Hi Terry and John,

I tried a few combinations, and yes, both 2014 and 2016 appear to knock off equal amounts from the head and tail. What is interesting, is that the time that shows up on the kf is still the original time, but does not correspond to the time on the timeline. I only used 1 photo placed at the beginning. Resizing the photo back to the original length puts back the kf's. Strange that.

John, I think that you mentioned that one of the drawbacks with 2016 is that clicking on kf turns it white from grey, whereas in previous versions it turned blue. This makes it hard for old eyes to see that the kf is indeed highlighted. At least VPX7 does a blue highlight; I hope that Magix doesn't change this in the next version of VPX7.

VPX7 has the same kf and resizing effects as 2014 and 2016. It's strange to see a kf at 5s when the image is only 4s long.

@Terry,

8+ hours per day? Sounds like work. As for me, I just finished up some, ah, loose ends, and can now get back to working on the bathroom renovations and completing at least 1 video for this year.

Regards,

Hi John CB

. . . . What is interesting, is that the time that shows up on the kf is still the original time . . .

That is correct - all times are referenced to the 0:00 point of the image wherever it is placed on the timeline - this is logical.

. . . . clicking on kf turns it white from grey . . .

That is correct - however it is not so bad as some of the other colour changes which IMHO are definitely not user friendly - black icons in mid grey background is not easy to see for someone with a visual impairment.

. . . . I hope that Magix doesn't change this in the next version of VPX7 . . . .

Unfortunately this is the design trending at the moment - flat buttons, shades of black on black etc.

My preference for buttons, dialogs etc would be similar to these

and

Cheers

John EB

Thanks both. You're right, both ends are changed. So KFs placed at each end (a typical arrangement with simple pans and zooms) both vanish when the duration is reduced!

But I can't see why it's 'logical' that the KF area doesn't report the correct time for a KF. In this example, with just one KF assigned to a photo, after a bit of editing I see this quite unhelpful information. The KF is at t=0 and IMO that's what should be shown in the KF area, not 1:01. After all, the timeline is the frame of reference.

High res: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/KF-Times-Puzzling-1.jpg

In practice, having shortened such an animated image, how do you find the invisible KFs for editing? I usually resort to opening up 'working gaps' on either side and enlarging the clip again until they reappear.

Hi Terry

. . . . I can't see why it's 'logical' that the KF area doesn't report the correct time for a KF . . . .

This is the logic as I see it, bearing in mind that MEP is a non destructive editor:

• Place image on timeline to start at eg 10 secs default length 7 secs
   
• Add keyframes at 1 and 5 secs
   
• Change image length to 4 secs, hide equal amount off both ends for display length required, image has not been moved so keep displayed start at 10 secs
   
• Keyframe at 1 sec is not part of the displayed image and has not been moved  - hide it
   
• Keyframe at 5 sec is still there and has not been moved - time is still 5 secs from the actual start of the image.

The highlighted text what I consider the pertinent statements.

HTH

John EB

Hi,

I can understand the logic for a video clip, but not for an image, as the image has only the initial length that the user chooses to give it. However, I guess one can't have 2 different systems. It just seems strange on an image that gets its length changed from the initial insert.

In MEP 2016, I see, barely, the numbers beside the kf when I highlight, if you can call it that, a kf. The numbers are black on light black (very dark grey). As you noted, very hard to see.

Hi Terry

. . . . I can't see why it's 'logical' that the KF area doesn't report the correct time for a KF . . . .

This is the logic as I see it, bearing in mind that MEP is a non destructive editor:

Thanks John, understood - nicely explained.

My remaining gripes are firstly that it's not very intuitive, and secondly that those hidden KFs give me a hard time. Re the last part of my post, how do you handle them?

--------------------

Those colours sound awful!

Hi Terry

. . . . . Re the last part of my post, how do you handle them? . . . .

My normal work flow method is to use very short images - 4 secs by default and work on them to get any KF work necessary, often locking the animation / effect to the length of the object, then adjust length if necesary

Even for a complex collage, such as the one below from our holiday in May, I start work with 4 sec images setting the initial animation / effects then start tweaking the lengths and KF positions.

the result is

HTH

John EB

Thanks John, understood. Very nice collage! Are all yours custom made? I'm doing that more frequently nowadays, maybe 50-50 versus ready-made. Almost all of the latter are of my own making though, so I'm capitalising on the initial effort.

BTW, my default for imported images is 4s too. One criticism I have of MEP's Slideshow Wizard, which I sometimes use if I'm pressed for time, is that its clips are too long for my liking. I tediously chop 2 or 3s from many of them. An option to reduce the average length would be neat.

