Co-ordinating slides to audio

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Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby nancyrbogen » Mon Aug 23, 2010 11:14 am

I do slide choreographies of music, meaning I match my slides to specific places in a given piece of music. I'd like to see more controls and helps for this, namely a clock or grid in the audio section and a way of putting makers down on it.

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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby im42n8 » Mon Aug 23, 2010 1:59 pm

You should be aware that under the Slide Options Dialog | Music tab is a section called Soundtrack Tools. Two of the tools that help synch music is the "Record Slide Timing" and "Sync Slide to Audio." The latter simply adjusts slide and transition times to the length of the total audio. Other than that it's not very useful. It's useful for extremely simple shows and where the coordination of images to music is not a consideration.

The former allows you to listen to the music as the show plays and to tap and hold a key to begin a transition and release to end transition. In this way you can "time" a show to the music. Not too elegant but much better than it was in early releases.

I think something similar has been requested -- relative getting a slide/image to be adjusted to the music (on/off/between beats). If you have a specific approach that you think might work better than what's provided I'd highly recommend you sending that request directly to Photodex. If the idea has merit (i.e., provides a value-added capability), and it's not too difficult to implement (esp in relation to the other feature requests), then it's liable to be implemented eventually.

-Dale
What's New: Tools for ProShow: v11.42a Access ProShow capabilities Photodex doesn't provide (For PSG & PSP).
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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby nancyrbogen » Mon Aug 30, 2010 11:10 am

Thanks, I'll do that. The only way right now that I can manage is to note the exact slide location in the thing below the preview window on the left and then shift the slide back and forth using the transition and slide time to make the slide come on and sit and go off where I want it to. This usually means adjusting the same values in the slide before and slide after. And if one or the other or both is a video and/or is preceded or followed by one--ooh la la.

Anyway as an old computer-hand, I know how to make do and improvise--and maybe if the Proshow folks get to like my stuff, they'll do something. My work Textur is in/on my Proshow Share Gallery, and I see Jon Canfield has used it as an "interesting" show in his extra-stuff for Chapter I of his book.

Best,
Nancy

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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby briancbb » Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:19 pm

Nancy

Not sure I fully understand what you are doing, but this is the way I do it.

Press TAB so that the 'slide list' across the bottom of the screen changes to 'timeline'.

The slides are now proportional in size to the time they are on the screen, as are the transitions. The audio waveform is also now linear (not compressed for long slide times).

The vertical lines marking the slides and transition borders can now be 'click dragged' to line up with the beat of the music. This is how I time my slides and transitions to the beat.
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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby nancyrbogen » Sat Sep 11, 2010 7:42 pm

Brian,

What you are suggesting is a good beginning, but I need something far more sophisticated--something that will allow me to "assign" a slide to a particular few notes and the slide's coming and going to specific notes before and after. It's easier to demonstrate. Look at-listen to my Textur in the Proshow Share gallery or on Vimeo at:

http://vimeo.com/14526527

Nancy

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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby im42n8 » Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:44 am

What it appears you are wanting is probably going to stay in the category of wishful thinking for some time relative to ProShow. For the vast majority of shows this type of song segment linking is not an issue.

Most people just attach some song to the timeline and voila'! They're done. Many put the song they want onto the timeline and have ProShow adjust the length of the slides and transitions to exactly fit that song, and then they're done. Some use it as a starting point and adjust from there. Some find songs that fit the content and add as many songs as they need. They then clip and edit the songs as necessary for what they need and also adjust the slide times and transition times to appropriate viewing times. And then they play a segment at time and fine tune the timings to the beats and such, working from the beginning to the end.

If you want to "assign" a specific spot in a song to a location in your show, no matter how you "assign," that is going to change if any timing upstream from that point gets changed. Then, you'll have to change the time after the location of that change to offset the change. So, if you have your "locked" point at 60s and later you add a slide at location 15s that adds 10s to the overall time, then between the times of 25s (15s +10s) and 70s (60s + 10s) you'll need to remove 10s of time (in either or both the slide times and transition times of the existing slides).

And that's how its at present (more or less), this fine morning (evening/night, depending on where you are).

Enjoy!

Dale
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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby Teetime » Sun Sep 12, 2010 12:34 pm

Nancy, I looked at your Textur. If this is typical of the types of slideshows you do you might want to consider using a product like Sony Vegas. It makes it very easy to sync the music and images.
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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby nancyrbogen » Mon Sep 13, 2010 9:17 am

Jerry,

Would I be using it instead of Producer or in addition to Producer?

Nancy

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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby nancyrbogen » Mon Sep 13, 2010 9:47 am

Jerry--

I took a look at Vegas and indeed downloaded a trial and the manual, and this is basically for video, NOT for color slides. As a matter of fact, it's much like Premiere, which I have and am using to edit such video as I will be importing into my next Producer show.

