Re time Collages

wendy-weissman wrote on 9/13/2020, 3:04 PM

All the collages seem to have pre set timing. Most of these are too long given how many pictures are in them. When I change the timing manually it does not seem to change the animation at all. Even when I select "all objects" (in fact that makes it even worse).

I looked in the manual and other than manually moving the animation objects I can see no other way to fix this. Am I missing something?

This is a cool product that is missing these little things that will take up hours of work and defeat the purpose of having these effects in the first place.

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 9/14/2020, 3:50 AM

@wendy-weissman

. . . . I looked in the manual and other than manually moving the animation objects I can see no other way to fix this. Am I missing something? . . .

You are not missing anything, depending on the collage you are selecting it will apply to the number of images/video indicated on the collage icon, collages are fixed length and changing the length has to be done manually.

John EB

wendy-weissman wrote on 9/14/2020, 11:47 AM

That is rather unfortunate. This is the main reason why i would think people would want this type of application and manually having to edit those almost makes it not worth it. I really wish there was a way for us users to vote on enhancements. This would be at the top of my list. Be able to change the duration and have the application automatically re organize all the transitions etc..

browj2 wrote on 9/14/2020, 12:59 PM

@wendy-weissman

Hi Wendy,

Collage templates, like all other templates are not features - they are templates. Collage templates, for the most part, include keyframing various effects, including size/position animation and more. These are not amenable to a simple change in duration - you would have to move the keyframes as well. This can be done in Movie Edit Pro Plus/Premium, but PhotoStory (at least my version) does not have the Edit effect curve feature allowing you to stretch and compress an effect. Most people just want a template and not play around with modifying it.

Trying to change the length of the overall template is usually not simple, and you would know this if you understood how the effects and keyframing work. If you do know all about this, the you would know that you can simply ungroup everything and modify everything to your heart's content - within the editing limitations of the program.

You seem to just want an overall change to the entire duration. This is actually quite simple. Me, I would probably want some photos to appear longer, some shorter, etc., so I would want full control - not some kind of automatic adjustment.

How to adjust the length? Create your collage with nothing else in the project. Export to a video file; I prefer Magix format mxv. Open your main project, import the video clip of the compiled collage, select it, go to Effects, Image Optimization, Speed and change the length by making the speed faster or slower. Done.

As you were told, I believe, in MEP/VPX you can create your own template, modify an existing template, and save it for future use. It looks like this may be possible in PhotoStory, but you are limited by the number of tracks available.

John CB