I've arrived in Pro Show Gold land in what is quite a step-up -- or should be -- from Microsoft's
PhotoStory. I love PhotoStory's simple, intuitive style of operation but have grown weary of lock-ups after completing projects and before saving (transcoding) to DVD output. I tried some rival commercial products but found them not so much simplistic as downright simple-minded, where if you changed one parameter (slide duration, for example) that then applied to the entire show. So last year I became the proud owner of PSG version 3.5. . . and didn't get very far with it at all: my own fault, due to absence of time.
I now have that time to spend on creating in PSG the kind of DVD slideshow I managed in Photostory, one in which the finished production closely resembles the appearance, if not necessarily the quality, of a TV programme or film -- i.e., without rotations, without bizarrely intrusive transitions, without slides-layered-on-slides (though that
is a facility I'll use when I've mastered it.)
My problem is that I cannot find anywhere the kind of simple, step by step, easy to follow panning & zooming tutorial equivalent to PhotoStory's.In PS, two images of the same slide appear on screen when you wisdh to add motion to the slide.
At left is the start position. At right is the end position. By using the "box" overlay on the lefthand image of the slide, you pull or push the box corners so that the box shrinks or expands to the area of the image you wish to be shown as the view start position.
You then go to the box overlay on the second image of the same slide and either move the box laterally across -- so that the slide is panned -- or pull out the corners so that the whole of the image is boxed: you've zoomed out to the full image.
All this is accomplished as a WYSIWYG task and takes less than 10 seconds.
Sadly, I've now spent an infinity of time longer than that 10 seconds trying to replicate this in PSG. I've also spent a seeming infinity of time trying to fathom out to do this by searching everything from the Help files to the Web.
So I've concluded I am a total numpty.
If someone can point me in the direction of a simple step by step tutorial for what in PhotoStory is the simplest of step by step procedures, that would be appreciated.And if someone can suggest which of all the countless dissolves offered by PSG most closely resembles the "standard" dissolve I'm used to in PhotoStory, that would be a help too.
I've nothing at all against having a choice of transitions. It's just that I want the images -- panned, zoomed, or whatever -- to tell the story I create on a DVD. Not the gimmicks.
Thanks.