Lock slide to timeline

[1TrickDog]

The ability to lock a slide’s timings is useful. However the ability to lock the start, and or end of a slide to the timeline would be valuable. Say I have 50 slides with two audio files for a 6 minute show. The first audio file ends at the 3 minute mark and the second begins. If I had the ability to lock the start of slide 26 to the 3 minute mark, I could then play around with the timings for slides 1 through 25 without moving slides 26 through 50 on the timeline. This way one change early in the timeline will not cascade down the timeline to slides associated with other audio files. It would allow you to sync your slides to your audio files as you develop your show, and if later you wanted to changes timings in one segment, you would not have to worry about it throwing the rest of you show timings off.

Another option would be to lock a slide to a portion of an audio file, that way if you move the start of that slide on the timeline the audio file will follow and that slide as well as the ones that follow will stay in sync with music.

Just a thougth from a computer geek, but a PSP noob.

[BarbaraC]

Imagining myself trying to use such a function, my brain went into frizzle mode (very scientific term). If a slide is locked to a specific spot in the audio, then any adjustment you make previous to it will necessarily adjust all timing for the slides in between it and the locked slide. This would mean that if, say, slide 25 is locked and if you adjust slide 3, everything from slide 4 through slide 24 will have to be automatically recalculated. If you keep going like this up through the slides until you reach slide 25, you could easily find that the gods have seen fit to give number 25 a length of 0 or 108 or something equally untoward.

Barbara

[tdew]

I think it could be very useful if you had a specific bit of music that you wanted to use for the later part of a show.
Say you started out with two songs. The 2nd was exactly as you'd hoped, but the first one was not so great. You've now come up with a different song to use for the first part- but you'd like to keep the 2nd exactly as it is.
You could then start the new first song and adjust the slides for that part without changing anything in the 2nd song.
Or am I missing something?

[BarbaraC]

I think it could be very useful if you had a specific bit of music that you wanted to use for the later part of a show.

That sounds GOOD.

Barbara

[dikster]

My shows typically run 50-60 minutes, have several "chapters" and use lots of songs. For example, a travelogue on Europe might have chapters on individual countries. It would be great if I could select more than one Italian song and sync them to the slides in the chapter on Italy.

dik

[ginger]

I have to cast my vote for this one too. I'd like the option to be able to define the slide where a song will end, and then fiddle with the slides in that section to get the timing right.

ginger

[1TrickDog]

Or am I missing something?

Nope, you didn’t miss a thing. As a matter of fact, you actually hit the nail on the head. That was a good example of what I was thinking about.

In addition, here is another scenario. You have two songs in a show and all of your slides timed accordingly. You are then given some more photos to add to the show, but the problem is that they fit best in the middle of your show. Wouldn’t it be nice to click and drag the second audio file down the time line, and have all of the slides associated with it move as well? That way you could make room for a new audio file and the new photos in the middle of your show, without having to redo all of your timings.

[mandi]

I have wanted this exact function for ages, and came looking again to see if there was any way to do it. e.g. two songs, you've got the timing PERFECT, and have to add another short clip of a song and some photos to the beginning, even being out 1 second or even a half a second throws the rest of the shows timing out that you’ve spent forever getting each pic and transition right.

I kept thinking I must be missing some thing because surely there must be some easy way to do this. I hope I’m just doff / don’t know how and there is a way to do this. If you know how, please enlighten us unfortunates who do not know the how!

[jonathlee]

I agreed with this feature too. Plus with a "Marker" where user can put some marker (same row as the 0:00:00 timeline display). This is important for user who wants to mark certain point of the song and make adjustment accordingly.

[Charly]

That's a thing I would appreciate quite well, too.
Actually, for example I make minor timing adjustements on a slide, that changes the position of all subsequent slides versus the time line. If I could, using a locking mark, say for example "from this place dont move any slide position"
OK, I know... That could result in problems as described in some posts above, BUT I said "for MINOR changes"
Giving one second more to slide 18 as an example would make the 19 shorter, yes. But it would be still better as pushing forward all others ?

Or, Am I wrong ? that feature already exist and I didnt see it ?
Regards from Switzerland
Charles

[gallenulenoir]

Hi,

Would be a great feature - another way to explain is maybe to call it "Lock Kicker"

I am sure many of you have had the experience of putting shows together and you get those real "grab you" combinations of a particular music cue and image. You then spend the rest of the edit time making sure as you make changes around your show of preserving "that special moment" - the lock slide feature would make this a LOT easier.

Here's hoping it is on its way in V6

Scott.

[photocitizen]

Producer 6 STILL does not offer a way to lock slides to the timeline.

Nor does it offer any timeline markers like every other pro video editing software does. (Yes, I know Producer has "flags," but these are locked to a slide, not to the timeline. So if the slide is moved or is deleted, the flag goes with it. Useful for some things, but not what I'm referring to here.)

C'mon Photodex! We need these two features to speed up our workflow. Please tell me you're working on it now.

[BarbaraC]

Alan, Photodex doesn't host this forum, so your best bet to get your wishes known is to write or call them. They might every now and then peek in, but my sense of this is that it's rare.

Barbara

[im42n8]

Alan, in addition to what Barbara said, ProShow is NOT a pro video editing program. In fact, it does NOT edit video at all (it manipulates it however, non-destructively). If you want a video editing program, you need to go for one that does that job as its primary function.

Flags in Proshow are nothing more than attention getters. Beyond that, they're essentially non-functional.

Locking a slide to a timeline (or vice-versa) offers it's own unique problems ... and since this program doesn't have the timeline as a major focus of what it does, I wouldn't hold my breath for it. I doubt that it's going to appear as a feature anytime in the near future.

The program doesn't adjust to what you think your workflow should be, you need to develop a workflow that works within the constraints imposed by the program. That's the same for any program. Some workflows are more efficient than others and some programs allow considerable flexibility in a workflow. While the ProShow program does allow for some decent flexibility in your workflow, it's not free form and it's not extremely flexible. However, for the vast majority of users, the flexible workflows allowed by the program in its current form are more than acceptable.

Like Barbara said, if you have a beef with the program, submit a request directly with Photodex. This is not a forum run by Photodex; it's just a forum of users of Photodex's ProShow. Photodex might check in from time to time ... but they don't really monitor user's input about the program or its features (desired or proposed).

Dale

[girard1974]

This would be very beneficial for the kind of work I have been doing. When inserting videos into a show rather than just slides with pictures, the show can get quite long. I usually place an audio file at the beginning of the show and then at the end. To have to use the <Ctrl> key to manually move the audio file to the end often takes a very, very long time - and it gets quite tiresome. I've offered this to the good folks at Photodex awhile ago hoping that the solution would be included in this recent release, but sadly no.