Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby hcajones » Thu Apr 18, 2013 11:30 am

Thanks for the many responses.

As far as I can tell, the answer to the narrow question I asked is that there is no way to lock a point on the soundtrack to a particular slide so that the soundtrack won't move (as to that slide) if slides are added or deleted or durations changed. I thought that was the case, but it's good to know I wasn't missing something.

The additional information about alternatives and methods to get to a similar result in different ways is helpful.

Thanks again.

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby Jean-Paul » Thu Apr 18, 2013 12:42 pm

You guys have a very low opinion of Photodex and their features.
I am just an idiot who uses them successfully.

This is a complete waste of time, energy and goodwill.
I am out of here!
Jean-Paul

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby im42n8 » Thu Apr 18, 2013 12:45 pm

The "simple" answer was NO. But then, if that was the only response you got, it really would not have told you what you need to know to effectively use ProShow.

If you do a search of this site, you will find that this question has been asked many times ...

Dale

PS You can attach a track of music to a slide, as I described earlier. It provides a measure of what you asked for. The music stays with the slide. The "downside" is that if you add other tracks of music in the timeline then you will need to offset the start of those tracks by the amount of time associated with the music you attached to the slide (that's because a "sound" track attached to a slide is not part of the music track timeline (unless you use an offset for a music/sound track in the show timeline, all music tracks are back-to-back. Sounds/music attached to slides are never seen by this timeline. So, you have to compensate for them accordingly).
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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby hcajones » Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:55 pm

Dale, I think you read something into my post that wasn't meant to be there. I'm glad that I got the "no" to my basic question, but I'm also grateful for the additional information that was provided. If I wasn't clear about that, I apologize. I really appreciate how helpful people try to be on this site.

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby BarbaraC » Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:38 pm

hcajones wrote:I'm glad that I got the "no" to my basic question, but I'm also grateful for the additional information that was provided.

That will teach you to not pipe up with simple questions. :lol:

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby im42n8 » Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:56 pm

Years ago, when I was teaching myself non-linear optics, I'd go ask my chief scientist a simple question. A half-hour or so later I walked out with the answer ... that's how long it took for him to explain! Turns out that what I thought was a simple question wasn't quite so simple.

Parts of ProShow are like that too. The answer to what you think is a simple question can often have aspects that you never would have thought of and probably never suspected either. But, those "aspects" are something that you really need to know if you're want to use the program effectively.

There are all levels of expertise on this site. It's often better to ask than to bang your head against the wall in frustration while trying to figure a problem out. Someone will generally have an answer for you. Sometimes the answer won't necessarily be useful to you :o but generally it will be. :D People here are helpful ... and if they're not, they're usually trying to be. We've all been there. 8)

Dale
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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby BarbaraC » Fri Apr 19, 2013 3:54 am

The other forum I belong to goes a giant step further where, once a question has been answered, the posts slowly but surely veer away from the original intent. You can, however, still learn from the "off-topic" posts, ideas and facts being revealed that seem useless and extraneous at the time, but then quite suddenly they're precisely the knowledge needed. Such threads can also wind their way into outlandish humor, but often enough, it's a perfect ending.

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby debngar » Fri Apr 19, 2013 6:23 am

Jean-Paul wrote:You guys have a very low opinion of Photodex and their features.
Jean-Paul

If that were true, I doubt I'd have continued using the software after first purchasing Gold version 2 in late 2005 then moving on to Producer after that.

Using automatic tools to design a slideshow only goes so far. Then the human element is better suited to make certain choices after that, to put the finess into the final design. That element is the key that unlocks the potential for a show to draw the audience in and feel it, not just look at it. That's what can make the difference between a mediocre show and a really good one.
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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby im42n8 » Fri Apr 19, 2013 10:14 am

Ditto what Debbie said Jean-Paul ... spot on.

I've been using this program since early 2006. In the time since, I've discovered aspects of ProShow that nobody knew about ... or had merely suspected. I discovered ways to doing things in Producer that were once thought impossible (examples: putting a layer's rotation center at any location, on/off the screen, and then rotating it around that point while changing that layer's zoom while within a mask -- the result being what looks like a natural zoom ... or changing the zoom of two layers rotating around each other while they keep the same relative distance between their outside edges ... I think I'm the only ProShow user to figure that latter one out so far). Had I the low opinion of Photodex and the features it provides (as you intimate), why would I still be using the program and plumbing it's depths to do things with it that nobody has ever done with it before? We "experts" here have been using this software for quite some time now. Why would any of us still be using this software if we had such a low opinion of it?