I make a step here in the diskussion....

first of all: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

when I looked here I am remembered at my very early tuts: this one  and also here

may be its funny to have a look.....

Another item was title and transition as I have seen here

For this I just ready with a tut, in german of course...

Some example are shown - if somebody needs a google translation - I will do so.

I had the best succes using an "empty" png file

So long...

Hi

@ Wabu - a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you . Nice tutorials as well.

@ Terry

I tend to create most of my collages from scratch, however I recently did use one of MEP's. 

However I still had to tweak it because it only applied it to 4 out of the 8 selected images even though it has the >3 in its name.

. . . . One criticism I have of MEP's Slideshow Wizard, . . . .  is that its clips are too long for my liking. I tediously chop 2 or 3s from many of them . . . .

I came to the same conclusion when I was experimenting with them - they are OK for creating something in a hurry or for beginners.

What I would really like to know, once I have created a collage, is how to export it as a single  .ctf file instead of the individual components.

Cheers

John EB

What I would really like to know, once I have created a collage, is how to export it as a single  .ctf file instead of the individual components.

@John EB,

Terry's tutorial covers this, I believe?

@John and Terry,

Re Slideshow wizard: it has a feature to select the length of the photos and the length of video clips. The latter is not very precise as it is a slider, but I find that it works quite well. The minimum on video clips turned out to be 7 sec including 1 second transitions, and it helps to trim the video to approximately the desired location. However, collages are usually disastrous.

Still looking for the elusive kf's. We'll just have to remember to start with smaller images.

@Terry, John, Walter and all,

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year! You inspired me to do a quick (ok, not so quick) Slideshow Wizard Christmas video, with no collages, but a few tweaks.

Hi John CB

Doohhh!  It was me that encouraged Terry to write that one up as a tutorial !!! 

Like the video - Merry Christmas to you, Nathalie and Bernadette and a Happy and Prosperous New year.

Big favour to ask you - can you send over a load of that snow to Austria and northern Italy for January and February - missed out last year no snow in Austria for two weeks, moved to Switzerland and then had too much snow !

Best wishes

John EB

@John EB,

I cheated and used last year's snow. We had a light dusting of snow 2 months ago and none since, only rain. And that is the forecast for the next week. No skiing here at Christmas, except for cold water skiers..

Hi John,

However I still had to tweak it because it only applied it to 4 out of the 8 selected images even though it has the >3 in its name.

>3 means 'For 3 landscape ojects', not 'For more than 3 objects'.

I don't have any 8 landscape object collages in MEP 2014. Are there any in 2015/2016?

There are a couple for 9 objects, although I've never used either. I took a look and both could be used for 8 objects with hardly any difference noticed. For example:

High res: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP-Collage-8objects-1.jpg

Which 3-object collage were you trying?

What I would really like to know, once I have created a collage, is how to export it as a single  .ctf file instead of the individual components.

Pleased to see I'm not the only one to forget previous discussions! OK, my lapses are maybe ten times more frequent ... but I'll put that down to my great age.

@John EB,

I cheated and used last year's snow. We had a light dusting of snow 2 months ago and none since, only rain. And that is the forecast for the next week. No skiing here at Christmas, except for cold water skiers..

13 degs C here!

Loved your video. That's another temptation I have to resist.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Walter,

Oh how I wish I'd kept up my weekly adult education classes in German!

I'm sorely tempted to study your tutorials right now. But I must resist because I'm desperately trying to complete my DVD of last summer's walking holiday before Christmas.

Thankfully that is still 9 days away ... but I must join in and return everyone's
HAPPY C H RISTM AS!

Re Slideshow wizard: it has a feature to select the length of the photos and the length of video clips.

John,

This could be my first Christmas present - but can you get it working?

In MEP 2014 it doesn't. With 4s specified I still get some clips of 7 or 8 s.

It seems related to the music settings in some way I don't grasp. I don't use that aspect. Just want the photos to be displayed for shorter time.

Hi Terry

. . . . >3 means 'For 3 landscape ojects', not 'For more than 3 objects'. . . . .

> always means greater than for my 'scientific brain', maths being my one of my strongest subjects, however looking closely at some of the icons I can see that they also have the ^ as well for portrait images..

The effect was > 3 obj 08.

. . . . 8 landscape object collages . . .

There are no 6, 7 and 8 object collages in MEP 2016.

I find that most of the collages do not fit the project I am doing and it needs something a little different.

