Smooth sound transitions for concatenated shows

[jt49]

Working with PTE's soundtrack is not always easy. Example: When playing a show with unsynchronized audio, the soundtrack typically stops abruptly when the show reaches its end.

It would be fine if in all cases (synchronous and asynchronous) we had an option for the soundtrack not to stop at the show's end but to go on playing for a couple of seconds while fading out. This should also work in cases of concatenated shows (Run slideshow at exit). It would give us the opportunity to concatenate shows with crossfades of their soundtracks. It would be a great feature for people working with live presentations, which often are manually controlled, and where they would like to have smooth transitions in the soundtrack.

[Tonton Bruno]

Just put a dark slide of 2 seconds at the end of your show, and this problem is gone.

[jt49]

I do not agree.

Recommendation: Look at the manual of a well-known German competitor an search for "Speaker Support"

[Tonton Bruno]

Sorry, I don't know very well competitors neither their nationalities.
I just use PTE for the slide shows and Resolve for the video shows.
In each case I start my project with a dark screen at the beginning and a dark screen at the end.
Then for the sound, sometimes I decide to modulate it at the beginning and at the end, sometime no.
As I write less than ten PTE projects a year, I have no need for an automation for the last slide.
This is just my feeling. Maybe you write several projects every week and you need to automate tasks I perform only once a month or less.
Perhaps the german product you mentioned is more suited to your needs than PTE.

[rosy]

5 hours ago, Tonton Bruno said:

Just put a dark slide of 2 seconds at the end of your show, and this problem is gone.

+1 Rosy.

[jkb]

each show should be standalone.
if the sound runs through from one to another it could be difficult for the audience to know which sound belongs to which.

It also would not give them time to appreciate what they have just watched before moving onto the next.
Also for competitions, we would never want the sound to continue across shows - each show is judged separately.

Maybe for a manual performance that is just entertainment, you may want it, but could this not be controlled using the volume on your output?

Fade one down then the next up.

JIll

[jt49]

On 10/3/2021 at 10:14 PM, jkb said:

 ... Maybe for a manual performance that is just entertainment, you may want it ...

To me, this sounds a bit derogative. But we should keep in mind that a full length presentation with live commentary (e.g. "Famous Gardens in England") typically is much more successful regarding public interest than an (often motley) collection of short synchronized sequences (e.g. "The best AV-Shows from Challenge 321").

I am sorry to say, but it really is a pity that the audio part in PTE does not support live presentations in an appropriate way. My suggestion would be helpful to overcome this deficiency.

Let me outline my idea with a very, very simple example. I consider a show with 20 slides, and I want to speak live during the presentation. The show has to run with manual control, in order to give the speaker the freedom he needs. Of course, I want to run background music during my speech. As the music should play continuously, the soundtrack must not be synchronized to the slides. In this situation the points of time when the transitions between the slides take place are obviously unpredictable (in advance), they change from one performance to the next one. Parallel to the transition from slide 10 to 11 I want to change the music to a second music clip, and I would like to have the audio transition as a crossfade. I don't see any way to manage this simple task in PTE. I can only cut the show into two pieces (two separate shows), and concatenate them (Run slideshow on exit). In this case I can have the change of music at the correct position. But: The problem is that the first music clip will not fade out but will stop abruptly. There will not be a smooth transition (crossfade) in the audio part. If PTE would offer the feature I am asking for, it would be so easy. It would be possible to realize a similar speaker support as we find it in m.objects.

Presently I work with a single PTE presentation (also in much more complicated situations), and I outsource all asynchronous audio. This audio runs using a portable version of foobar2000 that I control via PTE using batch scripts. It works, and if you do it in an appropriate manner, it even runs without noticeable latency. When working with two programs, there are other problems to be solved, but in the end it works. All in all it is not a solution that I could recommend for everyone, and it would be much better if I could do everything within PTE (and not with m.objects ).

JT (from Munich)

[jkb]

4 hours ago, jt49 said:

To me, this sounds a bit derogative

Sorry JT it was not meant to be.

From your explanation above I can now see what you are trying to do.
Normally I wouldn't run background music when talking.
I would set up my project to have manual contol - wait for key press - with no music,
then maybe have a section with synced sound running automatically, then go back to manual control with no music.

At present I can't see a way of acheiving what you want to do in PTE.

But I can see some problems with what you are asking for.
What happens if your talk lasts a long time, maybe due to questions from the audience.
Your first piece of music could run out, unless it is much longer than you would normally need, or do you loop it?.

At the point you arrive at your change over, the first piece may not blend harmoniously with the second.
I know PTE is very good at doing a crossfade, but if the 2 pieces are very different it can still sound bad.

I am sure you chose your music with care, but it could still cause problems.

The only way I can see at the moment is to use a separate physical volume control and to manually fade one down & the next up.
I am not familiar with foobar so maybe this is what you are doing.

 

Jill

 

[Tonton Bruno]

16 hours ago, jkb said:

Normally I wouldn't run background music when talking.

I would set up my project to have manual contol - wait for key press - with no music,
 

This is excactly the way I use PTE.

I do public lectures on history of art, 9 per year, for a cultural association and 30 to 50 persons at each lecture.

I never put any music on my shows. I use a head microphone and an active monitor for the voice.

The attendees are not young and if I add background music, they have difficulties to clearly understand what I say.

