Photo Manager - Problems with Add Audio Commentary playback and Share

browj2 wrote on 3/12/2024, 2:51 PM

Hi,

Photo Manager Deluxe v. 13.1.1.12

Select a photo, right-click or Edit, Add audio commentary and record something. I went through all of the formats trying to find one that worked because nothing played back. They all probably do. I ended up using Microsoft ACM (*.WAV). Record something. Hit the square to stop. The message is inappropriately named "Recording cancelled" even though the recording was indeed made. Close.

The file should now be in the list with the same name as the photo .wav. Double-click to play it back. No sound.

Exit the program, reopen, double-click the .wav file - it works!

One should be able to immediately hear the audio played back without having to restart the program.

Does anyone else have this problem?

There are other problems here, like nothing goes in the white box to the right of Manual recording or in the counter just below it, but they don't impede the use of the tool.

SHARE

For anyone wondering why one would do this, add audio commentary to photos, I have a load of family photos for which some relatives want to add commentary. I could add the photos into the video editor and then record the person into the video editor, creating a wave file for each photo, and editing the duration of each photo to suit the duration of the narration. The problem is that different people will comment on different photos which have been scanned in no particular order. The filenames of the recordings would require management to get them to be the same as the photo. The photos will be used in various videos/movies. The easiest way seems to be to just go down the list of photos with each person, if they have something to say, record, and it gets the name of the photo, making it easy to sort out later in the video editor where the duration of photos will have to be adjusted to suit the commentary.

The next problem, Share, Edit Videos from Album - no longer works, not even with MEP2015. I can open an album file, .alb using MEP2015, but not with Movie Studio 2023 or 2024 or VPX15. ALB has been removed from eligible project formats. Bad!

Can someone confirm this?

However, if MEP2015 or MMS2023 is open, select all from an album and drag onto the timeline works fine.

Select some photos and their respective wave files, Share, Embed photo into a video - select the program. MEP2015 and MMS2023 open and only the photos are added to the timeline, which, I guess is correct as there is also Share, Use as background music that will send selected audio files to the video programs. MMS2024 and VPX15 will open with only 1 photo (or 1 audio file) on the timeline. Try select all from an album, drag onto the timeline and nothing happens in MMS2024/VPX15 the first time. Try again and the files will drag and drop. The same things happens if a bunch of files are selected from the list and dragged onto the timeline - doesn't work the first time, second time works.

So I see a problem with easily getting selected files into a video with MMS2024/VPX15. Can someone confirm this?

Photo Manager desperately needs an upgrade, but I think that it will fall by the wayside. Pity!

Thanks,

John CB

Comments

browj2 wrote on 3/14/2024, 8:12 AM

Follow up on Add Audio Commentary.

Since the file playback cannot be heard without reopening Photo Manager, I found that if I opened Sound Forge Audio Cleaning Lab, navigated to the desired folder, the newly created file can be played back. Better still, I can drag the file onto the arranger and edit it, overwriting the original.

I now have a method that works for this part of my workflow.

John CB

browj2 wrote on 3/14/2024, 9:20 AM

Problems with SF Audio Cleaning Lab - overwriting a file causes a click to be added before the end of the file. Most annoying. Happens in both SFACL 3 and 4.

Workaround is to do a Save as.

John CB

browj2 wrote on 3/22/2024, 8:00 PM

Hi,

After playing around more with Sound Forge Audio Cleaning Lab (SFACL) 4 and the Add Audio Commentary in Photo Manager, I found something strange. The first file saved was about 40 seconds long. However, when I opened the wave file in SFACL, only about 12s was showing. The object could not be extended. I thought that maybe there was a limit to duration of a comment of about 12 s. I was wrong. Double-clicking on the wave file and playing it back in WMP, it was 39s long; same when putting it on the timeline in VPX and in Samplitude Pro X.

I tried doing a few more with the same result. SFACL does not bring the file in properly. I was able to do it, but only after opening the file with something like Samplitude. This seemed to have changed the temp file or something.

Oops, I just tried again, and now the file is about 34s but shows up as 43:05. There is nothing shown between 34 and 43.

If anyone has both Photo Manager and a version of SFACL, please try it. The format in Photo Manager is Wavefile (*.wav). I tried these out in SFACL3, and the last file was truncated at 8:16. There are strange things happening that I cannot explain.

John CB