However, now that John CB has reminded me you did the tutorial on collage creation     , I can get some of my complex collages put together ot make it easier to use them again when needed.

. . . . I cheated and used last year's snow. . . . .

Ohhhh noooo  - however recycling is more enviromentally friendly    in which case here is a recycled eCard from last year.

Cheers

John EB

Re Slideshow wizard: it has a feature to select the length of the photos and the length of video clips.

John,

This could be my first Christmas present - but can you get it working?

In MEP 2014 it doesn't. With 4s specified I still get some clips of 7 or 8 s.

It seems related to the music settings in some way I don't grasp. I don't use that aspect. Just want the photos to be displayed for shorter time.

Sorry Terry, don't know that I can help much. As I indicated, in MEP 2016 the video clips with the slider turned all the way down come out to be 7s including any transitions. That seemed to be the minimum. Then the program will also play around with the length slightly to adjust cuts or transitions to go with beats.

Then I tried out MEP2014 just to see. In Slideshow Maker, I reduced the image length to 3s (make sure that "Adapt music length to movie" is checked and not the other way round) and put the video length slider to the minimun, 50% cross-fades, 1s transition, no other effects except for deco elements, and used Summertime theme with 3 video clips and 3 images. I ended up with some 2 - 2s+ video clips, 1 5s3f video clip and all photos at 3s.

 So, make sure that the slider is set to the left. This is for video clips and there is no seconds indicated. Maybe that is where you have the problem. The box for the length is for images, not videos. And make sure that the music length adapts to the movie. Let me know how it works out.

Why is it taking you weeks to do a simple hiking video? Why, it only took me 5 minutes hours to do my 1 minute Christmas slideshow. And I'm still not happy with it, but my wife likes it. What took so long? I selected some images and videos, cropped some, fixed most of them, even did some Mercalli 4 stabilization, and tweaked the result. Finally, I simply had to change the text font to Snowdrift and then find a way to get the parts where there is supposed to be snow to show white and not transparent - 3 hours Thanks to the geniuses on the Xara forum, I succeeded. You can see the 2 texts below. The one in red was treated in Xara and imported with the snow and the slight shadow from the snow into MEP. It only takes a few minutes to do, but hours to figure out how. This effect did not make it into the video that I posted previously. Ah, the things that we do!

Now if I can only remember how I did it. Oh yes, I remember.... now, where are my glasses.....the instructions are in the Xara forum but I have to document my addition. We're not losing our memory as we get older, we just have more to remember.

Lastly, it has snowed in Charlevoix, so we may actually get to ski at Christmas. A couple of years ago when we went there, we wanted to ski on Christmas day, but it took 4 hours to dig the car out after the overnight snowstorm (1 hour just to find the car under the snow), so we passed on the skiing.

@John EB, thanks for last year's card. It was and still is a great one!

All the best!

Hi John CB

. . . . the instructions are in the Xara forum but I have to document my addition. . . . .

Will you write that one up as a tutorial - it would be useful?

. . . . We're not losing our memory as we get older, we just have more to remember . . . .

That's it!   I knew there was a reason, however I could not remember what it was 

Cheers

John EB

Hi John,

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to get into this. It's so exasperating! I tried it again with just 3 JPGs and thought I'd finally got it, now that I'm taking care to ensure Adapt music length to movie is checked, Apply background music and Process videos are always disabled . But then I went back to a very simple real section of my current project and despite several atempts I still get incorrect results.

Is this perhaps just a misunderstanding of mine? Am I correct in assuming that Display duration per photo means what it says, namely that all photos in the result will be that length (excluding any transitions/fades)?

Or is that conceivably the minimum length, with no control possible over the maximum?

Here's a typical result:

High res:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP-SlideshowWizard-4.jpg

BTW, I note that after disabling background music (with no tracks shown), the Properties dialog still shows some music length. Presumably a minor bug.

--------------------

It's still going to be a struggle to finish my DVD by my deadline. I'm my own worst enemy in digressing onto all sorts of side issues and other work avoidance. Like solving puzzles such as this one about the Slideshow wizard. Or, in the middle of a new, complex task, thinking 'hey, this is something I'll want to do again quite often - I'll try to write a macro for it." Or "I'd better document this for when I want to do it again."  Etc, etc.

@Terry,

My photos turned out to be 3s but not the first time, only the last time, don't know why. You didn’t change the slider under process videos. Try sliding it completely to the left. The music length is the total available under the music selection, I believe.

We're suffering from the same syndrome. 

@John EB,

I will do up an illustrated version of how to modify the text once I get agreement from the source.