How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

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How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby kc27 » Sun May 16, 2010 8:18 pm

Hello All

I have a show with 188 slides (it will probably have 250-260 slides by the time I am done) that is approximately 13:45 minutes long. It has four songs on it. The first three songs are similar in beat, the fourth song is noticeably quicker.

I've always used the "sync all slides in the show" with the "match to total soundtrack length" in the past, and not really worried about the pacing, because the music did not vary that much in beat. But in this case, someone else has determined the songs, and so I have the three moderate beat songs and the last, quicker beat song. When faster beat song plays, I would like the on-screen pacing of the slides to speed up, too.

Is the solution to select a group of slides and sync them to the first three tracks, then select another group of slides and select them to the fourth, faster track? I gave that a shot and it did not seem to work. Could that have been user error on my part, or is my idea flawed?

I did a search and read about other Proshow Producer users who timed their transitions and slides to the beat of the music, but I am not sure this is the same thing as what I am trying to achieve.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby gpsmikey » Sun May 16, 2010 8:56 pm

It depends on the songs how hard it is to find the beat - I never use the "sync to music" feature - I always sync it by hand. If you hit the TAB key, it will switch view modes and you can see (mostly) the waveform of the music and look for the beats there, adjusting the slide timing to fall on the beat. Some songs have a clearly defined beat that is easy to see - others are tough to find sometimes. I have suggested to Photodex that they add a feature that Sony Vegas has where you can tap the "m" key to drop a marker as you listen to the music. You listen, drop the markers where you want the slides to change then go back and have them to work with. They indicated they would add it to their wish list, but the more people that contact them and request a feature like that the more likely they are to add it to the program :D

Anyway, that is the way I (and quite a few others) do it - it can take a bit of time to get it right sometimes too !

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kc27

Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby kc27 » Mon May 17, 2010 2:18 am

Mikey

Thanks for the explanation. I've read in other posts about that method.

Do you start with a show that has already been synced to soundtrack, and then make adjustments from there? At least if you work that way the slides are intially distributed to cover the entire soundtrack. The part of the manual method you outlined that I do not understand is how one makes sure they do not run out of slides before the soundtrack ends.

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby trulytango » Mon May 17, 2010 3:01 am

Hi there

In answer to your question at the start of the thread... no, your idea is not at all flawed - you CAN select a group/block of slides from within a show and synch them to a particular track. So if you have added 4 tracks to a show, you could select/highlight the first 50 slides and synch them any of the tracks. However all this will do is ensure the total slide suration/time of those 50 shots matches the entire length of that particular track. It will not magically make these 50 slides actually match the track i.e. follow the beat of the music or suit the mood/tempo etc. To do that you would have to apply yourself and use your own ears.

In answer to your later observations - yes, auto-synching your slides to a track's length is a good starting point, but that's all. It just gives you an idea of what is possible within the time available to you. Again, the fine tuning is down to you, and people here use a variety of different methods and workflows... but it is this fine tuning by ear and/or manipulation of individual slide timings that will lift your shows to another level.

I suggest that it might be best to work with one piece of music and one block of slides at a time whilst you are learning how to fine tune. Once the first part of a show is complete and timed to it's track, you can incorporate the rest in stages.

Good luck and happy proshowing :D
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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby gpsmikey » Mon May 17, 2010 5:41 am

I don't know of a single "perfect" answer - I usually try and pick music that gives me something close to the slide times I want (every two beats, every 4 beats etc) and work from there. There is no "magic" way really of doing it simple and having it work. Some music lets you select the length (check out the royalty free stuff from Smart Sound - you can create the length you need from their stuff with their software). Sometimes you need to take a couple of slides out to make it work etc. Another trick I have used before where I really wanted just a few more seconds was to use an audio editor (you can get Audacity for free), copy a short section of a song and insert it back into the song again in a different place where it sounded good. Takes a bit of tweaking, but you can often pull it off and nobody can tell where you did it :D Some music doesn't really have a beat that you need to sync to while other music just doesn't seem right unless you do change slides on the beat (or multiple of the beat). If you are moving the show along fairly fast, you will typically want to have a slide time of at least 4 or 5 seconds for any slides that have any significant text on them you expect the audience to read (read the text out loud to get the minimum time) then you need to get the trailing edge of that slide back on the beat again. Sometimes it isn't so much the beat, but a change in the music that you want to sync to. That is why I like the Sony Vegas mode where you can drop markers with a key as you listen then go back and align to those markers.

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby VernonRobinson » Mon May 17, 2010 6:02 am

In support of what Mikey said, Premiere Elements also has the beat markers at your command. However, it does not allow you to do slide shows as easy as ProShow. Editing video is another matter :) and that is where Vegas and Premiere really shine. Premiere also has built in beat mapping technology where it will try and find the music beats. Works well on some music and not so well on others. I am sure that Vegas has something very similar since they also market the Sony Acid software which has beat mapping.

Unfortunately, inside ProShow, you will have to do it the old fashioned way. If the music has a steady beat, you could use a stopwatch to get your timing and then adjust your slide durations accordingly. In this way you would only have to find the first beat and then extend your other slides as multiples of the measured beat.

Regards,
-Vernon

kc27

Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby kc27 » Mon May 17, 2010 7:09 am

Thanks everyone for the advice. Also, trulytango for the comment about my original strategy. My experience with ProShow has been with the Gold version doing very basic shows letting the program sync the slides to the audio.

