Spafford Posted November 10, 2007 Report Share Posted November 10, 2007 Hello ...Need some help completing a slide show for my mom's 70th Birthday. We're down to a week and half, so this is becoming a bit of a white-knuckle exercise. Slide Show stats (so far): Over 650 pictures, 83 audio sound bites of memories from family members and ~90 minutes in length.At any rate, here's our latest puzzlement ...actually three puzzlements: >> When we changed the slide duration time, it reset all my customized slides. Why? >> Why can't we play the slide show in the time-line window? Why? >> Any ideas on how to gracefully increase the length of slide show? We need it to be ~ 105 minutes o We're currently at 8.5 seconds/slideThank you very much,Kelly ....PS. We're using Pictures-to-Exe 5.0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrobin Posted November 10, 2007 Report Share Posted November 10, 2007 Kelly,Welcome to the Forum!First of all, the times should reset only if you click on "Set for existing slides".Secondly, you need to add music in Project Options / Music in order to play the timeline.Lastly, re the length of the show, 105 minutes is a long time for a single show. I would divide it up into smaller parts, using an "Intro" slide to access each one as required (add some buttons in Objects and Animations, and select "run application or open file" for "action on mouse click" under the "Common" tab). Then you can use up time by having short breaks or some other entertainment in between, to add variety to the presentation. If this is not possible, then either add more slides, or increase the time between each one. If you are comfortable with MS Excel, you might be able to use my "Adjustor" model described here to add the same amount of time to each slide. Hope this helps - good luck with the presentation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjdnzl Posted November 10, 2007 Report Share Posted November 10, 2007 Hello ...Need some help completing a slide show for my mom's 70th Birthday. We're down to a week and half, so this is becoming a bit of a white-knuckle exercise. Slide Show stats (so far): Over 650 pictures, 83 audio sound bites of memories from family members and ~90 minutes in length.At any rate, here's our latest puzzlement ...actually three puzzlements: >> When we changed the slide duration time, it reset all my customized slides. Why? >> Why can't we play the slide show in the time-line window? Why? >> Any ideas on how to gracefully increase the length of slide show? We need it to be ~ 105 minutes o We're currently at 8.5 seconds/slideThank you very much,Kelly ....PS. We're using Pictures-to-Exe 5.0Well, Kelly, firstly, a personal observation - 650 slides over an hour and three quarters is a very big show, asking a lot of viewers'attention spans, but of course it's your prerogative.To (partly) answer your questions:There are two ways to set the timing of slides; individually, and overall. If you set an overall time after having set custom timing for some slides, as I understand it there is no way for the program to differentiate between custom-timed slides and others, so they all get set the same. I have seen other slide show programs that allow proportional time adjustment (ProShow) but PTE does not seem to allow that.Your second question loses me somewhat. Why would you want to play the show in the timeline window?Third, adjusting the length of the show is easy. Apart from your problem of losing custom timing of some slides, you divide the show length in seconds by the number of slides, in your case 105 minutes is 6,300 seconds divided by 650 giving 9.692 seconds per slide, which you can set for all slides. Then using the timeline, you can move the timing for individual slides without altering the overall show length. It may well be a tedious job with 650 slides!Best of luck,Colin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spafford Posted November 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2007 Hello Al and Colin ...Thank you for your help. If I can, may I ask a couple of follow-up questions: >> The slide show is a story of my mom's life, and will be filled with ~ 90 minutes of audio clips from her children (4), grandchildren (~20), my dad and her sisters (2)Audio Clips = Expressions of love, honor and memoriesTypically, I would not remotely entertain a 105 minute slide show ~ will the audio clips make it more tolerable?If I were to use a menu, to break it up, would that hinder the flow of the slide show?Is menu fairly "easy" to do? We're runnig out of learning time I think it will be fairly emotional for my mom, so don't want the slide show to become sluggish and/or too broken up.Given that we're racing against the clock would value your perspective, as we don't have a lot of time for experiments, etc. We (more acurately, my son) has done many slides shows, typically 5-15 minutes; capturing memories of our vacations and times as a family. ...but, nothing that remotely approaches this magnitude.Thank you, again.Kelly .... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjdnzl Posted November 11, 2007 Report Share Posted November 11, 2007 Hello Al and Colin ...Thank you for your help. If I can, may I ask a couple of follow-up questions: >> The slide show is a story of my mom's life, and will be filled with ~ 90 minutes of audio clips from her children (4), grandchildren (~20), my dad and her sisters (2)Audio Clips = Expressions of love, honor and memoriesTypically, I would not remotely entertain a 105 minute slide show ~ will the audio clips make it more tolerable?If I were to use a menu, to break it up, would that hinder the flow of the slide show?Is menu fairly "easy" to do? We're runnig out of learning time I think it will be fairly emotional for my mom, so don't want the slide show to become sluggish and/or too broken up.Given that we're racing against the clock would value your perspective, as we don't have a lot of time for experiments, etc. We (more acurately, my son) has done many slides shows, typically 5-15 minutes; capturing memories of our vacations and times as a family. ...but, nothing that remotely approaches this magnitude.Thank you, again.Kelly .... Kelly,Anthing that will renew interest, such as a change in tempo, a change in slide content, a new or different subject, will tend to maintain interest. Conversely, long periods of the same slide rhythm, similar sound bites, can lose viewers' interest and once lost, it's hard to get it back.You know what you want to do better than I do, but my penny's worth would be to shorten the show to about 20 minutes or so, remove redundant or repetitive shots, keep it tight and moving - emotionally as well. From what you have said, you have about 90 minutes of sound bites from about 26 people, so that equates to about 3 or 4 minutes per person. It might be difficult, but I would edit that to a minute or less per person, and go for about a 20-minute show - and that's not allowing for any music you might want to include. It will be tighter, faster, and more memorable than a nearly 2-hour show.My wife and I did a show for her parent's diamond (60th) wedding anniversary, about 150 slides and 14 music tracks - mostly shortened in Goldwave - that ran for just over 20 minutes. The last track was "I remember well" from Gigi - a duet between a man and his lady. His memory was failing, and she corrected his recall, whereupon he would reply "Ah, yes, I remember ... well". He sings " Am I getting old?", and she replies "Oh no, not you, you were so strong, so young and gay, the Prince of Love in ev'ry way" to which he again replies "Ah, yes, I remember ... well". The slides mirrored the words, interspersed shots of the couple when young and old, the last slide being of the old couple sitting on a bench in the garden. The show was very poignant, as although the song has him losing his memory, in fact my mother-in-law was suffering from Alzheimer's, and her memory was such that she couldn't remember half of her family. There wasn't a dry eye in the room among the 80 or so guests, and although it was some years ago now, that show is still remembered and occasionally shown again.Best of luck,Colin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrobin Posted November 11, 2007 Report Share Posted November 11, 2007 Kelly,Not knowing you or your family personally, it is a little difficult for me and others to give a definitive statement here - you and your son will have to decide on what is best. However, I agree that the audio clips could help make the lengthy time more palatable, and the fact that the viewers will likely be personally involved in the images in the show will also help make the time seem shorter. Still, 105 minutes is a long time to sustain continuous interest in a presentation, emotional or otherwise.There is no real reason to break up the show since you will likely have a definite order in which you will be viewing the images - it was only a suggestion as a way to make the presentation appear shorter than it is. You can still divide it up into sections, and leave it as a single show. It would be good to have one or two nature breaks to give people an opportunity to get up and stretch, get some refreshments, etc., etc. The "Intro" idea does have a bit of a learning-curve and experimentation time required to get it right.Hope it all goes well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.