How to indicate paused state?

[karlg]

I have a "manual" show. That is, I have set "Stop at the end of this slide" for all the slides in the show so that the viewer can decide when to go to the next picture (or pan/zoom location in a picture) using the keyboard or mouse. Is there some way I can set my show so it will give some indication to the viewer when the show is in the paused state? For example, I would like to have the Navigation Bar hide while the show is doing something (transitioning, panning, or zooming) but then pop up when it has stopped at the end of a slide. But it seems that the program only provides the OPPOSITE functionality: you can set the navigation bar so it will appear at the START of a slide instead of at the END of a slide. Or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

Karl

[Lin Evans]

Hi Karl,

Let me try to answer some of your questions. You can do this without putting the stop at the end of the slides but rather by using the Navigation Bar. The "Pause" (a set of parallel vertical lines) control when pressed, changes to an Arrow pointing to the right. Once this state is achieved, you can press the forward arrow, back arrow, etc., and the show will remain paused on each slide until the user decides to either go to another slide using the forward or back button or again press the "Pause" at which time whatever the preset time for the slides will take over and the show becomes automatic again.

If you set the navigation bar to appear for a preset time then fade out, you can then navigate with the PgUp PgDn and Space Bar or use one of the Remote Controls designed for PowerPoint. So the Navigation Bar can remain hidden until the mouse is moved the re-appear showing that the "Pause" is in the "locked" position to remind the viewer that it's set up on full manual. When the Pause shows the parallel bars it's on auto-advance, when showing the arrow it's on manual.

The only intervention needed to visually determine the state would be for the user to move the mouse as long as they use the PgUp, PgDn and Spacebar.

Best regards,

Lin

I have a "manual" show. That is, I have set "Stop at the end of this slide" for all the slides in the show so that the viewer can decide when to go to the next picture (or pan/zoom location in a picture) using the keyboard or mouse. Is there some way I can set my show so it will give some indication to the viewer when the show is in the paused state? For example, I would like to have the Navigation Bar hide while the show is doing something (transitioning, panning, or zooming) but then pop up when it has stopped at the end of a slide. But it seems that the program only provides the OPPOSITE functionality: you can set the navigation bar so it will appear at the START of a slide instead of at the END of a slide. Or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

Karl

[karlg]

Lin

Thanks for the info. I made a copy of my project, removed the "Stop at end of this slide" settings, and tried your solution. However, it doesn't solve my problem because:

1. When the show is in the paused mode (Navigator bar shows the triangle), clicking the arrows on the navigation bar does advance to the next slide, but the transitions, pans, and zooms don't happen. Using the "Stop at end of this slide" technique, I have several slides where I first show a zoomed in portion of the picture and then when the viewer advances the show (clicks the right arrow in the navigator or hits right arrow, PgDn, etc), the show zooms out to show the full picture. For other slides, I do the opposite: show the whole picture and then when the viewer advances the show, zoom in to a portion of the picture. In other cases I show a color version of a picture and when the viewer advances the show, it slowly fades into a B&W version of the same shot. In other cases I show a full pano and when the viewer advances the show, it zooms to the left end of the pano then scrolls across it. None of these work using the "put the show in pause mode" technique. For example, in the case of the pano, you see the whole pano, but when you click the arrow, it doesn't zoom to the end and scroll across, it seems to just do the first increment of the zoom and pan to the end and stays there.

2. If the above problem didn't exist, I would still have the problem that I don't see any way to specify that a show should start in paused mode. That is, letting the viewer have the choice of manual versus automatic (timed) advance would be great, but I'd want the show to default to manual. Come to think of it, I could always have the first slide contain an explanation and put a "Stop at end of this slide" on it. But it would still be nice to have the ability to make a show default to paused mode initially.

Karl

[alrobin]

Karl,

You could make a little text object showing "paused", or some appropriate message, and have it appear right at the end of each slide's appearance on screen, where it stops to wait for the next manual signal. This could be copied to each slide, and then adjusted to the appropriate timing on-screen.

[karlg]

Karl,

You could make a little text object showing "paused", or some appropriate message, and have it appear right at the end of each slide's appearance on screen, where it stops to wait for the next manual signal. This could be copied to each slide, and then adjusted to the appropriate timing on-screen.

Al

Thanks for the suggestion. I was hoping for a solution that doesn't require editing each slide, since my use of PTE is just to whip up slideshows to show to friends. But I'm just learning to use the program and perhaps am overestimating how much work it would take to add such a message at the end of each slide.

Karl

[alrobin]

Well, it would depend on how many slides you had in your presentation, of course.