Timecode markers

[nickunwin]

Hi Igor,

The following might be a useful idea for people wanting to easily and quickly create audio timesync'd slideshows... especially those who create slideshows for weddings, engagement sessions etc

Provide a facility for the user to listen to the audio track on it's own (no slides etc). While listening to the audio, the user can add a timecode marker by clicking an add button (or pressing a key - eg spacebar). This would make it easy for someone to put markers in on beats, or at key points during the audio track. once they finished listening, they could then add slides to the project and choose an option to sync slides using these timecode markers. The slides would then be distributed along the timeline with their durations set by each corresponding timecode marker. - eg slide one starts with the music, slide 2 with timecode #1, slide 3 with timecode #2 and so on.

This would make it very easy for a user to sync music & slides together. OK, the sync may not be exact, but for someone doing quick repeated 'production' shows (such as weddings), then it would be a great timesaver.

A couple of other ideas to add to this one:

+ Allow the timecode markers to be saved as a template (then the songs can be re-used again easily without having to redo the listen/mark each time.).

+ Add the abilty to generate an intial set of random motion effects across the entire timeline using the pan/zoom and cross-fade effects as default. Again, this would save a lot of time in the initial setup of the slideshow for people making lots of them. They would only then need to review each slide and make sure that the pan/zoom effect was centred on the right 'focus' - eg a persons face.

Feel free to e-mail me if you want any further explanation of the above!

[alrobin]

The following might be a useful idea for people wanting to easily and quickly create audio timesync'd slideshows... especially those who create slideshows for weddings, engagement sessions etc

Provide a facility for the user to listen to the audio track on it's own (no slides etc). While listening to the audio, the user can add a timecode marker by clicking an add button (or pressing a key - eg spacebar). This would make it easy for someone to put markers in on beats, or at key points during the audio track. once they finished listening, they could then add slides to the project and choose an option to sync slides using these timecode markers. The slides would then be distributed along the timeline with their durations set by each corresponding timecode marker. - eg slide one starts with the music, slide 2 with timecode #1, slide 3 with timecode #2 and so on.

This would make it very easy for a user to sync music & slides together. OK, the sync may not be exact, but for someone doing quick repeated 'production' shows (such as weddings), then it would be a great timesaver.

Nick,

These are good ideas, but I just want to point out that Igor has set things up so that you can go one better than this. Start with a new show (no images added). Add your music selection in Project Options. Add a couple of slides to the slide list. Now open the timeline, select waveform. Next highlight all slides except the first one and select "Delete point". Next, click "Play", and whenever a beat occurs, or wherever you want to add a timecode marker, click "add transition", and a transition point for the next slide will be placed on the timeline. This way you can not only add markers where you want the slides to start, but the images themselves will also be placed at the same time.

[nickunwin]

Neat Al, it helps a lot

I've been trying this out today and it works well. I would still like to see a timecode marker facility added though - along with the ability to save the markers and music to a template file. This would allow key points to be stored for individual tracks and would really help speed up slideshow production if the same track was to be re-used with different pictures - eg in slideshows for weddings and portrait shooting. For those sort of shows you want a quick and easy setup, picking music and just dropping in the right number of slides...

I've been testing out a couple of slideshow generators today with a view to seeing how quick & easy it is to produce a PZR show, and how easily those shows can be dropped to DVD and other media like iPod/Web/WindowsMobile. In comparison with a few other competing products (not ProShow I hasten to add), PTE has a few areas which can be made slicker & quicker. PTE is great for producing tightly integrated one-off shows which you can spend hours & days on (the other prog's don't come close to PTE in this respect), but unfortunately PTE is not so great for producing repetitive shows which need producing in a short time . Adding the timecodes & the abilty to automatically generate an initial set of PZR values would really add value to PTE.

[frets3]

Hi, Nick,

If you want repeatable slideshow formats, check out TheDom's template technique. He uses numbered, dummy slides associated with pan, zoom, and rotate values. The user simply numbers his/her own slides and substitutes them for the dummies. This is an easy way to clone slideshows with repetitive animation characteristics.

http://www.thedom.fr/share/links.php

Best wishes,

David