Hi John,

Thanks, that’s an interesting set of tests.

If I have a large number of photos (say over 30), the main reason that I use SSM is to reduce the time of adding individual effects. Even though I have some effects of my own, I sometimes like to see what the wizard will do, for variety. I specify mostly pans and zooms. Very occasionally a few rotations and multiples. And intelligent portraits and panoramas if the source material warrants it.

So I’d simply like to specify total durations averaging 3 or 4 secs, regardless. I’d be happy for the wizard to avoid transitions and effects that prevent that being achieved. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem smart enough to do that.

I always make a copy of the original photos in another movie tab so that I can quickly refresh it, as I too have sometimes had quirky behaviour from Undo.

For my 35 photo project I changed each individual duration, plus a couple that needed effects changing too. But for 500...

Wow... I too use 4 secs for my photos and have near to 500 (audited & 100s removed) photos of a single day holiday taken by 3 iPhone/camera trigger happy family members.

I use the SSM and after using it would go to the storyboard mode to "fix" every photo to 4 secs and to a quick transiton (like 0.10s ) with apply to all... yes blindly.

Normally transitions are OK and but some effects are horrible after you shorten it. But luckily these are normally complex one, where you can deselect in the settings or they can be spotted easily on the timeline because it uses lots of tracks. I will manually change them. And yes, I spend weeks just editing my vacation videos.

@terrypin, @wongck

. . . . 4 secs for my photos . . . .

Does that include the transition times as well?

. . . . And yes, I spend weeks just editing my vacation videos . . . .

I am still trying to finish off my 2016 holiday - it takes a little longer - there is 2 months worth of video and still images to work through - I am nearly done, only the last 10 days of the holiday to finish - so far 19 months on/off working on it.

John EB

@wongck

Sounds like you, John CB and I have broadly the same requirement. I last raised it in December 2015, with a timeline fragment illustrating the error:

This what Help says:

Film length: Resulting film length: This is an estimation of how long the film will be after applying Slideshow Maker.

Available music: This is the complete length of the music that is currently selected. Background music enables detailed settings for the pieces of music to be used.

Adjust film length to the music: An attempt is made to adjust the length of photo objects to the background music. If the film is too short the music will be cut off. If the film is too long, the music will repeat.

Adjust music length to the film: Photo objects have a set length, and the resulting film is filled with music. The music at the end of the movie is simply faded out.

That 'set length' is presumably the setting for slide duration here:

But it clearly doesn't work, or work reliably.

I don't believe it would be difficult to add some code to fix this. But, three years on, I won't hold my breath.

@terrypin, @wongck

. . . . 4 secs for my photos . . . .

Does that include the transition times as well?

Hi John: Saw your post after sending mine.

Yes, but I now use them infrequently, with cuts predominant. And for those few I change the default 2s to 1s. I''ll extend a photo to 5s (or more) if obviously necessary, but sometimes trim others to 3s.

Double WOW.... and I thought I was the only one catching up with vacation videos. 😇

I had been trying to finish my 2016 vacation video as well, and that's 12 days worth and I have started the 9th day when that Win10 no-sound fiesta came about. I am on day 10 now. I only started to speed up (reads as start doing after months) in Feb when I realised that the 2017 vacation was 34GB (damn Apple for the easy to use camera) and yet to start. In the meantime, the family is already talking about vacation this coming Dec. 🙃

4 secs with overlapping transition at both sides. So 2 photos will be a bit less than 8 seconds. I had in past year squeezing my videos into DVD, and so the short time of a photo. For the 2016 video, I trying HD, so will use a USB memory stick rather than DVD. But then I suppose my videos will be bad as the Videocam does only DVD quality. I am still looking to purchase for a HD camcorder.

Hi,

I was under the impression that SSM would adjust the cuts to the beat of the music, so asking for 3 seconds would give approximately that. Looking in the manual and at SSM, it doesn't look that way. Terry, how do you get the cuts, even with transitions, to follow the beat using SSM? I noticed that your travel video that I watched recently was perfectly cut to the music, and not Magix' music. Are you using Musical Cut Adjustment after using Remix Agent or something? Or are you doing it by ear?

