn your CD, you copy the Autorun.inf file along with your .exe (s) to the CD. Then when your customer puts the CD in their drive it should automatically start your slideshow. After the slideshow, they can simply double-click on the manual slideshow.exe and it will run.

Boxig's website that I referenced last night is: http://www.thailandphotoalbum.com. Again, he has numerous utilities that help many of us on this forum.

Good luck!

Fred

[Stevie]

Hi All

I’m fairly new to PTE but have built a few shows with music to demonstrate my photography using version 4.2.

However, I’m now looking to possibly use it as a way of proofing weddings, like Techman describes, in a simple way with no music, just the file numbers. I have seen Fotostation used for this purpose, but it only generates a Quicktime format movie in very low resolution, although it’s so easy to do and literally takes a couple of minutes.

My thinking is that by using PTE I could simply select the folder that my pictures were in, set it up to show the file numbers and then let it create the file. This would be high resolution and self extracting, plus presumably I could also burn the movie onto DVD for viewing on a normal TV.

Is anyone else doing this?

The only concerns I have is how to rotate the portrait pictures automatically (did I see on here somewhere that the latest beta version did this). And also how vulnerable the pictures are at this resolution against being copied. I know that the print screen option can be stopped but is there still a way to print off the images? I’m aware that I could batch re-size but I’d like to make the task as simple and quick as possible.

Thanks

[DaveG]

Hi Red,

Re: Starting music at x slide:

It is also possible (in Audacity) to create an MP3 containing silence of any fixed length.

You only have to do this once for lengths of silence of 2, 5, 10 etc seconds and insert them as required into your list of background music - beginning, middle, end, anywhere.

Works for me.

Shortening the gap between two songs is also easy - merge the two songs into one in Audacity and select the gap that you wish to eliminate - then cut.

DaveG

[Stevie]

Just tried the new beta version and it does indeed auto rotate the images, so it’s just the lifting of photos that I need to work around. I made up a show with about 130 1DMk2 pictures, which was a breeze, although it was about 350 meg when finished.

Fred, when you made up your shows for clients did you resize?

Thanks

[Marion]

Red,

Let me first say this forum is awesome. Second, to answer your presentation question, we first present our slideshow with music using PTE. We then use a software called Prism http://www.prismprojector.com/home.php to show the individual pictures to clients. This combinatin works GREAT for us in our photography studio. Hope this helps.

We are a 100% digital studio and are looking at the Canon D20 coming out soon.

Marion

[Guest Techman1]

Stevie,

I'm sorry I didn't answer your question at the bottom of your final reply on this subject. I somehow missed it (maybe I was on vacation then). Anyway, I didn't see it until today when Marion responded to Red's request.

To answer your question, "YES". I do run a batch resize and sharpening through Photoshop to make the images not so large. On the coping issue, people can still do a screen grab and capture the image. By resizing down at least they are not getting a high resolution image, although I believe it is only 72 dpi either way (maybe it just makes me feel better). Also, on DVD if they play the DVD through their PC they probably have screen capture software to grab the image from there too (many people don't know they have the capture software). I guess the key is to let your customers know about the copyright laws and hope they have morals to not copy your images. Any large prints they will certainly need to go through you for, but wallet size can be taken from your CD's/DVD's - unfortunately.

I hope this helps and isn't too too late. Anyway, good luck and sorry for the slow response. Better late than never?!?!?!?!

Fred

[sqw]

Is it possible to start background music on the second or third slide?

Just start the music on the individual slide you want the music to start on, rather than for the project.

I use music on a particular slide in two ways, for either single sound effects, or effects that run over several slides.

- Simon