SeismicGuy

Sorry again--just figured it out. No need to "move track up" just click the audio and slide it up. Duh again!

Here is another minor annoyance but I am sure there is an answer. My slideshows typically have background music often made up of several selections downloaded from the internet or from music I already have. With MOTV you these would just all be on one "track" one after the other and you could do whatever trimming/manipulation you wanted to do for each of the selections along that track. In addition you could do some limited manipulation of any audio that is contained in an mp4 video slide (fade, mute, etc.). You can do the same thing with PTE AV but the difference is that you have to Separate the audio from the mp4 slides first and they show up as separate tracks. If you have a bunch of mp4 slides in the show you get quite an unwieldy "thick" panel that shows each and every audio piece on a separate track (see the image for what I mean). I don't really see a reason to have such a wide display of the audio, especially when the audio from one slide is far away from any other separated audios. So I tried to move the right small track upwards to condense the view thinking it would end up on the same track as the next audio up. But what happened was that the track did go up but the other one went down so the overall width of the audio track area did not shrink. I figure there is a way to have the several small separated audio tracks on a single track but not quite obvious.

I think I might have done something wrong and it comes down to the way I created what I would refer to as a "multi-image" slide. The first time I think I selected the first slide, went to Objects and Animation, ADDED the second slide (which happened to be next to the first) added another Key Frame, did the tweaks and that was it. The result shows up as a single slide both on the Slide View and the Timeline. But I guess my mistake is that the Second slide (that was used to make the multi-image slide) still shows up as a second slide following the multi-image slide. I guess that is as intended and all I need to do (if I want) is to delete that second slide from the Slide View (or Timeline). The second way I tried this probably makes more sense. I first inserted a Blank Slide and chose the two images I wanted to use for that slide. It looks to me like those images do not necessarily need to come from the File List window but can actually come from anywhere on your computer. When I was done doing it this way the multi-image slide (that had been an inserted Blank slide) shows up as expected. So it looks like my "mistake" in the first attempt was not removing that second slide from the Slide or Timeline view since it was already integrated into the multi-image slide. I guess my confusion again originates from the way this type of thing was handled in the MOTV program I've been using for the last 15 years. You could start forming the multi-picture slide by first selecting the slides in the Slide view or Timeline view, hit the "multi-picture" button, select the effect you wanted, then the program would render this into a single mp4 slide and insert it in the program while at the same time DELETING the individual slides used to create the multi-image slide. Of course you could always re-insert the individual images as slides again if you wish.

Think I just figured it out although the answer seems very unexpected. The two slides still show up separately on the Slides view but my "creation" shows up as a single slide on the Timeline view and it seems to work correctly.

Thanks. Here is another question I just stumbled on and am stuck. I went to Objects and Animation and am working with two images. I played around with what I wanted to do (basically have the first image fade out to reveal the one below) and the preview seems fine. HOWEVER I cannot figure out how to add the resulting 2-image custom creation back into the slideshow I am working with. Unless I am missing something I do not even see a "save as" option anywhere. Am I missing something?

Wideangle--yes, I have played around with applying a Style and then going into the Objects and Animations window to see what is actually going on with the image(s). Paul--I have fairly extensive experience with MemoriesOnTv which has many of the same capabilities but presented in a much simpler fashion. I would use many of their individual image and "multi-picture" presets but almost never without doing tweaks after the presets have been initially applied. In fact the best way to learn the details was to investigate and/or tweak the slide after a preset has been applied.

Well after my various questions, watching some tutorials, playing around and digging to the various operations available in the program things are finally starting to click a bit and I feel I have gotten over some of the initial hurdles. I think part of the program was the lingo and the interactions and overlaps between the actions available in a slideshow. My understanding at this point is that the Slide Options button is primarily focused on the transitions while the Objects and Animation are focused on what is going on in the slide itself. Then the Styles button allow you to apply different effects to particular (or all) slides and the Themes button allows you to apply a set of styles to a number of slides. I do have a few questions. If a slide(s) has had a style or theme applied to it, I would expect that I can still hit the Objects and Animation button and do some tweaks to that slide while keeping the same basic behavior. For example, I tend to mainly stick with Ken Burns effect on my slides but it could be that for one particular slide where the Theme has been applied I might like a little more pan and/or zoom. So this would be doable while at least starting out by having the Ken Burns effect already applied to that slide (basically I am only tweaking that effect)? Playing around it looks to me like a Theme can still be applied to only a single slide. For example the Ken Burns effect shows up in Themes but not Styles but the Ken Burns Effect theme has 8 styles (basically just variations on the pan and zoom). So even if I am just looking at a single slide why would I not just pick the Ken Burns Effect from the Themes button since it does not as obviously show up on the Styles button. I tried this and it seems to work fine by just applying a Theme to a single slide. I am also trying to play around with having multiple images on a slide and see that there are a number of Styles either provided in the program or downloadable from users. I am working with one of those now Barry Beckham's "2 Images 001" that has a blurred background image and two images floating into view on top. I am finding that I can use that as my starting point and then do my own tweaks while still keeping the same basic overall effect. So is it anticipated that working this way is "correct"--using some style as a basic starting point and then doing tweaks on that style? Saves a lot of time without starting from scratch Anyway, feel free to correct any of the description above in terms of my understanding of these things. Doug

AHA said the blind man. I hadn't noticed that before--thanks!