I don't like video. I'm wedded to the color slide, which I've been shooting since Kodachrome 64.

With chin up tho trembling,
Nancy

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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby Teetime » Mon Sep 13, 2010 12:06 pm

nancyrbogen wrote:Jerry--

I took a look at Vegas and indeed downloaded a trial and the manual, and this is basically for video, NOT for color slides. As a matter of fact, it's much like Premiere, which I have and am using to edit such video as I will be importing into my next Producer show.

I don't like video. I'm wedded to the color slide, which I've been shooting since Kodachrome 64.

With chin up tho trembling,
Nancy


Nancy, a Proshow Producer slideshow IS a video, even if it is stationary slides, but I'm sure you know that. Vegas (and Premiere) both produce excellent slide shows, but PSP is much more optimized for sophisticated photo animations. I believe your slideshow doesn't use any animation except the transitions from slide to slide. Making that kind of slide show in Vegas is extremely easy and would produce exactly the same result as you are getting with PSP. Using Vegas makes it easier to match transition points to specific points in the music track.

In Vegas, you can place a "marker" in the timeline by pressing the "M" key. One thing we often do is put the music on the timeline, play it, and tap the the "M" key to the beat of the music. Then, we run a script that automatically puts our photos on the timeline with the transitions occurring at the marks. These transitions can be cross fades (as you use) or straight cuts. Using a similar technique, I would expect to be able to create a slide show similar to yours in less than three minutes with Vegas.
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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby nancyrbogen » Thu Sep 16, 2010 3:08 pm

Good points, Jerry, but please understand that I've gone way beyond the show you saw and am now working on a new show that will involve 3+ layers per slide with video as one of them in some cases and all kinds of motion and color adjustments and a considerable variety of transitions.

Would Vegas still be appropriate?

I have a big quarrel with Premiere. I like their effects, but everything has to be dragged--and it is a DRAG!

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Nancy

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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby Teetime » Thu Sep 16, 2010 5:32 pm

nancyrbogen wrote:Would Vegas still be appropriate?


PSP multilayer animations via styles is much easier than doing them from scratch in Vegas. Vegas is capable of doing any of the PSP style type of multitrack animations but it involves more work.

However, I am using Vegas and PSP together to do a slideshow where I want the slides to transition on the beat of the music. What I have done is identified about 10 or so multilayer motion slides that I am doing in PSP. I put a 2 second black slide between each motion slide and then render the whole show to uncompressed AVI. Then I import that into Vegas and use the trimmer to trim out each motion slide and place it in the appropriate place in the timeline. The project isn't finished yet, but so far this is giving me exactly what I want - the best of both worlds.
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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby nancyrbogen » Fri Sep 17, 2010 5:48 pm

Ooh-la-la, Jerry! This I gotta see! Have you done anything comparable? The work I'm beginning right now will be my most complicated: multilayered with some videos as layers here and there. In one case, I'll be using the same video of mad birds flying (actually seagulls) on two layers; one layer will be in reverse and slightly slower. So I'll have a big crowd--to go with the music I'm using.

So do you work in Proshow or Vegas first? And can you switch back and forth?

Looking forward,
Nancy

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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby Teetime » Sun Sep 19, 2010 4:51 pm

nancyrbogen wrote:Ooh-la-la, Jerry! This I gotta see! Have you done anything comparable? The work I'm beginning right now will be my most complicated: multilayered with some videos as layers here and there. In one case, I'll be using the same video of mad birds flying (actually seagulls) on two layers; one layer will be in reverse and slightly slower. So I'll have a big crowd--to go with the music I'm using.

So do you work in Proshow or Vegas first? And can you switch back and forth?

Looking forward,
Nancy


Nancy, I'll be happy to post a link to this video when I finish it - probably be another few days. I actually do my work in PSP and Vegas concurrently. The final product will be rendered out of Vegas because that is where I can time everything to the music. PSP is being used to create individual slides that are among the many slides (or events as Vegas calls them) on the timeline.
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Re: Co-ordinating slides to audio

Postby Teetime » Sun Oct 10, 2010 8:30 am

Hi Nancy. Here is the video I referred to: http://www.takeonesolutions.com/Family/Reed-Asher-Sexton/9824762_GW4p8#1030500610_Yj2Sq-M-LB. The overall video was rendered in Sony Vegas 9e where I could more easily sync transitions to the music. Several segments were created in PSP as uncompressed AVI. I then trimmed those to fit in specific slots in my Vegas timeline. I was satisfied with the way it turned out.
Jerry Photos • Video
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