Newbie questions

[Jetkelly Profile Private message]

Hi all, I'm just getting started with PSG and have a couple of questions, which are probably very basic but have me completely flummoxed, so any help you can offer would be much appreciated!

My first project is a photo album style video and I have set up the backgrounds and transitions I would like (page turns basically). I have two things I'd like to do which I can't seem to manage right now:
- is there a way to delay the start of an imported video clip? At the moment, the video clips start as soon as the slide transitions, so I lose the first couple of seconds. Surely there's a delay option?
- I'd like to have images rotate in and land on top of each other, but slowly enough that you can see each image for say five seconds. I've found the installed styles which have three images coming in but they seem to come in altogether (or at least very quickly). How do I build a slide where the first image slides in, then the next image slides in, and then a third? Is it using layers and again is there some sort of delay function?

Apologies if these are very basic questions, or are covered elsewhere

Any help would be much appreciated

James

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Welcome to the forum, James!

The way we make things happen more slowly is by extending the duration of a slide. For instance, if a photo drops down into place from the top, and if the slide's length is 1 second, the photo will drop fairly quickly, but if the slide's duration is made 3 seconds, the photo will take 3 times as long to drop.

I've worked very little with video, but you might try placing a very short blank slide just before the slide containing video, transitioning into the blank and then from the blank into the video slide. I don't know if this will work, but it's worth a try.

Barbara

[Oldguy Profile Private message]

I have tried to duplicate your problem.
I can't seem to create the same problem.
Maybe the problem is in the video.

Forrest

[GregGp Profile Private message]

If I understand correctly, you are losing the first part of the video because of the transition. In PSP you could move the start of the video by using key frames. With PSG, you could use a cut transition before the video slide with the time set to zero. If that doesnt match your album style scheme with turning pages, you could try what Barbara suggested and slip a blank slide in-between.

Greg

[debngar Profile Private message]

James, if you're using Gold and not Producer, there is no opportunity for use of key frame adjustments to get the effect you want.

Barbara suggested a Gold workaround which might help but I think you may still not get you what you want in the way of introducing the other images one at a time without a lot more work.

In a nutshell, some things done in Producer can be replicated with Gold but doing it in Gold requires more slides to make it work. Gold only has essentially 2 key frames per slide, the start and end motion. Hence, all layers will come in and exit all at the same time and is why all the photos in a slide all move at once and can't be adjusted otherwise. Producer has a key framing feature where the user can insert more of them per layer and slide them along the slide timeline to work at different times during the slide time.

To duplicate some of what can be done in Producer, one must copy the end motion and settings of layers from the last slide to the start of the next with a cut transition of "0", then do it again to bring in the next image. If the extra work isn't worth trying to accomplish this effect, then choose to use some other effect, or buy Producer and learn key framing.

[DickK Profile Private messageWebsite]

James --

Deb's answer is, of course, right. Basically, it's just a series of slides with each slide adding one image to the slide, building up the stack along the way. The Cut transition between them means they'll just end up an smooth sequence. It's actually a lot harder to describe than it is to actually do it. This is one of the cases where Gold vs. Producer isn't important, you can get the effect you want just fine with Gold.

The basic technique here is one you'll use often -- setting up a series of slides with no transition between them (cut/zero time) to create a smooth flow across them with individual parts in each slide of the series.

If it's not clear after you play with it a bit, just ask again and we'll get ya there.

Dick