I was volunteered for this project, (and am happy to do it), but I am not going to have a lot of time to finesse the soundtrack. I'm going to be getting additional images shortly before the deadline to finish the show. Besides fighting the temptation to inadvertently create an eyesore by using too many of those neat styles and additional tools in ProShow Producer, I'm going to be up against it as far as just getting the show in shape visually by the deadline. So working the soundtrack will be more of a last minute effort on my part. That's why I had asked about dividing the slides into groups, and doing a "rough" timing by assigning the first three "slower" tracks to a groups of songs, the a second groups of slides to the faster, fourth song.

The slides will be all images, no text, so I won't have to worry about reading times as mikey noted. Based on my current skill set and experience with soundtracks, I will consider the show a success if I am just able to get the on-screen pace of the slides to pick up for the song with the faster beat.

For those of you that do edit the show to the beat of the music, is this the process?
1. Add slides
2. Add soundtrack
3. Sync show to soundtrack
4. Use Record Slide Timing soundtrack option to make adjustments

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby gpsmikey » Mon May 17, 2010 8:26 am

For what it's worth, here is a sample of how I was syncing the slides to the beat of the music (in this case, it is music from SMart Sound that I was using). Here is a short segment of the show I did for my daughter's soccer team (I tend to use a longer time on the first couple and last couple of slides - on the last several slides, I use longer times so I can overlay the score etc in Sony Vegas when I assemble the show later):
http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewsho ... 2655&alb=0

Here is what a segment looks like in the waveform view (use the TAB key to toggle between normal view and waveform view) where I was adjusting the slide timing - the trick is to not only get the timing right, but get it on the right beat - it may look right on the other beats shown, but it doesn't sound right. Anyway, here is the waveform view of a segment (this music has a good beat and I found a A/B crossfade timing of about 1/10 second worked well):

Image

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby VernonRobinson » Mon May 17, 2010 8:33 am

Given that you are going to be getting slides at the last minute, how about if you complete the show as if you had all of the slides. Apply your slide styles, get your timing down, and then just replace the images when you receive them. This technique works for me as we often do our Championship finals on Sunday morning and have a team banquet with slide show later that evening. This technique works because I am typically trying to keep the time down to 20 - 25 minutes. So I plan accordingly.

Regards,
-Vernon

kc27

Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby kc27 » Mon May 17, 2010 9:57 am

mikey - thanks for the visual and the example. Besides the editing the photography was really great. I am working with scanned snapshots, some of which were blurry to start, and less than stellar digital images. But they do tell the story, anyway.

I did purchase the Visual Quickstart Guide to Photodex ProShow, but the subject of the "Record Slide Timing" is not covered in depth. I hate to beat a dead horse to death, but here goes: Do you Sync show to soundtrack first, then second use Record Slide Timing soundtrack option to make adjustments? I'm just not clear on how you ensure the slides last as long as the music when you do the manual syncing of the slides to the audio.

vernon - great suggestion to use placeholder images to keep going rather than waiting until the last minute. That should help me get back some time - thanks!

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby gpsmikey » Mon May 17, 2010 10:14 am

Nope - I will either pick a particular piece of music and work with the timing and number of slides to make it match or as I did in the case of the soccer games, I set each music track to 1 minute (in Smart Sound you can do that and the Digital Juice also typically has 60 second versions). Dropped the whole games worth of slides on the track (typically about 150 - 200 pictures from each game and kept eliminating them until I got down to a number that would fit the beat (typically about 53 or so). I don't even bother to "sync to sound" at the start. If I know about what timing I want, I will select all the slides and set their timing to the correct time (0.9 seconds + 0.1 transition for example) then work from there. Lots of the royalty free stuff I use has a pretty fixed beat for the length of the song, so once I figure out the timing (often I will work with 5 or 6 slides at the front to find the right time then set all of them to that time - then it is just a matter of going through and adjusting for drift etc).

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby duglas50 » Tue May 18, 2010 1:59 pm

I'll lay a bunch of blank slides in first then drop in the sound track. After that I'll start dropping in the pictures and slide styles and sync each slide to the beat of the music as I go. Often times I will have to edit the music in Audacity or other sound editor by cutting portions out or copying and pasting portions in so the music matches the length of the show. Time consuming but that's my work flow and it works for me.

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby Mac » Thu Jun 10, 2010 6:28 am

To answer your question, "For those of you that do edit the show to the beat of the music, is this the process?"

My method might be a bit different than most as my shows are usually directly inspired by the feel of the music. The first thing I do in fact is drop the music in and the show develops from it.

I also could not imagine trying to use the "synch with audio" function as that can't come nearly as close to getting the music right as a person's sense of rhythm. It also can't sense the drama that might be going on. Depending on the feel of the music or the feel of the visuals, I want my slides to either fall on every beat or sometimes on multiple beats. Sometimes the slides need a frenetic pace and other times they need to languish. Making matters more complicated is that sometimes the transitions will look much better falling before after the beat. If necessary, I'll occasionally ignore the beat entirely!

I understand that when making a show with a lot of slides and a deadline makes it difficult to accomplish this, but this is my ideal. It's a time-consuming, laborious process.
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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby duglas50 » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:07 am

Mac,
After reading your post it looks like our workflows are pretty close to a match.

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Re: How to Time Slides When Songs Vary in Beat?

Postby Mac » Thu Jun 10, 2010 12:01 pm

Doug: How unfortunate for you! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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