Modifying the length of a show

[cjdnzl]

I have just finished assembling a slide show of about 96 images for a family reunion, tracing the ancestor's lives before emigration to New Zealand 100 years ago. After individually adjusting the screen times for each slide - some are images, others are mini-family-trees which take a bit longer to read - the show duration is 20m 16 sec.

However, the chosen music is a couple of tracks by Telemann, which runs for 21m 46 sec., so I needed to proportionally lengthen each slide duration to stretch the show by 1m 30 sec. to fit the music.

Synchronizing the slides and music would, I think, re-space the slides equally to fit, which I don't want to do, so my question is, is there a facility in PTE to do proportional adjustment of slide times?

I got around the problem this time by writing a console program to read the project.pte file and adjust each slide time by a factor derived from the difference in the timing. This worked well, but it was a kludge.

If such a facility is not in PTE, then how do others adjust complex slide timings to match the music without destroying the timings?

Colin

[fh1805]

My technique would be to adjust the duration of the music files using Audacity sound file editor. I described how to do this in my "Audacity User Guide for AV Workers" See thread here:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7979

[Conflow]

Colin,

I agree with Peter, I always edit the last few seconds of the 'Sound Track' -not physically in Audacity-

instead I use a little "dodge-trick" which may be interest to both of you and is simpler to manage.

It depends on the use of a 'Closing-Screen' with or without 'Objects'.

Assuming you use a Closing 'Splash-Screen' with Title Acknowledgements for Photography and Music

with an Exit Button and Re-Run Button etc;...You simply have to adjust the "Screen-Display Timing"

of that Slide so the Music fades-out within that display time and you are left with that final Slide on

the Monitor.

You can Close the Show or Exit or Re-Run as you choose...there is no time limit as the last Slide stays

on the Screen until you do something.

You open 'Project-Options' select 'Keep Last Slide on Screen' then go to your Last Slide and select

'Customise Slide' and select 'Own Timing' option-->set a time span to overlap the Music ending.

Thats it !

Hope this helps...

Brian.Conflow.

[cjdnzl]

Thanks, Peter and Brian, for your comments above.

Ok about Audacity, I use a sound editor called Goldwave (also free, and in my humble opinion better than Audacity), which can shorten or lengthen tracks, but it involves a pitch change which is quite noticeable. It will do a Fourier Transform on the track to shorten it without a pitch change, but it impairs the music quality of mp3 files, unfortunately.

The other methods, just fading out the music (works for some tracks) or hanging on to the last slide if the timing is only a few seconds out, are not options in this case, as the music is classical orchestra and sounds terrible when just faded out; and as the timing is out by a minute and a half, that's too long to hang onto the last slide. As the show is now, the music ends just as the credits slide fades to black, very 'professional'

But, to me, the whole problem can be solved by proportionally adjusting the slides to fit the music, rather than abusing the music to fit the slides, and my question was as to whether PTE will do this. If not, and that is not a criticism of PTE, I will refine my console program to become a useful tool.

A console program is one which, while written to run under Windows, looks like a text-based DOS program, and runs in a command window; very fast. It looks at any project(n).pte files in the folder, operates on the newest file, increments the number by one and writes out a new project(n+1).pte file which, when selected in PTE immediately injects the new timings for all slides.

Igor uses millisecond timing in the project.pte file, and it is easy to adjust each slide timing. Example; the opening slide in the set was timed for 7 seconds, shown as 7000 milliseconds in the .pte file. Applying the correction factor increased the timing to 7270 milliseconds, a 0.27 second increase unnoticeable when viewing the show.

In this instance, since the music is classical, there is no attempt to synchronize the slides to beats in the music; rather the slides are timed so that an average (?) reader can comfortably read the slide before it changes, and the slide timings vary with slide content. Likewise, evenly spaced slides will not work.

When I think about it, it surprises me that this topic doesn't seem to have been mentioned before now. Has anyone else ever raised this question?

Colin

[Conflow]

Colin,

I mentioned this a couple of times a few years ago in 'Upgrade-Suggestions' to Igor,viz:-

'Numeric Interger Adjustment' of the Timeline in PTE4.12 and 4.48 whereby I suggested

the placement of 1~3 manually placed adjustable 'Tags' adjacent to the running Sound

Cursor which would 'trip' a (specified) Function when it encountered a 'Tag' along its travel.

I had in mind the same thing you are talking about, but making simple Slide/Timeline or

Music/Timeline corrections towards the latter part of any Show.

In other words an (adjustable) Sound-Object akin to the 'Text-Objects' in Object-Editor.

Nothing came of that suggestion, I guess it was before its time.

Brian.Conflow.

[davegee]

Colin,

I agree with you re: Proportional Adjustment.

