Random selection

[Jim]

This is probably simple but...I want to produce a show (about 300 slides) that will play unsorted...I've noticed that when I choose the "Display slides in random order" option it still plays whole sections of them in the order that they appear in the file view even though it does "unsort" some..Is there a way for me to have all the slides play in a truley random fashion? It doesn't matter too much if the same slide repeats. Why does the above option grey out when I synchronize the slides/music? Thanks for any tips.

Jim.

[Ken Cox]

Jim with all the versions on the go at the present time you better say what version you are using

and

people will likely recommend trying the latest beta 14

ken

[Jim]

Ken..good point. I'm using 4.01.

[alrobin]

Jim,

At least the show starts with different slides when you play the preview again. I haven't used this feature so can't give you a definitive answer. Igor will have to speak for the design, and how effective it is.

Re your second query, why would you want to synchronize a show if you don't know which slides will be played where and when? Synchronization usually signifies control, which is opposite to the idea of randomness. But, then again, why not? I imagine Igor felt that the random-slide feature wouldn't be needed if the show were synchronized. Maybe it could be added as a feature in later versions of the program if a real need for it can be demonstrated.

[think(box)]

I can add to the confusion (like we need any more) Jim, Ken, Al - I am using shows with 5,000 to 14,000 slides that I've programmed to random slide selection and they almost never repeat a slide in 30-60 minutes of random play at 3 seconds per slide. These shows were made with 3.80 because 4.01 has huge 1+ minute show loading/starting times in large shows (and the shortest load time in small shows, adding to the confusion) while 3.80 does not.

Since Aleksey has found a way to make 4.10 take only a few seconds to load for the same shows, I've been meaning to re-Create these shows in 4.10. Since 4.10 beta 10 is the last version with taskbar captions working properly in fullscreen mode, I will use that version. I'll add a datapoint about the 4.10 series to Jim's datapoint about 4.01, regarding the question - does random play still seem random.

Since software-generated random numbers are often not so random, there is some chance that Igor is using a striding or other method that will have non-random play for certain numbers of slides. So Jim, have you tried a different number of slides in a test copy of your show, like + or -10 or so?