Slideshow wizard - increasing slide durations

terrypin wrote on 7/25/2018, 8:37 AM

One long-standing criticism I've had (and reported) about MEP's otherwise invaluable Slideshow wizard is that its individual slides (after the addition of pans/zooms/etc) are always too long. Typically 7 seconds or so instead of say my preferred 3-4 secs.

I thought I'd come up with a way to get around that. I have 35 photos to process, so under 'Background music' I loaded a 140s track and under 'Properties & title' I set the option 'Adapt movie length to music'. I expected to get a video of 140 seconds, giving me an average of 4s per photo. But as you see I got twice that.

Does MEP perhaps apply minima and if necessary duplicate the music, despite that contradicting the specification?

Occasionally a simple export followed by an overall duration decrease gives an acceptable result. But usually I have to resort to shortening each slide individually, and sometimes changing the wizard's effect.

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browj2 wrote on 7/29/2018, 4:54 PM

@wongck

Try Terry's tutorial to make a collage. Mister007 goes into great detail about everything. Of course, you still have to come up with what you want as a collage or modify an existing one.

@terrypin

Reflecting on what happened, it seems that when I selected a collage to insert, it created a movie, and then also inserted that onto the main timeline. Each collage is just a movie file with the extension changed to ctf. Thus, for some reason, it was inserting the collage as an mvd. Strange. I spent most of yesterday getting 1 bar of a Madonna song. just the way that I wanted it, and the rest trying to fit music to the various parts of the project. Today, I think I completed the project, well, Part 1, except for a review by the wife. Export just completed: 3.3 GB for 23 minutes.

I looked at the SSM music and the SoundTrack Maker. I thought that SSM cut to the music, but it is STM that does this. SSM uses actual songs; STM uses Soundpool loops and creates a song approximately the length required, probably using the MusicMaker Song Maker app or something. It would be interesting if MEP/VPX saved the MusicMaker project file that could then be opened and edited in MusicMaker.

The Song Maker in MusicMaker is interesting, but the results are not usually usable and the loops need changing. STM in MEP seems give better results. I wonder why.

Also, it might be interesting to have a choice of using the songs or the SoundTrack Maker with SSM.

John CB

johnebaker wrote on 7/30/2018, 3:49 AM

@browj2

. . . . The Song Maker in MusicMaker is interesting, but the results are not usually usable and the loops need changing. STM in MEP seems give better results. I wonder why. . . . .

Song maker uses what appears to be a 'semi random algorithm following a set of patterns' to select the soundpool objects and instruments required to create the music depending on the parameters/options set in the wizard.

STM on the other hand uses a set of complementary mood clips for a given style, each clip is a 'complete' piece of audio the instruments cannot be changed. The big advantage is are you are in control setting which mood to use and when.

HTH

John EB

terrypin wrote on 7/30/2018, 4:42 AM

@wongck

Try Terry's tutorial to make a collage. Mister007 goes into great detail about everything. Of course, you still have to come up with what you want as a collage or modify an existing one.

@wongck

If you or others use my tutorial, make sure you incorporate the improvements that @johnebaker described in that thread. One day maybe I'll publish an update.

wongck wrote on 7/30/2018, 9:43 AM

Thanks for that pointer