Another possiblility until this becomes available:

If your track is made up of several other tracks, take the amount required from the middle of the piece and use a crossfade to diguise the missing piece.

This way the integrity of the beginning and end is maintained.

DaveG

[Barry Beckham]

Colin

I think what people are trying to say to you here is that once you have a slide show created, your obviously happy with it. To then spread your slides over an extra minute and a half has the potential to add one and a half minutes of bordom for your viewers.

Your show is already quite lengthy and I appreciate you can get away with this far better with a family show such as you describe. However, you obviously didn't think that spread of time was necessary when you first created the show, so why now.

If you must use the ending of the classical piece use that crossfade option mentioned by DaveG, that is your best option if you think a fade loses something

[cjdnzl]

Colin

I think what people are trying to say to you here is that once you have a slide show created, your obviously happy with it. To then spread your slides over an extra minute and a half has the potential to add one and a half minutes of bordom for your viewers.

Your show is already quite lengthy and I appreciate you can get away with this far better with a family show such as you describe. However, you obviously didn't think that spread of time was necessary when you first created the show, so why now.

Well, the first run is always experimental, and as I said, the timing was done by estimating how long each slide would take to either read or view, so there was nothing sacred about the initial time of 20:16. Another 90 seconds was only a 7% or thereabouts increase.

If you must use the ending of the classical piece use that crossfade option mentioned by DaveG, that is your best option if you think a fade loses something

Thinking about future shows I might make, being able to make modest adjustments to the run time could be very handy. Some reaction to this approach from other readers would be welcome.

Regards,

Colin

[Conflow]

Colin,

I already gave my reply about 'Timing-Intergration' in my Post No:5 above ~ having said that I go

about making my 'Technical-Presentation' or 'Travelogs' as follows:-

1) Draft of Show.

* Firstly I select all my Foto's on the basis of 'subject-matter' to cover the entire Presentation.

* I sort and collate these Images into 'Alpha-Chapters' prefixed as follows: A, B, C, D, E, etc;etc.

* Each Chapter of the Presentation has a unique Theme or Message I want to show and exploit.

* The 'Chapter-Images' are sorted and sequenced into a progressive Theme or Message.

* I never use more than 5 or 6 Chapters.

2) Image Numbering

* The Images are numbered as follows:

* Chapter-A...Image numbers from:- A-00 to A-99 in the sequence A-01, A-03, A-05, A-07 etc

* Chapter-B...Image numbers from: B-00 to B-99 in the sequence B-01, B-03, B-05 etc; etc

* Chapter-C...Image numbers from: C-00 to C-99 the same sequence here also.

* Adding extra Images is easy,simply give it an even number such as A-02 or B-04 etc;etc.

* The Numbers A-00, B-00, C-00 etc are reserved for Image position 'swopping'.

* In any situation one only has to change "1" Digit of any Image to transfer it to another location.

3) Image Proofing

* I run each Chapter as a 'Mini-Show' on a small Image-Viewer (Image-Eye) and decide on timing.

* I check the 'Chapter-Timing' with a (Desktop) Digital Stop-Watch and note its duration.

* I work through each Chapter and record the timings of each.

Now I import Chapter-A into PTE and add the effects to my satisfaction.

I note its "Preview Time-v-Image Time", and so on for each Chapters in turn.

Music & Voice Programs follow the same general planning routine and slot into place fairy easily as all

Image-Timings are well established.

It works very well for me...

Brian.Conflow.

[Henri.R]

Hi Brian, thank you for your 1000th contribution to this forum!

I work more or less in the same way , and that's for movies, tv and for slideshows in the documentary area.

Different to your approach is the soundtrack which for me is (professionally) from the beginning more important; just the reason to ask Igor repeatedly to add more than one track in the timeline...

Henri.

[Conflow]

Hi Henri,

2nd.Timeline ~ Thats an excellent idea, and I can appreciate why from your Professional background.

May I be a little presumptious...imagine if that had 'Positional Tabs' on it ~ either as slideable Markers

or Function Objects (selectable) ~ the combination of those two 'ideas' would really put the Cat among

the Pidgeons.

If that 'Sound-Editing Technology' was introduced into PTE 5.++ one would have the next best thing to

a 'Mini-Mixer Desk'.

Well I expect we can dream..

Brian.Conflow.

P.S. I think the counter got stuck at 1001

[jfa]

Different to your approach is the soundtrack which for me is (professionally) from the beginning more important; just the reason to ask Igor repeatedly to add more than one track in the timeline...

I almost always start by deciding on the soundtrack with only just the idea for a show in mind and work from there. Often I have the soundtrack worked out even before I start shooting the images.

I,m with you 100% Henri. It should be fairly straight forward for Igor to do.

If that 'Sound-Editing Technology' was introduced into PTE 5.++ one would have the next best thing to

a 'Mini-Mixer Desk'.

