syncing certain slides to music

[juanb1203 Profile Private message]

I have a little problem, this show that I'm creating has a avi file at the beginning, with it's own music. Now I don't want my song for the show to even be on that slide, just the rest of the slides. So this is what I thought would work, but doesn't. I highlight the first slide which is the 2nd slide, and hold down shift and select the last slide, so that all are selected, then I go up under options and select sync slected slides, but after that all of the slides are set to the music, even the first one that I didn't select, how can I solve this problem? Even If I have 40 slides and two songs, and want one song for 20 slides and another song for the other 20 songs, I can't figure out how to do that either.

Juan

[briancbb Profile Private message]

Juan

If you use 'sync slides to music', the whole show is synced to the length of the combined music tracks, but only those slides highlighted are changed in time to effect this.

If you wish the music soundtrack not to be played during the first slide there are two ways to effect this.

1. Add a track of silence as the first sound track that is the duration of the first slide. This silent track can be recorded in a sound editting program by having no sound input.

2. If you double click on the soundtrack it will open up an edit window. There is a box for 'offset'. Enter in this the number of seconds you wish to delay the soundtrack (the length of slide 1 in this case). Note you can enter a -ve number in this and have the sound start early)

HTH
Brian

[juanb1203 Profile Private message]

Hey Brian, thanks for replying. I'm still a little confused. Let me ask you this, lets say that I have 20 slides, and two songs. How can I make one song sync with 10, and the other songs sync with the other ten?

[juanb1203 Profile Private message]

Hey Brian, thanks for replying. I'm still a little confused. Let me ask you this, lets say that I have 20 slides, and two songs. How can I make one song sync with 10, and the other songs sync with the other ten?

[DickK Profile Private messageWebsite]

Juan,

-- Select the slides you want to synch to the first audio track.
-- Go to the Show Soundtrack screen (double click on the audio track timing track)
-- Select the audio track that you want to use for the synch
-- Click the button on the lower right "Synch Selected Slides"

and repeat that with other other group and the other audio track.

Dick

[Barbara_K Profile Private message]

-- Select the slides you want to synch to the first audio track.
-- Go to the Show Soundtrack screen (double click on the audio track timing track)
-- Select the audio track that you want to use for the synch
-- Click the button on the lower right "Synch Selected Slides"

and repeat that with other other group and the other audio track.

Dick

Dick,

Unfortunately 'Sync Selected Slides' doesn't do what it sounds like it should do. I was confused by this for quite some time. Here's the explanation from the Help menu:

"Sync Selected Slides uses the existing slide times and increase them proportionately so that they add up to equal the length of your soundtrack."

If you use 'Sync Show to Audio' all the slide times are adjusted to the same length to fit the soundtrack. Using 'Sync Selected Sides' changes the length of the selected slides only but still syncs the whole show to the soundtrack rather than to just one audio file.

Barbara

[briancbb Profile Private message]

Juan

Looks like I have been beaten to the answer.

I have never tried what Dick has said, but on the other hand I have always believed it to be as Barbara has said,

Brian

[DickK Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hmmmm.... I stand <sit> corrected! When I played with it I thought it did what I expected but you're right of course, it doesn't do what's needed. Personally, I rarely if ever use either function, now I think I know why.

In that case, the only option is to do it the hard way -- use the audio track timeline as a guide and manually adjust the timings in each group of slides to line up with the track. I rarely end up doing that because I work the reverse, i.e., set the slide timings the way I need them to be for the story and clip & fade the audio tracks to fit their timing.

Dick

[juanb1203 Profile Private message]

Well I contacted technical support, and they told me what to do. If the case where I don't want any of the music playing on the first slide, I just go to options and then highlight the song, and then in the offset box, just put how may seconds I want the music to delay. So for example my first slide was 12 secs long, so I just put 12 seconds in the offset box, and my music didn't start until the 2nd slide. And you would do the same thing if you have multiple songs.

[briancbb Profile Private message]

Just as option 2 in my first post

Brian