Thank you, Jeff. What I said was a little vague. The problem we are having is all of the frame effects either pan in or pan out and most of them rotate. I am helping my sister make a slide show of one of her sons that recently died and she wants something somber and flowing with little movement. Something simple. What we want is to have most of the effects flow left to right or right to left and remain with width or height (which ever is greater) at either full screen (and not over), or on the smaller ones, remain inset so the maximum dimension is less than full width or height of the video dimensions, and move from one side to the other. We are using fade in and fade out for most transitions. Thanks for offering to help. My sister has been working on this project for over 3 weeks and has it almost completed with over one hundred JPEG images, three mp4 videos, and a text poem with sound effect music from Magix in one frame, and a full length sound track with typical remembrance music throughout most of the slide show. Any help you can provide will be most appreciated.

Larry

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying.

I'm honestly not sure I really understand what you have done so far, whose results you don't like, and what you wish to happen.

Is it possible for you to export a short section, say about 30 seconds, of the project as it is now so it is possible to see exactly what you are seeing. If so, please post it somewhere for us to download, not to the forum since doing so may adversely affect the file through compression, and provide a link to the download site.

I'm guessing here, but I wonder whether what you want is for each new image to slide in, either from the left or the right, such that the effect created is that the "new" image appears to be placed on top of the "old". Is that correct. In which case, have you tried any of the Transitions which are called "Glide ..." or "Gliding ..."?

Jeff

We put the latest full version of the video on GoogleDrive. I don't have an excerpt, if that's alright. The file size is 2.81 GB and play length is 17m:15s. The first problem, that I didn't pose to you, is there is distortion in the beginning where I inserted a converted mp4 file of clouds moving overlaid with text that suffered too much degradation. The problem I would like to address begins 23 seconds into the video where my sister's son's name and birth and death year appear. Since text is stationary, I thought we would try to find a similar font and overlay it, either in photoshop or Magix (would be a lot easier in Magix if we can find a similar font and overlay it there; may be a problem adjusting height and centering) for those frames. What do you think? 

The problem I was speaking of is, when new images appear, the effects for most pictures has them panning in and out, and usually tilting, where I would like them to remain one size and slowly drift from one side to the other from center. Fade in and fade out are no problem. Take a look and see what you think. Also, when you preview the slideshow will you evaluate the last minute and 15 seconds and give your opinion of what you see? I feel the text poem background should have richer color, and, maybe, change color of the closing text overlaid over the inserted sunset video (mp4) file. At 16m:08s the poem begins, followed by the closing sunset video. There is also an inserted 4 min long karaoke video beginning soon after a text intro at 9m:57s, beginning at 10m:02s and ending at 13m:58s that I would like you to review. Lastly, I don't like the way many of the pictures "snap" instead of fade in during intro transitions. We can change that.

Text position on the poem needs to be inset a little and moved down on the first page and up on the last two pages. The poem title font needs to be changed, too. Poem font could be improved. We merged text with the backgrounds in photoshop. Background dimensions need to be more squared with shorter height so it's positioned better on the screen. A few formatting changes need to be made to text, too. 

At the end, there is an added space between "We" and "love" on "We love you, dad, ..." that will be removed. Overall, there are a number of slideshow frames that need to be improved. All easy. We just need help maintaining size instead of having many of the pictures pan in and out. My sister insisted on using "watermarked" backgrounds for each picture. Is it possible, using backgrounds for each picture is preventing them from being able to be kept at one size instead of panning in and out?

This is a link to the video on GoogleDrive. Thanks a lot for your help, Jeff.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mNqFV2NXFof2NU81lPyUy1ejXgj-Du7x/view?usp=drive_web

Hi Larry.

I am downloading your file as I write.

Given its size and your specific questions raised above, it may take me some time before I can offer any suggestions to you so it may be at least two or three days before I am able to return to this thread.

Hope that's OK?

Jeff

Sure. That will be fine. Any help you can provide will be most appreciated. Thank you for everything.

@musicman.larry

Hi Larry,

While waiting for Jeff to reply, here are some of my suggestions.

1. Titles - Fonts - Fonts are in Windows System, not the programs. Any fonts available in Photoshop will normally be available in PhotoStory.

I'm not sure what you mean about the titles at the beginning. How did you get these? I would simply use PhotoStory and resize/move the title around the screen to get what I want.

2. Edge effects - It looks like you (or your sister) used the slideshow wizard and had it do automatic effects. Unless you limit the effects, you will get a mess. Zoom or pan zoom or the same movement on every photo becomes annoying with the third one in a row. I suggest that you limit movement of the photos, to none or a zoom or zoom pan only when you want to zoom in on someone's face.

Because of the portrait format of the photos, it looks like the program used Templates - Design - Edge effects, which makes a copy of the photo and puts it on the background (track 5) with an effect, like blurring, and adds movement effects to the main photo (track 6) in the foreground. You can keep the background and change the foreground movement. Click on the main image on track 6, click on Effects button/tab, go to View & Animation - Size & Position and you'll see the key frames for image size and position. Move the playback marker in that box and you'll see that the zoom factor changes. To remove the effects, pop down the menu to the left of Image Size & Position in the key frame area and select delete effects. Now the photo won't move.

