Finally sinking in

[SeismicGuy]

Well after my various questions, watching some tutorials, playing around and digging to the various operations available in the program things are finally starting to click a bit and I feel I have gotten over some of the initial hurdles.  I think part of the program was the lingo and the interactions and overlaps between the actions available in a slideshow.  My understanding at this point is that the Slide Options button is primarily focused on the transitions while the Objects and Animation are focused on what is going on in the slide itself.  Then the Styles button allow you to apply different effects to particular (or all) slides and the Themes button allows you to apply a set of styles to a number of slides.

I do have a few questions.  

1. If a slide(s) has had a style or theme applied to it, I would expect that I can still hit the Objects and Animation button and do some tweaks to that slide while keeping the same basic behavior.  For example, I tend to mainly stick with Ken Burns effect on my slides but it could be that for one particular slide where the Theme has been applied I might like a little more pan and/or zoom.  So this would be doable while at least starting out by having the Ken Burns effect already applied to that slide (basically I am only tweaking that effect)?
2. Playing around it looks to me like a Theme can still be applied to only a single slide.  For example the Ken Burns effect shows up in Themes but not Styles but the Ken Burns Effect theme has 8 styles (basically just variations on the pan and zoom).  So even if I am just looking at a single slide why would I not just pick the Ken Burns Effect from the Themes button since it does not as obviously show up on the Styles button.  I tried this and it seems to work fine by just applying a Theme to a single slide.  
3. I am also trying to play around with having multiple images on a slide and see that there are a number of Styles either provided in the program or downloadable from users.  I am working with one of those now Barry Beckham's "2 Images 001" that has a blurred background image and two images floating into view on top.  I am finding that I can use that as my starting point and then do my own tweaks while still keeping the same basic overall effect.  So is it anticipated that working this way is "correct"--using some style as a basic starting point and then doing tweaks on that style?  Saves a lot of time without starting from scratch

Anyway, feel free to correct any of the description above in terms of my understanding of these things.

Doug

 

[wideangle]

Hi Doug

You now seem to have grasped the gist of what Styles and Themes are all about.

Yes you can apply a Style then go into the Objects and Animations window to   tweak it and modify its effect. (It’s also useful just to go into O&A to get an idea of how a Style works).

If you modify a Style to suit your needs, you could maybe take it one stage further and define a new Style to include your modifications.

Regards

wideangle

 

[stranger2156]

Learning from the parsing of ready-made base styles or from user styles is a good way. But it can be ineffective without basic knowledge of the basics of the program. If you had a lot of experience, for example, with ProShow Producer, like some of the users on this forum, then it would not be difficult for you to participate in PTE. In the absence of such experience, in my opinion, the analysis of other people's styles should be combined with the study of video tutorials from advanced users of PTE. First, you need to understand the philosophy of the program and the principles of creating a slide show in it.

Paul

[SeismicGuy]

Wideangle--yes, I have played around with applying a Style and then going into the Objects and Animations window to see what is actually going on with the image(s).

Paul--I have fairly extensive experience with MemoriesOnTv which has many of the same capabilities but presented in a much simpler fashion.  I would use many of their individual image and "multi-picture" presets but almost never without doing tweaks after the presets have been initially applied.  In fact the best way to learn the details was to investigate and/or tweak the slide after a preset has been applied.  

[mhwarner]

2 hours ago, SeismicGuy said:

1. Playing around it looks to me like a Theme can still be applied to only a single slide.  For example the Ken Burns effect shows up in Themes but not Styles but the Ken Burns Effect theme has 8 styles (basically just variations on the pan and zoom).  So even if I am just looking at a single slide why would I not just pick the Ken Burns Effect from the Themes button since it does not as obviously show up on the Styles button.  I tried this and it seems to work fine by just applying a Theme to a single slide.  

 

Actually there are several styles in the "Basic" tab of styles which are "Ken Burns" styles.  They are just not called by that name.  There are 4 "Pan" styles and 2 "Zoom" styles (at the bottom). They do the same thing.  The only thing you would want to be careful of is to either set the Project Options under Defaults for the slides to "Cover" or to set it in the O&A screen for individual slides if you haven't applied it to the entire project.  The Ken Burns theme automatically sets the individual slides to "Cover" but the Basic styles do not.  If you're using images that you have already cropped to 16:9, then it's not a problem.  But with 3:2 or other ratio images if you don't set them to "Cover", you will not fill the whole screen -- even if you do get the "Ken Burns" motion you are looking for from the Basic styles.

[SeismicGuy]

Thanks.  Here is another question I just stumbled on and am stuck.  I went to Objects and Animation and am working with two images.  I played around with what I wanted to do (basically have the first image fade out to reveal the one below) and the preview seems fine.  HOWEVER I cannot figure out how to add the resulting 2-image custom creation back into the slideshow I am working with.  Unless I am missing something I do not even see a "save as" option anywhere.  Am I missing something?

