Editing Music - Proshow Gold

[DAVIDR]

I bought ProShow Gold and I finally have a computer being shipped to me that can handle it. I am looking forward to my first "slide show" - my son's Bar Mitzvah this September. In the meantime, I have read the manuals for PSG 4.1. One question - for his videa montage I am planning something that uses 2.5 songs. I have read through the various manuals and my question simply stated is as follows: I see how to set up music in the slideshow,but I do not want to use all 2.5 minutes of one of the songs. I would rather somehow lop-off the rest of the song after the point of "no return" to save filespace. Any suggestions ? Thanks.\\

DaveR

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Greetings and welcome to the funny farm You actually have several options here on getting the music to the correct length. The simplest one is to go into Gold and where you add the tracks, one of the options is to edit the music. You can adjust the length of it there by dragging the end to where you want it to end. You can also adjust the fade at the same time by dragging the corner of the waveform to create the fade. You can also do the same basic operation by hitting the TAB key in timeline view and it will switch to a waveform view of the show - again you can drag the ends of the song to the desired length.

The better way to do it is to use an audio editor to adjust the song to the desired length/fades. The options there range from the free Audacity (which is actually pretty good ) to something like Adobe Audition or Sony Sound Forge Studio etc. My suggestion would be to at least start with the free Audacity editor - you will find you actually use it fairly often for combining stuff etc (often, a song that you need to shorten for example has a chunk you can snip out of the middle so the beginning and end are still there and it sounds much better than if you simply lop the end off).

Something else you might want to consider at some point is some of the royalty free music sources like Smartsound.com - they have a bunch of stuff you can purchase that covers all flavors of music and their software allows you to simply drag the length you need and it will assemble the blocks into the track for you (check out their video tutorials if interested - they will show you how it all works).

mikey

[cherub Profile Private messageWebsite]

...I am planning something that uses 2.5 songs. I have read through the various manuals and my question simply stated is as follows: I see how to set up music in the slideshow,but I do not want to use all 2.5 minutes of one of the songs. I would rather somehow lop-off the rest of the song after the point of "no return" to save filespace. Any suggestions ? Thanks.\\
DaveR

Hi David and welcome to the forum !

Everything that Mikey said above, and also:
The fact that you are thinking of looping the music in order to save disk/file space leads me to believe that maybe you are thinking in terms of a PowerPoint show.
ProShow doesn't work like that.
ProShow is a video application, and what counts on the final DVD is the length of your show in minutes, and not the size of the individual files used in its making.
If you are planning on sending your show by email, then again, that is not how ProShow works.
ProShow has its own proprietary viewer (Presenter), and in order for others to be able to see your show, they will have to install this viewer. Alternatively you can send them an exe file, but because of security reasons, you cannot send it by mail.
So, the bottom line is that saving on your music files will not accomplish much.

Mazal Tov on your son's Bar Mitzvah !

[VernonRobinson Profile Private message]

Welcome to the forum David. Good luck with your project. Mikey has given you some good info. There is a lot there to digest. Start small and increase your complexity as you go and grow.

Regards,
-Vernon

[ginger Profile Private message]

Hi Cherub. I think David meant "lop", not "loop". What a difference one little vowel can make.

In the case of "lopping" off the end, it would make the file a little smaller and runtime shorter.

what counts on the final DVD is the length of your show in minutes, and not the size of the individual files used in its making.

It seems that I found this not to be the case. In my Fort Lauderdale show (which is my first show) I used photos at full resolution and uploaded to Photodex manually as recommended by Mike (admin) in one of his posts ... rather than letting Photodex compress the video to its default, which is much lower. This made for a very large file even though the show only runs about 5-6 minutes. If the primary goal is to display on the web, I think letting Photodex compress it would be a better solution if you're going to display it on their site.

ginger

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Uploading to Photodex and a "final DVD" are two entirely different animals. The DVD is going to be basically a container with mpg2 files on it for the menu and show. The size of those files will be dependent on the length of the show and the bit rate for the mpeg2. The audio will typically be encoded at 48khz PCM unless you use mpeg layer2 (PAL standard) or Dolby AC3. The upload to Photodex for sharing is an entirely different beast and can include all sorts of files at varying resolutions/data rates etc (including multiple video files). A DVD will have everything merged into one mpeg2 file (or multiple segments - I forget if the standard says 1 or 2 gig segments maximum).

mikey

[ginger Profile Private message]

Uploading to Photodex and a "final DVD" are two entirely different animals.

So true Mikey.

I probably should re-upload my show and let Photodex compress it. I burned the DVD with the full resolution even though they're standard dvd's. I probably need to look into burning to hd, though I haven't studied that option yet. Need to read up on all of the good info posted here.

By the way, welcome to the forum Dave. You've come to the right place!

ginger

[DAVIDR]

Friends - just to clarify... for this presentation about my son there are three songs I want to use that have the appropriate sentiments and fit the photos I am showing. One of the songs is a bit long and I actually want to cut it off - somewhat abruptly, not really a fade out.

Also - it is not a "loop", rather - "lop" - I plan cut off the song at the key point. My concern is that the song gets irrelevant at that point - although the very end of the song is somewhat charming, and I would not mind leaving that in.. Time (as in - length of the show) is my primary concern, not size of files. I plan to burn the final show onto a DVD and show it live at the party. I will be testing out the synagogue's computer / projector etc well in advance, by the way.

I hope this clarifies - any further advice on editing the songs is welcome.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

I would go with the option of getting the free Audacity and use that to trim the song any way you want to make it fit. That includes taking a chunk out of the middle so the last part stays or simply lopping off the end as you originally asked. Having some sort of audio editor in the toolbox is always a good idea and Audacity, while not all the bells and whistles, is free and used by many many people.

mikey