You can add you're own movement. At the start, click on the + keyframe to create one. Move along the timeline in the keyframe window to where you want movement to start. + to add a keyframe. Go to the end of the window and now grab the image that has the dashes around it in the preview monitor and drag it to the right. Hold down the Alt key while dragging to constrain movement to horizontal. Drag the image to the right, off of the main window. The Left position should be at least 1920, which means that the image is just off of the screen.

Back on the timeline, right-click on this image on track 6, select "Effects settings" and "Copy." Continue. Now highlight some of the other photos on track 6 and right-click on one, "Effects settings" and "Paste." They will now have the same movement effects of the first one.

I presume that you know how to make transitions by dragging the right image over a bit of the left one. Click on the transition button in the overlap and change the length to what you want. You can apply this to all transitions.

3. The Karaoke is far too long, should be 30 seconds max. Here you will need expertise to cut it down, get rid of bad part, use the out-takes of dad while the girl is singing.

4. End poem - I would have used a background and used PhotoStory to make the text and had the text scroll up or something. Best would be to have someone read the poem and have a photo collage or carousel on the screen. Reading a lot of text is difficult for viewers.

HTH

John CB

Hi,

I forgot a couple of things.

The default photo length in PhotoStory 7 seconds. This is far too long for most images, and far too long when there are many. I use 4 seconds as a default when I am using transitions, which means that the image is on-screen fully for 2s, plus a half second or so at each end of 1s transition. With no transitions, I use 3 seconds except on photos that may have a narrative to describe the image and/or a zoom/pan on a part of it, like someone's face. I suggest that you cut down the length of most photos.

I noticed that there is no caption with most photos. Will everyone know who is who? Year?

I have used a small banner and then placed text over it for this occasionally. You have many options under Titles, Title Templates, Subtitles Basic and Captions Basic.

John CB

Hi Larry.

Sorry for the delay in replying and for what is going to be a very short response! (Life tends to get in the way of the best-laid plans, and all that. My wife was taken into hospital late Saturday night; she's fine now and coming home later today, but it did rather prevent me from spending the time on this that I had hoped!)

Anyway, first I would heartily endorse everything JohnCB has written! In addition, I would offer the following suggestions:

• There is no need whatever to use Photoshop to "prepare" images, video files, text etc. to import into PhotoStory; it contains all the tools you need
• Given what John writes about the Karaoke footage, I would also add that the "gap" directly after it could lead one to assume the presentation is finished.
• Personally, I would prefer a fixed, stable background, rather than the one that uses parts of the main image behind that main image. For stills I actually find that constantly changing backgrounds are rather distracting, taking the viewer's attention away from the subject of the image.
• The "revolving cube" of images I find too "fast" and the fact that the images appear to be "out of focus" seems to detract from its value to the presentation.

That's all my thoughts for now. Hope they're helpful to you! I should add that I am most certainly not an expert, merely another user like yourself.

Jeff

Hi Larry,

Further to Jeff's excellent points, here are a few more comments:

1. I treat almost all photos with PaintShop Pro and a plug-in called Athentec Perfectly Clear. This gives my photos more pop, sharpens them and corrects exposure. I also may have to do some cropping, hiding of objects, cleaning up of spots and blemishes, perspective adjustments, etc. PhotoStory has tools to do most of this but I find that these programs (like Photoshop) do it quicker and better. However, sometimes the colour correction and shadow exposure enhancement in the Magix programs are better. I have PaintShop Pro as the external photo editor in PhotoStory (and Movie Edit Pro). This is done by changing the program under the Folders tab of the Program settings. On a photo, right click and there is Edit in external editor, which will open the photo to make adjustments. Upon closing (and saving), the photo is updated (usually) in PhotoStory. But, I don't do text in an external photo editor unless it's really something that needs to look like it's part of the photo. PhotoStory has excellent text features and special effects, movement, fades, etc.

2. There was one point, just before the Karaoke, I think, where there was music that seemed to suddenly stop. You should use a fade-out or if there is one, a longer one. Another option is to do a transition from one music to another. While I'm thinking of it, there are few audio features in PhotoStory. There is no mixer. However, you can turn on the volume curve and make adjustments (similar to keyframing). As a musicman, I presume that you know all about this.

3. I forgot to mention the stable background. Like Jeff says, it's better to use a constant background. I was going to suggest "Clouds" which is available under the templates, Decoration, Videos, but this seems to clash with the photos. There are other ones available, both static and animated. The animated ones are like loops, so you can put a copy abutting the end of the first one and there is no discontinuity. Of course, you can also add effects to the background video, like some blurring.

I hope that we haven't overwhelmed you with all of this. As you can see video editing requires quite a bit of learning to be able to get desired results.

Let us know if you need more help.

John CB