Well I expect we can dream..

Maybe not Brian. Igor has promised us basic sound editing, (which has slipped a little, now expected in v5.6-v5.7), and with a second track it would make minor corrections and precise adjustments much quicker on the fly.

Dreams can come true!!

[cjdnzl]

Well, I'm amazed at the completely different ways to go about assembling a show. I would never have thought about starting with the music, and even now, having read that some do this, I couldn't do it that way.

To my - probably strange - way of thinking, the music is there to add support and texture to the slides, rather than the opposite.

My modus operandi is either to take shots on a particular subject with a show in mind, or to assemble images I already have into a show sequence, say, from holiday or travel images.

I arrange the order of the images by considering the 'flow' from one image to the next, not necessarily in chronological order, and cropping so that the centre of interest of successive images doesn't jump all over the screen from one image to the next.

At some stage in the process, a piece or pieces of music may suggest it/them/self/s, I guess at least partly from the effect the images are having on me as they are shown.

Implicit in all this is the timing is set by the slides, and the music, when chosen, should fit within, say, 5 to 10% of the show duration, and then I fine-tune either the music or the slide timings so the music ends just as the show fades to black after the last slide. I dislike fading the music away without reaching a cadence, or natural ending. Just trailing off in the middle of a musical phrase jars with me, and to my mind is amateurish.

With a number, possibly the majority of shows, the slide timings are all the same, or nearly so, and synchronizing the slides to the music in PTE will do the job easily - but note this move adjusts the slide timings to fit the music, not the opposite. In some shows, however, like the one outlined in my post which started this thread, the slide timings are based on how long it takes to read a text slide, and the timings vary wildly in that show. To distribute the slides equally as 'synchronize' does would destroy the show. I realize that one can vary the timing in the timeline, but I find that a bit awkward, as increasing one slide decreases the next, and the 'knock-on' effect rapidly gets out of control. I believe there is a way to move all slides to the right to preserve subsequent times, but that will alter the length of the show, undoing the synchronize step.

Hence my original question, and why I wrote a quickie program to adjust the slide timings proportionally.

It is said that people can be divided into three broad groups; the visuals, who think and learn best with pictures, the aurals, who prefer hearing rather than seeing information, and the viscerals, who work on gut instinct. Of course, most people are a mixture of all three, but usually one characteristic dominates. For me, I'm a visual. I think in pictures, plan in pictures, and use pictures to explain my ideas to others. Perhaps this influences the way I put shows together.

I hope all that wasn't too boring,

Colin

[jfa]

To my - probably strange - way of thinking, the music is there to add support and texture to the slides, rather than the opposite.

There should be far more to the audio in a AV than music. It can be commentary, sound effects, sound recordings, music, etc, usually a combination of these, not always, (but mostly), including music.

The way I see it the mix is about the following--

Images - 35%

Audio - 35%

Presentation - 30%

If the audio consists of no more than any piece of music at hand, unsynchronised with the images the show can fail no matter how good the images are.

I have seen many shows with high image quality that fall down and become boring due to mundane audio. Of course the opposite is also true.

Generally when I listen to music, (all types of music), I will see images, many composers of classical music intended this hence the names of their work.

The Pastoral Symphony

The Four Seasons

La Mer

The Pines of Rome

etc. etc.

To elaborate on my working method, it's not always the case that the audio will come first, I will have in mind the ideas for the show, subjects, images, presentation, sound, and sometimes put them down in a rough script but at this point I will usually have a good idea of the type/style of audio I will use before most of the images are taken.

Now back to your problem Colin.

Generally in a piece of music there are many points of repetition, this is the nature of music after all, and at these points it is often possible to cut a section out and join the remainder without it being obvious to anyone who don't know the piece well, (those that do will usually forgive you if you handle the cut well). In your case this may not be possible as you have a fairly strict time to adhere to.

You may be able to add some silence at the start/finish to lengthen the piece, then cut and also use some of the methods mentioned above, (fad in/out timing etc). Also the addition of some sound recordings may help you manipulate the piece by masking the changes. You are using several tracks by the same author, so joining them at an appropriate point, (with fades), may give you the timing you require.

As your show is for a family reunion maybe just lengthen the final title and a slow fade to black will do as in my experience the family will start talking about the show as soon as they see the end title and ignore the fact the music and title are still on. Do this and fade the music to a low volume.

If all else fails another piece of music may work better with these techniques.

Good luck.

EDIT 16:00Hrs.......

But, to me, the whole problem can be solved by proportionally adjusting the slides to fit the music, rather than abusing the music to fit the slides, and my question was as to whether PTE will do this.

As far as I know Colin it's not possible in PTE at the current version.

