Odd Duration Phenomenon

[SeismicGuy]

As usual I am creating a slideshow that contains a combination of jpg images and short mp4 clips.  When looking at the Slides line I can see the durations of each item I place in the line.  My typical jpg duration is set at 7 seconds and the mp4 durations are whatever they happen to be.  But I I discovered an interesting thing happening and not sure why.  There was a jpg of 7 seconds followed by an mp4 of about 16 seconds followed by other jpgs of 7 seconds.  Not sure what I did but when I closed the program and then opened it up at a later date to resume the 16 second duration got applied to the jpg that was just before the mp4 and the mp4 duration changed to 7 seconds.  Glancing through the Slide line view I noticed this happening to several of the mp4s (i.e., the durations changed to 7 seconds) and adjacent jpgs changed to the duration that the mp4's originally had.  Not sure if I am describing this clearly but I wonder if there was something I did to cause this or some other weird glitch.  So I am having to go through and remove and replace the various mp4s and then adjust the jpg durations. 

Addendum:  Just noticed this happened EVERY time there was a mp4 next to a jpg.  Some how the jpg right before the mp4 took on the time of the original mp4 and the mp4 took on the time of the jpg (7 seconds).

Help!

[cagney123]

Hello SeismicGuy. Tried to duplicate your problem. Everything worked fine. Are you making adjustments while in Timeline view? That will mess things up. I always make changes in Slide view and only use timeline view for adjusting music timing to Slideshow view. Hope this helps.

[SeismicGuy]

I don't think it was anything to do with the Timeline view for a few reasons.  For one I generally work in Slides view and use Timeline only when I am lining up music clips or "quieting" the audio from an mp4.  Also I have done a bunch of slideshows and never had this happen before.  And it does not seem to be a random displacement of the duration but very precise.  By that I mean one of the mp4's that showed a duration of 18.329 changed to a duration of 7 and the adjacent jpg's duration shows 18.329.  It could be that all of the durations moved in one direction or the other as a block which would also acount for this.  But the essential question is what would cause duration(s) to dissassociate from a slide or slides and reattach themselves to a different slide?

[Igor]

Hi,

Let me know:

1. The exact version of PTE AV Studio. Check the About window.

2. Did you apply any slide styles for this project recently?

We observed a similar issue in the old version after use of slide styles. This issue was fixed more than one year ago.

3. Check the Slide Options for each slide in this project. Main tab > "Keep full slide duration" option is ticked or not?

 

[SeismicGuy]

I am not at my computer at the moment but am sure I have been using the very latest version of PTE AV Studio.  Moreover I did not encounter this happening with another slideshow I created a couple of months ago.  I do apply styles and often modify the results a bit via the Objects & Animation screen.  I was aware from previous experience that unintentionally applying a style to an mp4 will result in the duration of that mp4 being changed so I try to carefully exclude them when I apply styles.  Also the "Keep full slide duration" box has always been checked.  Still what happened with my current project is odder in that the durations were not just overwritten but were actually "shifted" somehow by one slide (i.e, the duration that was on slide 1 moved to slide 2 and that on slide 2 moved to slide 3, etc.)  I went through and removed and replaced all of the mp4 slides so durations are now correct again but I wanted to avoid whatever happened to cause this duration shift.

[Igor]

Thanks for the details. We need to know the exact PTE version. 

And if it possible, we need to find a series of actions how to reproduce this issue.

If you use the latest version, it should be very rare problem, because I didn't receive any reports on the similar problem this year.

[SeismicGuy]

Version is 11.0.15 (64-bit) Build 3

[Igor]

Thanks,

Does this problem occur only with one project?

If you have a backup of this project, can you try to reproduce this issue again to find a series of steps which caused the problem?

[SeismicGuy]

As far as I know this has happened only on the current project I have been working on and also it presumably happened all at one time because of something I did.  The only thing I can think of where I have lost proper duration on mp4 slides is if I accidentally select a bunch of slides and apply a Theme, forgetting that some of those slides are mp4.  But when I have done that it is a simple overwrite of the original mp4 duration with the style/theme duration.  But the difference in what happened this time was a shifting of the duration from one slide to another.  I have no clue what I did to cause that but if it happens again I will let you know the steps that caused it.

[Igor]

I apologize for this issue! If you'll find a way to reproduce this issue, please let me know and send me the project file. Thanks for your patience.

[SeismicGuy]

No need to apologize.  It was probably some oddball thing I did that triggered the shift.  I will keep an eye on things though and let you know if it happens again.