Anyone can make a slideshow . . . but it takes talent and hard work to do excellent work for your audiences. Putting the human element into it, as Debbie noted, is what really makes a great show. Automated tools can only take you so far ... perhaps it's a good place to start. But then, to make it a show people want to see, you need to get your hands dirty and make those changes and tweaks that make it something people don't have to struggle to finish watching. Or, you convert it into something that makes them want to watch it multiple times.

As Debbie said, it's "... what can make the difference between a mediocre show and a really good one."

Dale
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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby BarbaraC » Fri Apr 19, 2013 10:47 am

im42n8 wrote:We "experts" here have been using this software for quite some time now.

And when anyone refers to me as one of those experts, I cower, remembering all the little plateaus I reached when I thought I was an expert only to, in the very next moment, discover that I wasn't, that there was still so much to learn. The learning has never stopped. I remember when you, Debbie, got me up and running when I first began using Producer, and you, Dale, helped me understand masks. Mona gave me what might have seemed just little tips, and yet they worked as building blocks. I hope I've on occasion paid it back by sharing something I've learned or figured out.

The sharing, the back-and-forth amongst all of us, the willingness to listen, and the understanding that we'll never be perfect all combine to bring fun to the forum and to ourselves.

Jean-Paul, you need to relax, to see all of us, not as adversaries, but as a jumbled up crew of people who love ProShow.

Barbara
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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby Jean-Paul » Fri Apr 19, 2013 3:08 pm

I know you can all write the English language. :D
How many of you can read and understand this little quote, especially the last phrase :idea:
There is no need to answer this question :wink:

Jean-Paul
Jean-Paul wrote:I think your original thread was perfectly ok, it answered directly the original post.
I simply added information on a second method to sink a sound track (piece of music) to a group of slides.
Our main goal is to give helpful information to the original poster.
These features are all very good but they must be used wisely.
Example: if you need to adjust 12 seconds of a 4 minutes and 30 seconds piece of music (sound track) to 25 or 30 slides, that represents very small fractions of a second per slide and transition. After doing such a sink, it is very simple to fine tune slide and audio.

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby BarbaraC » Fri Apr 19, 2013 3:18 pm

I can't figure out why you're attempting to make people angry with sarcasm. It's mysterious.

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby cherub » Fri Apr 19, 2013 9:35 pm

Forgive me for joining this thread so very late. I just wanted to see where it would lead to. :D :roll:

I have a confession to make
I also use the Quick Synch :D :D :D

I do this particularly in long shows where I have several music tracks, or a duplicated track.
I start all my shows with A/B transitions, and I configure the "quick synch" to work only on the length of the transitions, leaving the slides durations intact.

After Producer has generated all those awkward transition times of 1.337 (and the like), I can finally start tweaking the real times that work for that particular music and effects. And believe me, I do tweak a lot :!:
This is also when I choose what transitions are suitable in a certain place and which aren't, and when to shorten or to lengthen a slide.
Needless to say, when you tweak, what's being added in one place, needs to be subcontracted elsewhere, and when you shorten the time, you must add it somewhere else.
A long, long process, that never ends, unless I say to myself - that's it, no more. :D
It's important to understand that sometimes, something has to give, and, in the end, the final product is a compromise between synchronization and what you actually want to display in your show.
And, and...
After all this work, you upload your show to YouTube, and discover that YouTube has a mind of its own, and not everything works as in your original show.
As I said before - compromise :D

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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby BarbaraC » Sat Apr 20, 2013 4:38 am

I tried the automated method just once, and not knowing I could choose what was affected, I ended up with the worst kind of mess. Was the ability to choose affected parts always in ProShow? I think I tried it back in version 3, and for all I know, I didn't read all the directions--always a possibility. :D

Barbara
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Re: Can a soundtrack location be locked in?

Postby cherub » Sat Apr 20, 2013 4:59 am

BarbaraC wrote:I tried the automated method just once, and not knowing I could choose what was affected, I ended up with the worst kind of mess. Was the ability to choose affected parts always in ProShow? I think I tried it back in version 3, and for all I know, I didn't read all the directions--always a possibility. :D
Barbara


I've been using the quick synch like forever, I think, but I don't remember exactly how I used it at very beginning.
As far as I remember, it has always been proportional. Because of this, even if your slides do get shortened unintentionally, they are always parallel to what they were originally. So, if a 10 seconds slide, gets shortened to 7.467 :D you can still work with it.

Machines were invented to simplify our lives. So, I do see the advantages in using them. I see the advantage of the Wizard too, because sometimes it comes up with unexpected combinations, that I wouldn't have thought of myself.
Of course, I always, always, do my own tweaking afterwards, but, as a start, it's a great one.

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