In the file list portion of the main screen, it would be convenient for there to be a small tick mark or something similar for files that have been dragged down to the slide list to quickly show which images are being used in the actual slideshow. The reason being that if you decide to add more images to the file list beyond those originally chosen, you will quickly be able to distinguish those from the ones that have already been used for the show. This just happened with me since I thought I had all the images I wanted but then decided to copy some more into the file list.

Excellent--that worked, thanks. Only thing that would have been a bit easier is if at the Change Category box if there was a dropdown box that let you select an existing category to move through instead of having to type in the name again. But in the meantime it is nice to know that what I was asking could be done.

My understanding was that when you imported a style from an external source, the style was automatically placed in a category of the originator's choosing but maybe I am getting this wrong. For example I downloaded the carousel styles in the previous posts and imported them into PTE and they ended up in a category called User styles (actually it was not clear to me where these were going to be put). It would be nice to predefine categories and then decide into which category a style should be placed (either a user created style or externally imported styles). Moving styles from one category to another would also be nice (e.g., the carousel styles that are now in my User styles category would preferably be moved to a category named "circular animated images" or whatever else I might choose). So are these things currently NOT doable.?

More questions about the above screen. I was hoping you could right-click in the first column and create a category but looks like not. But I guess you can rename a category. Then I was wondering if you could move styles within a category to another category but no again. Then I went searching around the hard disk to see where physically styles and themes might be stored so I could move them around outside of the program. I did find some promising looking Slide Styles subfolder deep inside the Program Files folder but gave up there. So I would vote for some better flexibility in categorizing, naming, and moving styles in some way.

I probably shouldn't even be piping in here since I am still struggling to learn the various ins and outs of the program along with the specialized lingo. But I think styles (whether pre-packaged with the program or downloaded from some external source) should be able to be easily sorted into folders by categories. For example one category/folder could be tiling of several images on a single slide, another can be carousel effect of several images on a single slide, another could be cardspread of several images on a single slide, etc. The user should be able to pre-define the generic categories/folders and then whenever the user created a specific style or downloaded a style created by someone else, it would be entirely up to the user to direct under what category that style should go. I assume(?) this is doable after the fact but seems much more logical to have this option from the get-go.

Quite impressive. I am not sure I understood the basic concepts involved in creating the "hoop" and having the images connected but if I watch it a few more times it will probably sink in.

I assume this is something that is not built into the program but, rather, was designed by you and is downloadable and can be imported--yes? What I am suggesting is that many common type of effects (e.g., animated tiling of images onto a slide, flowing/zooming of the images on the slide, the carousel effect you produced, etc.) could be integrated into the program. I guess there being a group of experienced users who innovate these effects and making them available for downloading and importing sort of accomplishes the same thing. If you had not noted that you had created such a style, I would need to search for "carousel" in the forum and would presumably find yours. Still it just seems like it would be easier to have variations of the most popular ones already built into the program without the need to search, download, and import.

As usual an excellent presentation for an excellent program. I am curious though how long it would actually take to produce a slide composed of say 6 or 8 images that rotated in a circle like a carousel. I don't know if that is a standard style/theme(?) built into the program but suspect there are folks that have produced some downloadable preset style or theme (I still get confused with the lingo sometimes) that can be imported. A number of preset effects, some of which are pretty complex, were built into MOTV and I am guessing this is also the case for many of the other currently available slideshow programs out there. I don't see it as a flaw if various effects are built in and easily accessible with a dropdown or button as long as the effect can be massaged and tweaked to serve a particular purpose. The nice thing is that at least you would have a starting point where 80% of the work was already done for you. A (poor?) analogy would be if I were using a spreadsheet program and frequently had to add a column of numbers. I can create a formula every time (=C1+C2+C3. . . ) or I can go to the ribbon bar on Excel and hit the "AutoSum" button. The program is not any better or worse since there is a "preset" button that will sum up a row or column of numbers but having such a button just adds to the usability.

