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open skies · Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:26 pm Post subject: fast forwarding

When you have finished creating your movie, but notice your music and photos end way out of sync and you try to adjust speed to fix the problem, how on earth can you fast forward the project, rather than have to run it full length over and over to see if you have it right?

bill catalano

Bill Smith · Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:10 pm Post subject:

You can't (and many of us wish that you could).

EDIT: Keep reading. I was wrong.
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nan · Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:13 pm Post subject:

You can do fast forward in Timeline in most 3DTime's photo show styles - by clicking in a middle point in the timeline and then start the show from that point.

Bill Smith · Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:07 pm Post subject:

Thanks Nan. I was aware that the photo display would jump (or fast forward), but I wasn't aware that the music would as well.

Hopefully, everyone else can get this to work. I can't seem to do this. When I double click the "video" jumps to that photo as expected, but the music doesn't fast forward to that point as well.

EDIT: I was using the photos on the right. I couldn't get the photos to display while clicking in the time line. But, I did learn how to use the time line to fast forward music selection.
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Bill Smith · Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 4:20 pm Post subject:

I love being wrong, especially about what this great product can do!

I've been playing with this whole subject some more, and am learning a few new tricks. So - thank you to Nan and Louis (at 3DTime) for helping me (Nan for pointing out that 3DTime photo styles supported this, and Louis for some more detailed instructions on making their products work).

I've actually discovered that 3.29 (and maybe a few earlier versions) of 3D-Album software support the ability to test out photo changes and associated music tracks. So, not just 3DTime photo, but any 3DTime or 3DAlbum style that supports the time line feature can do this.

It's not as easy to use and nice as I would like. Here's what I did. I would start up a style, and then click on the time line icon. The icon at the top will actually stop the preview window. Now, when the time line comes up you'll notice it has 5 rows. The 1st row has icons and input buttons, the 2nd row has a timeline, the 3rd row shows the photos, the 4th row shows the sound track and the 5th row shows the events.

Click on the 2nd row's timeline, say at the 30 second mark. Notice the small triangle/cursor marker has moved there. Now, click on the PLAY icon in the 1st row and the music will pick up at that 30 second mark. Let's pretend that you want a specific photo to show at exactly that 30 second mark. Click on the photo (3rd row) and drag it to the 30 second mark. Notice that the value in the PHOTO POSITION (1st row) is moving as you drag the photo along. This allows you to exactly put the photo where you want. OK, click the close and everything starts all over again in the preview window.

This won't help you with global music that is spanning multiple styles, but it will help you with a single style that is playing a specific set of music.

If anyone can add to these instructions to add additional information, that would be great.
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open skies · Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2007 11:19 pm Post subject:

Thanks Bill, but this is just tooo much trouble to go through as far as my capapbilities azre concerned, Interesting that you found a way though as I had written to customer support with this response.........Hello Sir,
We are not able to do that for now the reason is the presentation you created is a computer file and you can not fast forward the EXE file. This can only be done when you are running a video file. Thanks and we will keep this in mind.

d written to customer support with this response.........

james_times · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 7:45 am Post subject:

Bill (Smith), thanks for putting together a detailed description on using our timeline feature. This feature is only supported in our photo show styles where you want to synchronize your photos with the selected music. In the timeline, you can play the music, pause it, drag the photo thumbnail to that point, and then continue play and repeat the step. You can start at any point to preview the animation in the preview window and make adjustment. If you do not have enough photos to cover the entire music, you can choose the Quit Condition to "Photo". The music will fade out automatically at the last photo.

Bill (Catalano), the feature described above is only available in 3DTime's enhanced timeline. Customer support at 3D-Album is not responsible for features added by 3DTime. Please contact support at 3DTime for more information.

Louis from 3DTime

nan · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:29 am Post subject:

Actually, I find the sync feature in timeline is quite easy to use. The most time I spent on a project is to prepare images and texts. Once materials get ready, it took me from a couple of minutes to at most a hour in doing the sync in the timeline. Here are examples of some projects I did with this feature. Instead of using photos, I use text images for lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFfx5XXqLJM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH1PKPQoy54
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHzwE0Goxlg

Styles used in the above video are
TDTMemoerialCP0004
TDTMemoerialCP0001
TDTFamilyCP0001

Videos are captured directly from 3D-Album. No video editing software is used. I did not use video for the live presentation, instead, I use the executable application form, which gives a better graphic than video.

Bill Smith · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:50 am Post subject:

Nan, really neat idea using the text images like that.

I made a swf file showing Psalm 8's text (didn't use this product, so I won't include a link), and it isn't even partially as nice as what you did.

I'm also glad to hear that you've gotten such good results. I sent an email to support@3d-album.com and asked them to review my comments above (to make sure I wasn't giving bad advice). They said the timeline match wasn't perfect, but with today's processor speeds should be pretty close for most people.
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Bill

HOW TO: www.northwestpages.com/3dalbum_tutorial/
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nan · Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:45 pm Post subject:

Hi Bill,

Thank you for your comments.

In my experience, timeline works perfect for video production because it's timer is synchronized to actual time.

For live presentation, however, because I do not use synchornized timer (I want the animation to run as smooth as possible), the animation will run a little bit different than what you set in timeline (again, if you enable timer synchornization, there should have no such problem but the animation will be jaggy because of the skipped frame). The photo still show up on time, but it will stay longer than expected. If the animation is simple, i.e., one photo a time, as shown in my video, you will not see such difference if you have a high performance video card that can render the 3D graphics fast in real time. Once, I made a presentation use one of the dispatch styles and tried to show 4 or 5 photos the same time in a live presenation, I have to give each photo a shorter life time than what it should be. Otherwise, the scene will get crowded while new photos keep showing up and the old photos still linger around.