Simple P2E Design Questions

[Fried]

Hi Everyone

My apologies for what I am sure are simple questions addressed many times. I am at that stage where I know what I want to do but don't know the words to use for my forum searches so I'm having trouble finding the answers. Please bear with me!

SETTING & MATERIAL

The P2E presentation will be performed at the final awards dinner at the Snipe National Championships July 15th for approx. 300 people. The Snipe is a small one-design sailboat. The Nationals are a one-week event held this year in San Diego. If you are interested in seeing what the images will be like, here are some from other Snipe events:

http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing/Snipe/

GOAL

I want to build a simple show in which a series of slides each dissolve in, hold, and dissolve out in sychronization to a set of timing marks on a soundtrack I specify. The dissolve in and dissolve out intervals may vary from zero to three seconds. Some slides may have only a front-end transition, others may have only a back-end transition.

WORKFLOW

1. As suggested on this site, I first mixed my music track as a single MP3 using Audacity to merge the four pieces of music I am using. Perfect tool! The music track is 9:39 in length, the first minute of which are "credits" to the event organizers and so forth. The remaining is three sections of music: fun, slow, fast.

2. This weekend I intend to go through the music track and identify the exact timing marks when I want a slide's fade-in transition to begin, the duration I want the slide to be "up" until its fade out (dissolve) begins, and when I want that dissolve to be complete. I was thinking I would compile this information into a spreadsheet where I would essentially be compiling a script with notes to myself concerning good photo composition ideas at various key points. As the images are created throughout the week I can enter their filenames into this spreadsheet as well. A rough pass through the music indicates approx 90-120 slides will be needed. I will have at leat 900 shots from which I will be able choose the slides for my presentation.

3. I use Photoshop CS2 for all image post processing. I intend to create a uniform 1024x768 JPEG for each image I want to use and put them into one "PresentationImages" folder. I am adept with PS automation, layers, etc. I intend to use Illustrator CS2 to make the credit slides and these can be pretty much completed before I go.

QUESTIONS

From this point, I'm kinda lost in the alternatives.

Q1. I would like to create the timeline template and have dummy slides in place in advance so that I always have a complete presentation in progress. As the presentation images are produced, I want to just drop them into their appropriate spot on the timeline and as the week goes by, the dummies would eventually all get replaced by the presentation images and at any point during the week I can watch the presentation to see what I am missing and how things are coming together. Is this a good way to approach things given the context and if so what are the basic steps to follow for setting it up once I have my spreadsheet, and if not, what should I be thinking instead?

Q2. Simple effect sequence. For each slide, I want to fade it in from black over an interval of time specified on the timeline, hold it for an interval of time, and then fade it to black. Within sections of the music these effect intervals will be pretty consistent (and might range from 0 to 3 seconds) but their location and length will be slightly different depending on the nature of the music. I see how to create the first transition to fade-in the slide. It appears it stays up until the next slide's transition begins but there is no obvious way to make the fade to black between slides. What is the best method for creating this series of transitions? I read something about using Photoshop layers but I am a bit confused how they might be used to do this. I also like the "third image" effect I've seen in a few presentations but I don't quite understand it yet and I'm worried about making things too complicated as this is my first P2E and I will have my hands full just capturing and processing the images throughout the week.

Any help or suggestions you care to make would be most appreciated. In this relatively small world, the presentation will be a huge event. I have known some of these people for 40 years and a presentation of this caliber will be a first for the Nationals and for me. I am very excited about this project and what P2E will make possible!

THANKS!

Fried

Dallas

*** edit ***

For those of you who are P2E wizards, it just occured to me it might be faster and easier for you to simply email me a P2E file you already have that works like this rather than writing out some long explanation. If so, please feel free to email to: ftelliott @ gmail.com or just post it here if that is possible. THANKS AGAIN!

[Alan Lyons]

Hi Fried,

Firstly, welcome to the forum. you will find a wealth of info here on all aspects of Audio Visual presententation, for that is what we are at .

I would suggest for your "dummy slides" you could make single colour slides in photoshop and name these say "Snipe01...." Then when the relevent slide becomes available, you just replace the blank by renaming the slide. i.e. "Snipe01...." blank would be replaced by renaming a photo slide "Snipe01....". The images would then drop in where you need them.

I would be against using the black slide between each image as this breaks up the show and makes it look poor. Also it intails making a dark slide in photoshop, and coppying it between each slide. Imagine if you have 100 slides, a lot of work to make the show look bad.

If you are not sure about a disolve you can see the efect by putting both images as layers in the one canvas in photoshop and play with the transparency slider. If the effect is not pleasng you can either try some other image or use a quick fade to get past that point.

I hope this helps with your project and that you have every success with it,

Regards,

Alan

[Fried]

Hi Alan and thank you for your reply.

The method you outlined with the dummies sounds like what I had hoped to be able to do. I can use slides from previous events to give me a set of "one that looks like this" examples and then build skeleton using those. I was going to also put the actual slide # on each dummy in big letters so it would be obvious which ones I needed to still replace as I got near the end. Necessary?

I take your point about the black between each slide not being effective. I should have made myself clear. There are about 10-12 places in the show I wanted a "no image" break between one musical/thematic passage and the next so I wanted the last slide in the previous passage to just fade out, have a dark interval and then begin the new passage. The rest of the presentation would not use this fade to black idea. What you are saying suggests to me that maybe what I really want aethestically in some (or all) of these points may be just a slower fade-in of the next slide. For those places I still want a complete transition to black I need to fade in a black slide and it should be used sparingly. I think I get it now. I'll experiment with a few dummies.

I appreciate the points made on this forum about overusing transition effects. It drives me nuts when I see PowerPoint presentations in which someone has used every transition in the program and every bullet is a drop bullet. Let the content speak for itself! People love the photos. They are more than enough.

Thanks!

Fried

[Jean-Claude]

You can also use Sy(P) a freeware, download HERE (see also post below)

Install and launch Sy(P)

1- create a new synchronized project

2- assign the sound track you have(menu <View/modify main parameters>, tablesheet <music>)

3- add the number of blank slides you want as dummies slides (generated by Sy(P))

. if you want a fade out to black for each, double the previous number

in the Sy(P) spreadsheet you can see and modify all the parameters attached to each picture

4- select all the pictures: assign FADE effect and a common effect duration to them

5- in a first step, equalize all image durations

6- on each dummy slide you can add a comment or a remark to identify it.

--> you get a whole dummy PTE project with the definitive sound track.

7- save it, you can play it in PTE. For the moment you will see only the comments.

8- When the pictures are available, you load them in Sy(P) picture pool, you select one, and with

the popup menu in the main window or in the spreadsheet or the dark table, you replace the corresponding dummy slide.

9- adjust the durations

10- at the end of process you can erase if you want the comments.

Regards

[Fried]

Wow!!!

[Alan Lyons]

Hi Fried,

Glad to be of help, just one more point on the dark slide. If you intend to break up your sequence like this make sure the sound track does not stop over the black slide.

Darkness + end of music + silences = it's over now+ lets clap and go to the bathroom!

My original idea of dummies was to use single colour slides so when you add the show slides you will see the holes fill in,

Regards,

Alan

[Fried]

Hi Alan

Thank you again for both suggestions. I put together the presentation these past two days using a random set of slides from my image library. I see your point about the blank color slides. I could easily get mesmerized into leaving one of my old slides in there if I'm not careful!