Suggestions for Custom Synchronizations

[Carol Steele]

I realise this is too late for the next release, but a suggestion for the release after v4.3

When I create my slideshows I will often use 5 or 6 tracks of music which I splice together in Audition to make one seamless track of music and make a note of the exact time that one track fades into the next so I can use these timed transition points in my slideshow.

When doing a custom synchronization if you alter say the the first 5 or 6 slides to fit in an intro, the remainder all have to be altered to give an even space between slide changes (unless you are prepared to have one slide on screen for very much longer than the rest).

Would it be possible to click on the first and last slides in a series of images (to select all those images) and have a button to distribute those images evenly along the timeline - say between 30 secs and 3:20:20 mins.

I know it would certainly make life a lot easier for me - and I suspect a lot of other people.

Just food for thought.

[bharkins]

Carol, I fully agree. With the latest version with the full visibility of images, PTE is vastly improved. Now the control of the spacing of the images along the timeline as you suggest would greatly increase productivity.

[DaveG]

I agree with both of the above. My thinking was that, if it were possible, to be able to evenly spread all transitions that were not customized via the "customize slide" option would be a tremendous advantage.

Introductions and endings would then become much simplified.

DaveG

[Alan Lyons]

Hi Carol,

If I'm reading you right, you want to respace the slides after the 5 or 6 which are plased to fit a given section. The way I would see this working is if you could select the balance of the time line, not the slides and then had ao option to "space remaining slides to this time section". You could be able to do this a number of times as you fine tune your secquence and perhaps as an added option you could be able to " space slides x - y along the selected section.

From little acorns.......?

Alan

[DaveG]

There is a lot of merit in what Alan is proposing - it would allow for the precise positioning of a slide or set of slides with a prticular portion of the music.

Dave G

[Conflow]

Sliding Stop Bit...New idea to Synchronise.

If Igor could insert a "Sliding Stop Bit" in the Music Timeline - Now when the user imports a

background Music Track longer than the total Slide/Transition durations - the user has

the choice of moving the "Stop Bit" along the Music Timeline to that point where automatic

synchronisation is acceptably achieved consistent with the Slide durations they want.

To overcome the abrupt stop in the Music they could do an audio 'Fade-out' with Audicity to

coincide with the selected "stop point" - an auto-fade could be incorporated in PTE ?

I do this with 'Nero Wave Editor', its extremely accurate, and also slashes my production time

by at least 50% -and- I still preserve my origional Soundtrack in the Nero Folder should I wish

to add more Slides+Transitions at a later date.

Brian Kelly.Conflow.

[alrobin]

Carol,

Your request has a lot of merit - in fact it seems to be the most-requested addition to the timeline synchronization features. It was the main reason for designing the "Adjustor" model, and I wish Igor would add the capability to PTE for shifting a number of slides together as a group, to preserve timing between each slide as well as all the customized characteristics of those slides. In Adjustor you can "pin" specific key slides so that their locations don't change, and then hit a button to automatically spread remaining slides evenly between these "pinned" points. This would be so easy to add to PTE that I wonder at Igor taking so long to implement it. However, he has given us the light-table so I guess we can't complain too much! However, if he would just add these timeline features, I could retire the "Adjustor" model completely.

Brian, I understand your 'sliding stop bit' suggestion a little better now, and it has a lot of merit, too, for ease of adding slides to the end of a show, or for truncating the music where there are insufficient slides to "fill" the total time, as defined by the music selections chosen. Users have been requesting a music fade feature in PTE for some time, along with the capability to merge several selections without joining and cross-fading them in a sound editor. This combined with the "stop bit" would give users the added control over the music that they desire.

[dagrace]

I'll add my 2 cents' worth and vote for an evolution of the ideas here, as I understand them:

1) take slides x - y and distribute them evenly over time w-z, where none of the values has to be the "first" or "last" (slide or time). Is Al's "pinning" a different feature or just a version of this?

What about the inverse of #1:

-1) fix slide x at time w and slide y at time z and evenly distribute the slides 1 thru (x-1) over time 0 thru w, and / or slides (y+1) thru the end over time z thru the end.

Hmmm, thinking out loud:

Slide

1..........2..............3.........|X...............Y|...................Last

Time

0.....................................|W..............Z|...................End

|.....Zone 1......................|...Zone 2.....|....Zone 3.....|

So by pinning 2 slides, you can then ask to "distribute" any of 3 "zones"?

Not sure I would use every instance in every show, but I can see the need for each of these.

I think this reduces Carol / Alan / Al's ideas to one "feature".

I still don't have my head around the stop bit yet!

[alrobin]

David, that's how the "pinning" in my Adjustor model works - you can pin 2 or more slides, and then everything before, in between, and after will be equally distributed according to how many slides are in that "zone", and the length of time for that "zone". It's of no use for those desiring an exact position for each slide, synched to the music, but would be a handy tool for those who only want certain slides fixed to the music (for example the start of a particular music selection), and then wish to have the rest of the slides in between distributed evenly.

[dagrace]

Al, to be honest, I've never gotten the hang of your Adjustor. But I was "designing" what I thought might work in PTE. Glad to know I'm not in left field.

I'm a little embarrassed as I am a computer systems geek by profession, and I thought I knew a bit about Excel, but I just can't seem to make your model behave.

Hopefully, SuperIgor will come save the day (again) and I won't have to be embarrassed much more (on that front, at least!)

[alrobin]

David,

You shouldn't be embarrassed - it's not uncommon for homemade software to cause glitches with other systems for which it wasn't tested, so the fault is probably mine in trying to make it too complicated than it really needs to be.

[Alan Lyons]

Hi all,

I think what we need here is to be able to place say slide 5 at a given time and say slide 10 at a later time then P2E would spread slides 4-9 within that time frame. But we would still need to be able to move 4-9 within that area. This could work by being able to drag the slides to a time point without adding all slides then the others (4-9) would pop in between the set points. This would also need to be a switch on/off option because you may not need it for all shows. A problem occours if you deside to change the order of slides, as the system will need to use the slide order to know which slides will fill the gap(s).

As for the fade at the end I am sure a cross fade line as seen in sound editors could be added to the waveform and it could be dragged back into the waveform to create the fade at the disered point.

Alan