[SeismicGuy]

Think I just figured it out although the answer seems very unexpected.  The two slides still show up separately on the Slides view but my "creation" shows up as a single slide on the Timeline view and it seems to work correctly.

[jt49]

I don't know what you might expect. If you are working with the O&A editor, you are working within a single slide, which is to be considered as a kind of container for objects (images, videos, ...).

[SeismicGuy]

I think I might have done something wrong and it comes down to the way I created what I would refer to as a "multi-image" slide.  The first time I think I selected the first slide, went to Objects and Animation, ADDED the second slide (which happened to be next to the first) added another Key Frame, did the tweaks and that was it.  The result shows up as a single slide both on the Slide View and the Timeline.  But I guess my mistake is that the Second slide (that was used to make the multi-image slide) still shows up as a second slide following the multi-image slide.  I guess that is as intended and all I need to do (if I want) is to delete that second slide from the Slide View (or Timeline).

The second way I tried this probably makes more sense.  I first inserted a Blank Slide and chose the two images I wanted to use for that slide.  It looks to me like those images do not necessarily need to come from the File List window but can actually come from anywhere on your computer.  When I was done doing it this way the multi-image slide (that had been an inserted Blank slide) shows up as expected.  

So it looks like my "mistake" in the first attempt was not removing that second slide from the Slide or Timeline view since it was already integrated into the multi-image slide. I guess my confusion again originates from the way this type of thing was handled in the MOTV program I've been using for the last 15 years.  You could start forming the multi-picture slide by first selecting the slides in the Slide view or Timeline view, hit the "multi-picture" button, select the effect you wanted, then the program would render this into a single mp4 slide and insert it in the program while at the same time DELETING the individual slides used to create the multi-image slide.  Of course you could always re-insert the individual images as slides again if you wish.  

[SeismicGuy]

Here is another minor annoyance but I am sure there is an answer.  My slideshows typically have background music often made up of several selections downloaded from the internet or from music I already have.  With MOTV you these would just all be on one "track" one after the other and you could do whatever trimming/manipulation you wanted to do for each of the selections along that track.  In addition you could do some limited manipulation of any audio that is contained in an mp4 video slide (fade, mute, etc.).  You can do the same thing with PTE AV but the difference is that you have to Separate the audio from the mp4 slides first and they show up as separate tracks.  If you have a bunch of mp4 slides in the show you get quite an unwieldy "thick" panel that shows each and every audio piece on a separate track (see the image for what I mean).  I don't really see a reason to have such a wide display of the audio, especially when the audio from one slide is far away from any other separated audios.  So I tried to move the right small track upwards to condense the view thinking it would end up on the same track as the next audio up.  But what happened was that the track did go up but the other one went down so the overall width of the audio track area did not shrink.  I figure there is a way to have the several small separated audio tracks on a single track but not quite obvious.

[SeismicGuy]

Sorry again--just figured it out.  No need to "move track up" just click the audio and slide it up.  Duh again!

[wideangle]

Hi Doug

The best advice I can give to you is to forget about MOTV completely. You seem to be trying to do things in PTE AV Studio by following methods you used in MOTV, and they don’t work. 
You are just ending up being confused and frustrated, which is not a good start!

For example, you say that to create a multi-image slide in MOTV you first start by putting all the images in the slide list then go from there.
That is not how you do things in PTE. All you do is start with a single slide in the slide list (think of it as a container). You then go into O&A and add your images or videos etc into this one slide, to create your multi-image slide. As you add items, you can control their behaviour in a precise way by using key frames if you wish.  
Everything you do in O&A immediately becomes active in your slideshow. You don’t need to do a Save of any sort at that point.

You can continue to develop your slideshow by adding more slides (containers) to the slide list. Each of these slides can be a single image, a single video, or multiple combinations created as described above.

Again, with your audio comment you say “In MOTV you would...................”! If I were you I would spend a short time watching some of the videos that are around, on the basics, just to get started properly, rather than misleading yourself.
Don’t forget the online User Guide as well - plenty of guidelines there.

Regards

wideangle

[SeismicGuy]

Hey Wideangle--after 10+ years of using a certain tool or process it just gets ingrained and subsequent alternatives are naturally compared against the first. That being said I am not saying that PTE needs to have a look and feel like MOTV (or any of the other programs out there that users have migrated from).  HOWEVER it is just comforting to know that everything I could do in MOTV has an analogous procedure in PTE.  The multi-image slide thing is really almost exactly the same but just presented in a different manner.  You could hit the "multi-pictures slide" button and move slides in afterwards or you can pick the slides first and then hit the "multi-pictures slide" button.  After the slide was created you could double-click it and do more editing and add more slides or remove/replace slides.  The key nice usability thing was that there was a clearly marked "multi-pictures slide" button to begin with and usability is a big thing for me.

Doug

[wideangle]

Ok, but that’s water under the bridge, as they say. Get to grips with PTE AV and you won’t regret it!

Regards

wideangle