Still trying to figure out

[SeismicGuy]

Well nobody has answered my last question under the "Coming from Memories on TV" heading so I figure I would try here.  Since MOTV is rather long-in-the-tooth and not supported anymore, I was trying to dive into PTE AV as an alternative.  As mentioned previously my needs are really occasional and limited to travelogue-type slideshows that run anywhere from 15 minutes to about 40+ minutes, depending on the the vacation I am trying to document.  These typically include images, videos, and various background music pieces.  The one I am currently working on is about 10 minutes and I was using MOTV to create.

So at the same time I am trying to see how to go about this using PTE AV and find myself giving up after a few minutes. One MAJOR obstacle that I cannot figure out (at least it is not intuitive to me) is dealing with transition and slide effects.  In MOTV there are transitions that apply between slides and "picture effects" that apply to the particular slide.  I guess there is an equivalent language for these in PTE but it seems there is some vagueness or overlap.  For example it is not entirely clear to me if the Styles and Themes button addresses the transition, the slide effect, or both.  But then again there is the Project Options button with a sub-button of Transitions and it is not entirely clear to me if you choose several transitions for the "show" or just one.  Then the main "complaint" I have is that there does not seem to be any easy way of randomizing either transitions or slide effects. 

For example, in MOTV I generally stick to a couple or three transition effects but the go-to picture effect I use is the Ken Burns effect (called Pan-Zoom in MOTV).  In MOTV this can be applied to any or all slides and then you have the added option of "randomizing" the specifics of the effect.  In other words the Ken Burns from slide 22 will not be the same as the Ken Burns for slide 23, etc.  I do not see such a randomizing option for slide "style(?)" in PTE but maybe I am missing something.  From what I am seeing is that you can apply a pan-zoom to any number of slides (using theme?) but the pan zoom for slide 22 will be identical to that of slide 23 which would be boring.

Am I incorrect is concluding that there is no randomization that can be applied to the same "effect" over a number of slides?  Obviously I guess I can go slide-by-slide and do the small tweaks but MOTV would do this automatically by choosing the randomization option".

Doug

 

[rosy]

Hi Doug

Don't give up! Take a look here, PTE Instructions. this is the font of all knowledge (well nearly all) about how to use PTE.

Cheers Rosy. 

[SeismicGuy]

Hi Rosy--yes I have come across that but was really looking for more of a shortened/condensed "Up and Running with PTE in 10 minutes" sort of document.  I still could not quickly determine if there was any randomization of transitions or slide effects that was available in one or two steps. 

[Barry Beckham]

All that you appear to want is there within this software. You just need to give yourself a little time with it. And you’ll not look back.  You could select a Ken Burns style yourself from those already in the software or make one yourself in seconds. Then select the styles, (pan left, right, zoom in, zoom out etc) into a theme and you have the random animation your looking for.

 

[SeismicGuy]

Yes I saw the pan left, pan right, etc. but it was not clear to me (at least not intuitively) if a pan plus zoom can be combined for a slide at the same time.  Also not clear is if I choose just, for example, a pan right and I apply the pan right to five slides will the pan right in the fifth slide be slightly different from the pan right in the first slide or will they all be exactly the same, witch I do NOT want.  The randomization in MOTV ends up with completely different pan/zoom from one slide to the next by only hitting the "randomize" button once all of the slides are selected.  I am quite sure you can get a similar outcome with PTE but it looks like the user needs to create the randomization for each slide one-by-one versus having the program apply it with one button.  Not sure if I am being clear enough about this but does what I am asking make sense?

[mhwarner]

Easy, peasy!  Select some number of slides, click on the "Styles and Themes" button at the bottom of the program.  When the dialog opens, click the "Themes" button at the bottom.  Choose "Main" in the left-hand column (it may be the only choice if you haven't added any themes of your own).  Choose "Ken Burns effect".  It says you need 8 slides, but it will actually work with fewer slides.  You have options to "shuffle" the effects and/or modify some of the settings.  You should be off and running.  Maybe it could be documented better (although Igor added it in 2019) but the more descriptive you make the heading on your topic question, the quicker and more specific will be the answer.  I'm sure most of us have never heard of "Memories On TV" so that's probably why nobody answered. 

Note that styles and themes are usually only the motion that happens to a single slide or group of slides once they are on screen.  "Transitions" (found either under "Slide Options" or "Project Options") is what happens when moving from one slide to the next.  So that even using the "Ken Burns effect" theme provided in the program ( which was created and saved with a 2 second dissolve between slides), you could still use a different transition between slides such as the "Gates" effect (or page curl, etc.) and still maintain the Ken Burns effect for the actual individual slide effect.

Hope this makes it more understandable.

[SeismicGuy]

Well that helped a bit since I was not even aware that there was an actual "Ken Burns Effect" option which combines both the panning and zooming.  So I chose 8 slides just to make it more consistent and selected them all, then hit the Styles and Themes, then the Themes and then chose Ken Burns Effect and hit the Shuffle Styles button.  When watching the resulting preview of the 8 slides that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for--each slide was slightly different in the effect used.  What is not clear is the Settings options at the bottom which in my case was as shown below.  What does the Zoom 122% mean (global zoom applied to all of the slides?) and even though the Pan values are show 0, I am getting panning in many of the slides--seems if set to 0 I should be getting that.  I guess reading more about how these work would give the answer but it is sure not intuitive.

[SeismicGuy]

I am slowly but surely learning more about using the program by watching the tutorials and also playing with a practice project I have created.  The capabilities are kind of overwhelming and mindboggling to say the least but every time I play around I get a bit more feel for the program.  For the types of travelogue shows I have made with MOTV there are maybe a couple of hundred images consisting of mostly jpg's and several video (mp4, avi, mov, etc.). 

For all of the JPG's I usually go mainly with variations of Ken Burns effect (randomized) along with some "custom" multi-image slides that I create (e.g., a carousel of a few images or two to four overlapping and/or moving images).  The timeline in MOTV clearly distinguished between "slides" that are jpg's and slides that are videos and I would obviously just apply the Ken Burns effects to the jpg's skipping the videos (not even sure I I would be able to apply Ken Burns to a video). In PTE AV the timeline does not clearly distinguish between jpg and video "slides".  So if I select ALL the slides to apply Ken Burns is the program smart enough to skip the video slides?  Or do I need to carefully de-select the video slides.  If the latter it would be nice to have something in the timeline that clearly shows the slide is really video (like what it does in the layout view where it shows a filmstrip effect.