Maintaining Slide timing proportions when syncing audio files

[Annie C]

One of the features that I most enjoyed in Proshow Producer was the ability to quickly sync up audio and video. I could easily add or delete slides knowing that any timing adjustments would be maintained on a re-sync. When looking for a new program to replace Producer it was important for me to have a similar feature. However, I find that the sync feature in AV studio comes up short compared to Producer. After spending much time fine-tuning timings in AV studio particularly for those slides with multiple images and complicated arrangements, it’s disheartening to know that were I to sync the audio and the video, all slide timings would get the same duration. Adding or deleting even one or two slides would require more manual effort. So I just avoid that option and consequently spend more time than I want manually syncing.  I was just looking at my implementation of Producer and the function that AV studio is missing is the ability to “keep the proportions the same as existing times” which is an option available on Producer's “Synchronize show to soundtrack menu.” I would hope this feature would be available in a future release, or maybe someone knows of a work around.

[jt49]

I hope that I got it correctly: You have a (synchronized) sequence of slides, and then you delete 1 or 2 slides. Now you want to have a function that extends the new sequence to the original duration while all slide durations, animations, transition times etc. keep the proportions.

Sorry, but in most cases I would not regard this procedure as a good one. Typically you synchronize your transition points according to the music. A natural way is to place them at beat 1 in the corresponding bar. This order would be destroyed when you would apply the function that you want to see (and which you regard as a "missing" one). The transition points would be shifted to (more or less) random positions relative to the music. At least people with an education in music or dancing would not like it that much.

On the other hand. I really would like to see the feature of stretching or compressing a sequence of slides (while keeping proportions), but only if the soundtrack could stretched or compressed at the same time. This would keep the transition points at the correct positions, and we could modify the overall duration of a given sequence without loosing synchronization.

[SeismicGuy]

I am also interested in techniques that folks use to re-synchronize audio when making alterations to the slides after the fact.  For example I am essentially done with my 46-minute latest travelogue that includes 309 slides (some of which are short video mp4), with about 20 audio pieces (give or take).  I arranged the audio segments to coincide with pertinent slides and there are fade-ins, fade-outs, crossfades, etc.  Some are on the same track and some are on different tracks.  Now my wife wants me to add a slide here and remove a slide there and shorten some of the video segments by a couple of seconds, etc.  Perhaps with a single track it is possible to lock the beginning and end of the audio to particular slides (maybe?) and I would think that if you add or delete a slide the program would automatically adjust the durations of the original slides to compensate--yes? no?

But I think for my case I will just have to "brute force" it and somehow manually realign the various audio clips to match the revised slide configuration unless there are some tricks I am not aware of.

[jkb]

you can easily Link Audio clips to Slides.
Click a Slide, then right-click on the audio clip & select Link.
You can Link Audio on multiple tracks to the same slide.

Then if you move the position of the slide the audio will move with it.

To add or delete slide, but keep the same overall positioning, then do it in Timeline view.
If you add or delete in Slide view, then the following slides will move along.

 

PTE is great for syncing audio as you can get it so accurate.
Doing it manually is both the fun & skill of making an AV personal

Jill

 

[SeismicGuy]

I will play around with the linking but may or may not be a working solution for my case.  Here is an excerpt of the timeline where I have one audio fading out and cross fading with another and then that happens again shortly later.  If I drop another slide in say between 54 and 55 it will screw things up unless I position the audio clips I think, unless I can link both the beginning and ends of audio clips to specific slides.  But I suspect it could just be easier for me to manually do things like this.

[jkb]

If you drop a new slide - in Timeline - between 54 & 55 then you will have to adjust it's duration so it doesn't overlap 55.

Slide 55 will remain at the same position as now
All the Audio will remain as it is.

You can Link the start of an audio clip to any Slide, but you can reposition it once linked.

So if linked to slide 55 & you drop in a new Slide before 55. That new Slide will become Slide 55 & the original 55 will become 56, the audio will now Link to Slide 56

If you want your new slide to have a longer duration then the current gap, then you will have to move the other slides along the Timeline.
This where Linking the audio clips is needed if you want their relationships to the following slides to remain unchanged.

You appear to be using the auto crossfade & adjusting the volume maually as well.
In most cases the auto crossfade works extremely well without needing extra manual adjustment, but it obviously depends on what music you are using.

Jill

[SeismicGuy]

Yes the crossfade/volume adjust was because I originally had the clips on different tracks and was not sure how or if I was going to overlap them.  Once I decided on the crossfade I was just to lazy to get rid of the audio keypoints and adjustments.  

I think no matter how you look at it placing a slide in or removing a slide or any other timing changes with the slides requires a lot of work in readjusting the audios.  Moving one right or left requires that the ones following down the line (or up the line) will also need to be moved in a case like mine where I want specific clips to start with  specific slides

[jkb]

That is why you link the audio to those specific slides. It will then move with them.

Jill

[SeismicGuy]

I am playing around with a short example to see if what you suggest is true and so far no luck.  In my "test" case I have one clip placed at slide 1 and the placed  at slide 12 with a crossfade overlap (see first image below). When I right-click the second clip and hit "link to slide 12" the crossfade disappears and I cannot easily manipulate things to get the crossfade back.

 

 

[jkb]

yes the crossfade will disappear.

But you can move the Slide to keep it in sync & then unlink the Audio to get your crossfade back.

I do it all the time when buildings AV's & have some very complex soundtracks.

Jill

[SeismicGuy]

Yes but the point I was making is that, though no fault of the program, there is a bunch of fiddling you need to do in some fashion when dealing with syncing audios to the slides, especially when making any changes that alter the time.  Maybe not such a big deal in a 5 or 10 minute project with only one or two audio clips but a chore when dealing with a 45 minute project with a bunch of particularly timed audio clips--here is an incomplete portion of my audio characteristics for my current project:

 

 

[jkb]

You can't expect the program to do everything for you automatically.
It doesn't know what you want to move unless you tell it.

It really is quite easy once you get used to it.
If a lot of your sound is overlapping then just linking the first clip will move the rest along.

If clips are independant then you need to link each.

It may be better to build up your slides first, then add the audio if you are going to be continually adding/deleting/moving them.

 

Maybe try to get used to it on a short piece first then do it on your longer show.

Jill

 

[SeismicGuy]

Yeah the key thing is to have a precise workflow which I do not have with these vacation projects I put together.  I am busy pulling jpg and mp4 from 3 or 4 different sources (my phone, my camera, wife's phone, and phones of the couple we travel with) and try to cull down the jpgs and mp4's to be used.  At the same time I am downloading music that seems suitable to the locations and start lining them up in the timeline.  I keep going back and forth between slide arrangement, maybe combining slides into a multi-slide style, cutting/splicing mp4 clips using a separate program, sometimes excerpting portions of the audio using Audacity, etc. etc.

I do try to work on smaller portions of the overall travelogue based on the location rather than trying to tackle the entire travelogue at once.  But I sometimes find myself jumping from one portion to the next as some idea hits me.  Then finally when I think I am done there are always last second tweaks.  

Probably better that the program does NOT automatically try to do any of these things and I love the customizations and effects that you can achieve with the program.  The one single thing that I wish the program would do automatically is to "normalize" the volume across all of the audio clips.  This happened with a couple of audios I wanted to use for my project where the overall volume of those audios was much lower than the volume of the other clips.  And trying to move the volume above 100% does not do anything in PTE.  So I needed to take the offending audios, load them into Audacity, increase the gain, and then export those to be used in PTE. Not that big of a deal but the program I had been using for these travelogues had a "normalize" button that would analyze and balance out all of the audio clips automatically and the results were excellent.