[Henri.R]

John, you write:

"There should be far more to the audio in a AV than music. It can be commentary, sound effects, sound recordings, music, etc, usually a combination of these, not always, (but mostly), including music."

And don't forget, one of the most important components of the soundtrack is the mood or mental state created by the music itself..

And Colin, I also start with the pictures and text, but then very soon I introduce the music and other sounds, followed again by editing the pictures to get the right continuity.

So I fully agree with John, and Brian let us propose "mini-mixer timeline" to Igor?

Henri.

[fh1805]

Unlike others who have contributed to this discussion, I don't have a specific way of working when creating my sequences.

Example 1: the "Whitby Abbey" sequence that I posted a little while back started out simply as a location which I knew would produce some pleasing images if visited at the right time of day. I captured the images first. Then used Windows Vista's file Preview facility to take a look at them at nearly full screen size and decide which of them I wanted to shortlist for the AV sequence. The shortlisted images were copied into the "Whitby Abbey" folder and a new project in PTE was created and the images dropped into the slide list. A further review then took place during which the sequence of the images was adjusted and those not required were removed from the slide list. Now that I knew roughly how many images would be used, I could estimate how long the music needed to be (my "rule of thumb" is 6 seconds per image with an allowance made for Title, Credits and two black slides). I then found a piece of music that was:

- of approximately the right length

- of a suitable mood (i.e matching the mood and subject of the images) - to my mind, this is more important than anything else

I was then able to finish the build of the sequence in PTE and decide what transitions, animation and "tweaking" in Photoshop was going to be required.

Example 2: A month or so later I spent three separate days (spread over an eight day period) at my local steam railway. I had identified the pieces of music that I thought would be appropriate before I went to do the photo shoot. I had also given some thought to the kind of images I wanted and the most readily accessible track-side locations from which to photograph the steam-hauled trains as they passed by. Once the images had been uploaded into the computer the actual build process was pretty much as for the Whitby sequence (except that the music had this time, been pre-selected)

Example 3: I'm building up a sequence in which all the images are taken along a farm access track, the start of which is just 30 seconds walk from my front door. In this case I first wrote an introductory voice-over script and then set about capturing images to illustrate those words. But the body of the sequence will be a series of mini-sequences each set to its own music and having its own theme and showing the scenery and flora in various weather conditions, at various times of day and at the various seasons of the year. So far, I've built one mini-sequence based on a shoot in mist and fog and another based on two days of snowfall. I'll be going out in the not-too-distant future to do the spring flower photography.

So, as you can see, I adopt a "horses for courses" approach: sometimes its images first, sometimes its music first and just occasionally its pre-planned.

[cjdnzl]

Unlike others who have contributed to this discussion, I don't have a specific way of working when creating my sequences.

Example 1: the "Whitby Abbey" sequence that I posted a little while back started out simply as a location which I knew would produce some pleasing images if visited at the right time of day. I captured the images first. Then used Windows Vista's file Preview facility to take a look at them at nearly full screen size and decide which of them I wanted to shortlist for the AV sequence. The shortlisted images were copied into the "Whitby Abbey" folder and a new project in PTE was created and the images dropped into the slide list. A further review then took place during which the sequence of the images was adjusted and those not required were removed from the slide list. Now that I knew roughly how many images would be used, I could estimate how long the music needed to be (my "rule of thumb" is 6 seconds per image with an allowance made for Title, Credits and two black slides). I then found a piece of music that was:

- of approximately the right length

- of a suitable mood (i.e matching the mood and subject of the images) - to my mind, this is more important than anything else

I was then able to finish the build of the sequence in PTE and decide what transitions, animation and "tweaking" in Photoshop was going to be required.

Example 2: A month or so later I spent three separate days (spread over an eight day period) at my local steam railway. I had identified the pieces of music that I thought would be appropriate before I went to do the photo shoot. I had also given some thought to the kind of images I wanted and the most readily accessible track-side locations from which to photograph the steam-hauled trains as they passed by. Once the images had been uploaded into the computer the actual build process was pretty much as for the Whitby sequence (except that the music had this time, been pre-selected)

Example 3: I'm building up a sequence in which all the images are taken along a farm access track, the start of which is just 30 seconds walk from my front door. In this case I first wrote an introductory voice-over script and then set about capturing images to illustrate those words. But the body of the sequence will be a series of mini-sequences each set to its own music and having its own theme and showing the scenery and flora in various weather conditions, at various times of day and at the various seasons of the year. So far, I've built one mini-sequence based on a shoot in mist and fog and another based on two days of snowfall. I'll be going out in the not-too-distant future to do the spring flower photography.

So, as you can see, I adopt a "horses for courses" approach: sometimes its images first, sometimes its music first and just occasionally its pre-planned.

Thanks for that, Peter.

Kind regards,

Colin