[jt49]

Jill, thanks for your remarks. Let's have a look at your "problems":

1. Music clip is too short:
The standard solution offered by m.objects is looping the clip, and I do the same in my workaround using foobar2000. But of course I can avoid this problem. The easiest way is to choose a rather long piece of music. But if it is rather short, I open the clip in Audacity and make it much longer by producing a few repetitions in the middle part of the music. With a minimum of musicality this should not be a real problem to take care for melody and beat. All in all not really a problem.

2. Pieces may not blend harmoniously:
This problem naturally may occur when blending an asynchronous clip into another one (synchronous or asynchronous), because you cannot plan the precise position of the crossfade in advance. But even a bad crossfade is better than working with an abrupt stop of the first clip (the only solution offered by PTE). We also have to take into account that a speaker's background music runs at a rather low volume. By playing with blending times and the length of the overlap you can avoid extremely awful transitions. In my practical cases everything worked well (when using my workaround with outsourced asynchronous audio).

3. Manual audio transitions
You are right that with PTE you have to perform a manual fade down (to avoid the abrupt stop), followed by a manual fade up. So, in a full length presentation, the speaker has to hurry several times to the mixing console to do so. This is far from being a professional solution, and a trap for making mistakes. I would not recommend this method. The audio transition should work without manual interaction.

Summary: For shows with asynchronous audio, in particular for live presentations with background music additional features are needed.

[Tonton Bruno]

I made a trial, putting two short tunes on the main track, and using fade in, fade out on each track.

In "Project options_Audio" I activate "Loop the soundtrack".

In Project options_Control" I choose "Stop show" as "Action after the last slide".

When I run the project, the two clips from the audio track loop gently with nice crossfades.

At the end,, the music continues to play and loop, and I stop it exactly when I wish depressing the Esc key.

 

 

[jt49]

Bruno, I'm sorry to say that this construction is not of much use for supporting live presentations. I do not want to loop the whole soundtrack. I want to see asynchronous audio (somewhere in the middle of the show) that hands over to some other audio that follows at a particular timeline position (not at a fixed time!). The audio that follows could either be synchronous or asynchronous. The overall requirement can be described as follows:

PTE should support the construct of an asynchronous audio clip that starts at a predefined cursor position on the timeline. It should run even when the show comes to a stop (e.g. Wait for key press to start next slide). If needed, it should loop. And when the cursor reaches a second predefined position on the timeline, the clip should start to fade out. It is a kind of dynamic fade out of asynchronous audio.

Having this feature would require to have the coexistence of synchronous and asynchronous audio in one show. I had a private discussion with Igor on this subject some time ago. It seems that WnSoft does not like to spend the effort. A strong reason may be that the coexistence of two types of audio would make the user interface more complicated.

The feature I am asking in this topic does not go that far, but it would give us an easy method (rather a workaround) to implement the desired feature described above. The idea is to split the overall show into concatenated pieces (separate shows), each of which can either have only synchronous or only asynchronous audio. But for this method I would need smooth audio transitions from one piece (show) to the next one.

It is a pity that all people (I know) who work with live presentations either use Wings or m.objects.

[Tonton Bruno]

Now I undestand your very particular requet.

Definitively PTE can't do that and I'm sure that very few users would ever use this very particular trick.

You'd better stay with the german product which allows such a thing, because it is unique and you will never encounter this feature on any other software.

In my country, people who work with live presentations use Powerpoint.

[jt49]

I would not regard Powerpoint as suitable for professional multivision. Professional photographers/adventurers/travel journalists etc. often use Wings , but there are others as well (not using Powerpoint).

I am in the lead of an AV club in Munich. My observation is that there is a tendency to go from short synchronized AV productions to live presentations on travels and other stuff. And for this kind of productions you need speaker support. My first priority still is classical AV, but I have just started to produce live presentations, as well. So I highly recommend to support this tendency, in particular if it can be done without too much effort. I really do not understand that people in this forum oppose suggestions that do not spoil their interests, and which would contribute to enlarge PTE's scope.

In the next issue of our German Magazine "AV-Dialog" there will be an article on speaker support in PTE (written by myself); and it describes how to do it using external software in addition to PTE. It would would very fine if could write a sequel reporting on progress at a later point of time.

[Tonton Bruno]

There is clearly a need for live presentations of travels with music in background, and mainly in the private domain, when we present our last trip to friends or family.

Of course the transitions between views are performed manually.

Lets say that in this case, we divide our show in 3 or 10 seqences, each sequence having 3 to 10 views, and bringing its own music in background.

It would be nice to be able under PTE to assign a clip  to a sequence, containing 1 to n views, and playing this clip in a loop, as we progress manually.

When we pass from a sequence to the next one, we would need an automatic "fade in, fade out" for the sound.

I presume that it is what you wish, and I admit it would be very nice.

 

 

[Laszlo K]

With one program you want to control a narrator, video timing and audio volume and timing? That is the situation of a person with a mixing board. Can not expect from one program.

For years I used to handle a Photoclubs presentation of competitions and presentations at times between 25-35 shows for over 200 viewers. I have never had an issue by having a small good quality audio mixer with good cables / connectors next to a high powered laptop. Yes it needs a pair of ears and knowing where to start and stop things,also to know the equipment and understand cues. Otherwise you will need to do the editing like the big boys do ahead the time and just press the start button and automaton will take over.

Laszlo