RGAkins

Jill's suggestion worked fine.

This worked pretty well - only problem was that the first two added items (a text and image) had the correct keys but otherwise were blank. Especially interesting was the text since it showed the correct bounding box, the correct text, font, and shadow, but the text didn't show no matter where I tried it. I just deleted those two items and re-entered them with the original key values. Since I had almost 20 items appearing and disappearing and moving around, Jill's suggestion saved a lot of time. It's good to have generous experts looking over my shoulder!

Is it possible to copy a set of key-frames and apply them to a different background?

Rosy, Yes, I set the duration to the shortened value. The video does, indeed, cease at the shorter time, but there remains are portion at the end where the video has stopped. Thus, I still have the original long length, but with a non-video end. The entire piece is still the length of the original video. I want to somehow trim off that non-video portion.

It would be nice if the time-line had the options of min:sec or milliseconds.

Jill, thanks so much for your help. I believe that I have done what you indicated. The result is that the video stops at the shortened time and the keys are as desired. But now I have a "dead" piece of video at the end -- how do I truncate it so that the entire show is the desired (shorter) length. Grabbing the right end and moving it changes the key frames.

I have made a slide show using a video as the background and adding images via O&A. I now find the video too long and new to cut the end off. I can't just move the end to the left because that changes all the keys frame times (squashes them down). I just want to cut the end of the video and leave the uncut portion the same keyframe-wise.

Newby here: I just finished a slideshow and have found that I messed up several times when entering key frames in milliseconds and seeing the timeline in min:sec. Certainly these can be set to be the same, but how??

Jill, so you are saying that you need a still image for each or the repeated videos? If so, does the length of the still image make any difference? This seems to be a rather obtuse way of simply looping a video until you stop it.

Thanks to Jill, et. al. I finally got it!! Lots of good help and I look forward to progressing and asking many more questions -- and some day maybe even giving a few answers as payback. Dick

Pnwhiker, et. al. Thanks so much for some of the detailed responses, but I still cannot accomplish what I am aiming to do - probably my questions were not clear since I just beginning to learn some of the terminology. Let me try again: I have no problem creating images on transparent backgrounds (usually with an old version of Photoshop, but also with Gimp or other programs). I almost always save them as PNGs. I can add the PNG to a frame ala Pnwhiker - no problem. But what I want to do is add it to the timeline such that I can have the black silhouette move across and over a background (another image or video), and then, perhaps, fade from view. All my attempts at putting a PNG on the timeline result in a black silhouette on a black (or gradient) background, not a black silhouette on a transparent background. Maybe I'm trying the impossible!

Happiness is having a forum where generous help from knowledgeable people is readily available - it can make up for lots of shortcomings in software and new users' abilities. (Not that I see any problems, yet, with the software!)

Jill -- I use Adobe Photoshop (old version) to create PNG's with transparency. Aleina -- I just want a slideshow consisting of some images and some videos with some black silhouettes moving over them. The silhouettes are PNG with transparency. Thank you both, and others, for your help.

So far I can put my PNG over another image or video, but the PNG background will be black, white, gradient, etc. --- but NOT transparent.

I see how to change the background of the PNG, but how do I put it over a video, for example, with the original transparency? I changed the background from black to "gradient," but when I put in in the slide show there is the gradient, not the transparency. I don't see an option for transparency background as the original had.