Not worth debating or theorizing why they are not around. My guess is that for their particular audience (folks wishing to put together a presentable slide show for fun in an hour our less) there were umpteen other alternatives that were either free or cheap. If you are interested I can send you the program and you can use my license (no big deal since the company does not exist anymore) and then you can judge for yourself. As I said it took me about 20 seconds to assemble a rotating "carousel" of several jpg and videos on a slide. I am guessing that a newcomer MOTV might take about 15 minutes to do so. How long would it take a newcomer to do the same thing with PTE and how long for an experienced user? Again, I think PTE is definitely a superior program given the level of tweaking and precision that can be accomplished. But not so much in terms of usability right out of the box. Doug

There are a lot of great programs and apps that are not longer around for a variety of reasons. Codejam was planning updating the program back in 2012 but the specific issue they had was licensing Bluray at a reasonable price. My impression is that they were a smallish operation appealing to hobbyists like me that were just looking to put together decent looking slideshows for pleasure use. Their price was more than fair but there was plenty of free competition for this such as Windows Movie Maker, etc. Not sure what problem you had mixing jpg and video slides in a single slide. I am attaching a rendered multi-picture slide that includes jpgs and a couple of videos that rotate around in a carousel and the videos still act as videos--took me an entire 20 seconds to do this. If I was doing a real "show" I would spend some time tweaking things in the multi-picture side. As pointed out above, the target audience for this and other similar software at the time was really folks that wanted to quickly assemble a bunch of jpgs and videos to show friends, family, etc. The presets in MOTV were great starting points and it was easy to tweak them without too much effort. In fact the more time you spent with the program the more you discovered you could do. PTE seems like the opposite philosophy where you really need to dig in deep right off the bat. The plan for MOTV was to update things like resolution to Bluray quality but I guess they figured the effort was not worth it or they lost interest. I have no argument with the fact that PTE is much more sophisticated in terms of the tweaks and level of precision but I guess it comes down to usability. If I want to create a slide where, say 4 images float in to certain positions it just seems there are a lot of steps in PTE versus the single button present for MOTV that took about 5 seconds to accomplish. Test Circle.mpg

Hi Barry--I quite enjoy your tutorials and have to say that the sophistication of PTE AV is quite something. But I will have to respectfully disagree with the necessity of there being a steep learning curve in order for something to be worthwhile. Yes if you are a professional and are developing a slide show that has to be spot-on perfection with music, effects, etc. timed to the millisecond then yes, you really need to learn all of the ins and outs of this program. But there are a lot of folks just looking to create a nice presentable slideshow to show friends, family, etc. You could get pretty close to perfection with MOTV but doing so didn't require a steep learning curve. Plus another nice thing about it was that the interface was highly graphical and intuitive and getting help on a specific task was also quite easy.

Yes I had similar questions on a few different threads so missed this one. Here is how a slide looks in the analogous Slide View that is multi-picture with 6 different images: And here it is in the Timeline View: And after double-clicking the slide it brings up the ability to edit it. Here is an example with the Key Frames indicated and the first slide in position and the other one entering from the right:

Yes understood. But having to look at the name versus just having the slide itself stand out in some way (filmstrip effect) is much easier. In other words a picture is worth a thousand words. You IMMEDIATELY recognize the slide as being a video rather than a jpg WITHOUT having to look at the file name.

Changing the slide name in advance of moving it into the slides view or timeline view is a workaround but the FILMSTRIP symbol stands out much more than reading the name of the slide. For the multi-picture slide, there was really no grief or effort in doing this. First you would create the multi-pictures slide with whatever images you wanted: Then when you were done using one of the prepackaged effects or creating your own, the program would "render" the result into a single video file: I hope I don't get kicked out of the forum for constantly referring back to MOTV but the program has not been sold by the developers (Codejam) for a few years now so it is really not a currently competing product. Still I think if you google around a bit you might be able to find a source to buy or download the last version. The program was ridiculously cheap and was only about $50 or less at the time. If you can find it, it is worth downloading and playing around with it. The learning curve is almost nil and the versatility was incredible.

Anything could be placed in a multi-picture slide (jpgs and videos). At the end when you were satisfied with what you had the program would "process" the slide into a single mp4 file that would be inserted into the show. Again the things that could be easily accomplished with this program were amazing even though the interface was deceptively simple.

Hey Jill--I don't necessarily have ALL of the slides the same duration and I might tweak some to be a bit longer or shorter than whatever default I would pick. Also I would often create a number of multi-picture slides (e.g., two or three images coming together on a single slide) and those are typically longer anyway. Also the videos that I scatter in help to break things up. Wideangle--EXACTLY right. With MOTV it takes no time at all to select only jpgs and skip over the videos. I never would create multi-picture slides by combining jpg and video although there was nothing to stop you from doing it. Once the multi-picture slide was created the program would convert that entire slide to an mp4 clip and that resulting slide would be placed into the show, although it was still possible to edit the slide if it turned out that you wanted to change something.

Adding the mp4 videos back in at the very end is one solution I also came up with. But my suggestion to have video slides in the timeline somehow stand out differently than jpg images (e.g., by using filmstrip symbols or special highlighted or colored border) it would make it so much easier to deselect the video slides after selecting all of the slides or to omit selecting them altogether when making changes that you just want to apply to jpgs. Or even have a checkbox somewhere that lets you apply changes to jpgs but not mp4 slides. Seems there a several ways to skin the cat for future options in the program.