We need a new feature, a "Stop Time" button, to allow us to catch up. I have projects, some started recently, some started a few years ago, for vacations/travel from 2002 onwards (not to mention musical soirées and others), and I haven't looked at those prior to then, yet. Very few have been completed. For our recent 3-week vacation, I managed to get the first day, fishing, completed and out, a major accomplishment for me. Now, I'm concentrating on part 1 of my niece's visit, almost finished, and trying to avoid starting part 2 until part 1 is out. Most of the 500 photos (all but 1 in portrait mode - I told her that she'll have to turn her TV sideways to watch the video) are in part 1; she wasn't with me for the first week. Part 2, only 2 days with me, has about 100 of those photos plus video. I first went through the photos, eliminated many, especially multiple photos of the same thing whilst selecting what I thought was the best, then I ran all through PaintShop Pro and Perfectly Clear, making the photos pop, adjusting horizontal alignment, perspective, cropping, and sometimes removal of objects like garbage or blue bins. Even then, I did not do everything perfectly, just improved things - diminishing returns. Then I made a few Vasco da Gama videos of some of the places where she went, followed by getting some Google maps and street images to help illustrate various locations. Research (where did she take these photos? GPS was off). I created some collages instead of using SSM. Now I'm putting in titles/text, to be followed by music and some dialogue, and probably adjustments to cuts to follow the beat of the music. Part 1 is 22 minutes, probably 15 minutes too long. Total production time, probably 40 hours. Please, a "Stop Time" button!

The joys of editing video.

John CB

@browj2

Reading your post, that's the exact process I go thought as well.

I dislike those portrait photos & videos, at least for photos there's effects for it. I am not sure what to do with portrait videos. I use a old ACDSee to correct the photos, even use it to remove unwanted objects in the photo. Those photo selection & correcting process takes the most time.

But the finished video.... ahhhh... a very satisfying feeling indeed.

@wongck

If you have Plus or Premium, then you have EdgeEffects under Design Elements that make a background using the portrait image of various types, and add movement and other effects to the original. Works with videos and photos. It's a good solution but with many photos, I would rather have a collage to get through them a bit quicker.

John CB

"Terry, how do you get the cuts, even with transitions, to follow the beat using SSM? I noticed that your travel video that I watched recently was perfectly cut to the music, and not Magix' music. Are you using Musical Cut Adjustment after using Remix Agent or something? Or are you doing it by ear?"

Hi John,

Anything approaching perfection you saw must have been pure luck! My attempts years ago to use the tempo recognition or BMP wizard or whatever were never successful. My approach to music tracks is entirely manual and very simple.

If you have Plus or Premium, then you have EdgeEffects under Design Elements that make a background using the portrait image of various types, and add movement and other effects to the original. Works with videos and photos. 

Hey, Thanks for the hint of EdgeEffects works for video. I thought it works for photos only, I been using it for my photos along with collages. Never experiment with video. My MEP does have a few, I am sure you have more in yours.

Hi,

Here is a test that I did with 3 photos:

1. Using the Template EdgeEffects - Gamma 2, 1, 3 (I think) - 12 seconds
2. Using SSM with Chillout, Intelligent effects for portrait mode on - 17 seconds
3. My collage - 4 seconds

I should try more alternatives in SSM to see what else it could come up with. However, looking at the lengths, 1 keeps the length at 4 seconds per image, 2 increase the length, 3 is of course the 4 second length, which I can easily extend.

Which is the preferred method? Depends on the content and what one is trying to do?

SSM with any effects will always be the longest, as far as I can tell.

Another interesting feature of VPX, not available in MEP, VPX shows the details of the EdgeEffects:

John CB

"I should try more alternatives in SSM to see what else it could come up with."

I urge you not to, that's been my downfall! There are so many possible results of playing with Effects settings that hours can pass with still nothing confirmed on the timeline.

I'm trying to avoid too much 'fancy stuff', which can ultimately become tiresome. So for rapid coverage of large numbers of landscape photos I often simply use straight cuts and a very short duration. Perhaps with a little zoom and/or pan. The image fills the screen and it's not there long enough to bore.

But portraits in large numbers are a different matter. Like you, I use collages a lot. Some of MEP's own are effective, apart from the subject issue: their long duration. Here's one I improvised this morning from a section of SSM. I then applied it to 24 photos (AR 2:3), which displayed them in 24 s. Although that's an average of only 1s per image overall, each one is actually displayed for over 2½ s.

Hi

. . . . . "I should try more alternatives in SSM to see what else it could come up with." . . . . .

I must agree with Terry - time has no meaning when playing with SSM - I quickly realised I was getting nowhere with it in a lot of time - I have only used SSM once in over 12 years of using MEP and that was a few weeks ago for a very quick funny advert.

It is far quicker to create you own collages and it is very easy once you have the first 'section' done, after that it is rinse and repeat eg in the example below once the first 4 images were done the effects were just copy and pasted to the rest - as you can see in this example of 28 images in 43 secs.

@terrypin @browj2 @MAGIX_Redaktion

Perhaps we should have Magix run a 'Collage competition'.

HTH

John EB

@johnebaker

Very nice John. In fact I may have to copy it! (More work avoidance...)

@johnebaker

@terrypin

Very nice John. I expect that most images were adjusted to have the flowers in the centre of the small images. I like the transitions. Mine were all dark to light. I'm going to make up a couple like yours for use in the next part of my project.

I think that Terry already has many collages already done, right Terry? As do you, John. Maybe you both can make some of them public like Sergio:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu23YMK_gcX06NeJ5uQlStQ/videos

He is very well-organized and has a lot of interesting ideas, although there are not many that I would actually use.

Mister007 also has a very detailed tutorial in 4 parts as to how to make collages. Here is the link to part 3:

https://www.magix.info/us/tutorials/les-collages-de-vdl-volet-3-crer-un-collage--1191340/

He went into great detail for those who need it. Terry, I found that your tutorial was quite sufficient.

Since part 1 of my current project is done, up to putting in the music, I'll leave well-enough alone, even if my collages are a bit boring. Part 2 will have a mix of the portrait and landscape images plus video, so the dynamic will change.

I agree with you about SSM not being too useful. I used it in the past where I had a dozen photos in between video segments, just to make some simple transitions and add in music, whilst keeping the length short - no effects.

OT

I had reason to use a Xara graph in my project for the first time. I wanted a vertical bar chart with one bar increasing by 1 each time my niece visited a church. Xara has chart smart shapes, just modify. Dragging the bar up or down changes the value. It was quite simple to quickly modify it, export to jpeg, repeat. An alternative is to simply import the XAR file onto the timeline. In VPX, it opens Xara for modification, if you have Xara.

Anyone who got Xara P&GD with the Humble Bundle should go into the gallery and download everything from the on-line gallery before the update period expires, which I believe is September. Make a backup in case you have to reinstall. I'll have to look up the location of the saved content, as it's rather difficult to find.

John CB

Some fascinating videos from Sergio, thanks for the link. But, like you, I can't see myself using them. However, what I would like to see are a few detailed examples of how he made them, especially the creation and manipulation of his masks.

I confess I still haven't found the time and motivation to attempt climbing the Xara learning curve! Happily I've had little need for animated masks, and I can make static ones in the comfort of PaintShop Pro.

And my French is insufficient to read Mister X007's video headings, much less follow his narrative.

Hi Terry,

Pick one of Sergio's videos and I'll take a look. All of the details are available for download.

There are major differences between PSP and Xara. I drew a line once in PSP and had to read the manual to find out how to do it. In Xara, simply select the line tool and draw. There is no need for fancy layers, just draw. I usually use File, New blank photo, just to have a black background. Same with the smart shapes. To draw a rectangle, select it and draw, then change the height and width in the box if you need exact dimentions. To draw on a photo, drag the photo in, and simply draw on it or add text. You can't do that in PSP without creating some funny layers.

I just had something very strange happen. I my Collages project, I added a movie, brought in some photos, selected a collage, and it created a new movie with the collage and inserted it into first movie, but not with my photos. Very strange. I created a new project, no problem.

John CB

Oh no! It's doing it again. I can't even insert 1 collage without this happening, and it doesn't use my photos. What did I do? Could it be something in the translation.ini file that I changed?

@browj2

. . . . I expect that most images were adjusted to have the flowers in the centre of the small images . . .

Sort of - they are all 4:3 images cropped to 16:9 such that the flowers were in the correct places.

I too have had a look at Sergio's videos and like Terry I cannot see me using them either, however the Mister007 has given me some ideas.

John EB

I put the original Translation_EN.ini back and it works fine now. Of course, my added collages all now show up at the bottom, which is fine. Whew!

This was very strange, as everything worked fine yesterday and I hadn't changed the ini file since.

Lesson: always keep the original ini's.

John CB

Mister007 also has a very detailed tutorial in 4 parts as to how to make collages. Here is the link to part 3:

Great tutorial... Anyone translated the docs to English?