ProShow doesn't use all font varieties

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ProShow doesn't use all font varieties

Postby BarbaraC » Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:17 pm

I did a search and found it mentioned, but I saw no explanations or solutions. ProShow refuses to give access to all the fonts, and it seems to be hit or miss. For instance, it'll show Times New Roman, an .otf font, but it won't show a bunch of other fonts I have that are of the same format. I'd sure like to use more than just the old standbys like Arial and so forth. Does anyone know what the problem is? If not, I'll send off mail to Photodex.

Barbara
Last edited by BarbaraC on Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Interesting

Postby BarbaraC » Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:45 pm

I just checked the Windows fonts folder from inside ProShow, and it seems to think the .otf files are mp3 files. Every other program on my computer knows that they're fonts. This has got to be a bug.

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Postby hardsoftware » Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:45 pm

Barbara

I am not sure if this will help but you could check your FONT folder to see if they are in there. Just go to Control panel/Fonts and all of your usable Fonts should be in there. If they are not then Proshow will not access them.

Ben

edit: Opps you already checked :oops:
PSG, & Producer 3,4 and 5. Photo Editing: PS Elements 2.0 & 5.0, Premier Elements 3.0,

PHOTODEX GALLERY: http://www.photodex.com/share/hardsoftware
UnEmployed, and getting pretty good at it!
Facebook look for Ben R. Baca.

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Postby BarbaraC » Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:00 pm

That's all right, Ben. You ought to know some of the things I've misread on billboards. Smirnoff will never be the same.

I checked in the fonts folder inside both Explorer and Producer, and Producer is falling on its face badly, showing only about a quarter of the fonts without any rhyme or reason in what it picks and what it doesn't. I just sent off a support request to Photodex because I don't think this little anomaly is very cute.

Barbara

mrcracked

Postby mrcracked » Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:01 pm

my guess would be proshow does not support open type fonts. i checked my list of currently active fonts and have many open type fonts active. they all appear in photoshop, indesign and after effects, but do not appear in proshow. a quick search revealed this note:

Strangely, on Windows, all available word processors, including Microsoft Office Word, lack advanced OpenType typography features. Advanced typography features are implemented only in high-end desktop publishing software and not present in any of the word processors. However, the text engine from Windows Presentation Foundation, which is a managed code implementation of OpenType is the first Windows API to expose OpenType features to software developers, supporting both OpenType, TrueType, and OpenType CFF (Compact Font Format) fonts. It supports advanced typographic features such as ligatures, old-style numerals, swash variants, fractions, superscript and subscript, small capitalization, glyph substitution, multiple baselines, contextual and stylistic alternate character forms, kerning, line-level justification, ruby characters etc. So far, Expression Blend and Expression Design use the WPF text engine, and thus automatically gain support of advanced typography features. On Mac OS X, AAT-supporting applications running on Mac OS X 10.4 and later, including TextEdit and Keynote, get considerable OpenType support.

i am guessing proshow does not support the advanced features so chooses to ignore the fonts entirely. i am sure any reply from photodex....if it even resembles an answer.....would say the same thing.


mark


p.s. a good font manager goes a long way to making happy media work
Last edited by mrcracked on Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Postby BarbaraC » Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:19 pm

Got the answer very quickly and am not happy with it:

Actually ProShow Gold only accepts 8-bit unicode true type fonts. For this reason, some fonts are not supported. My apologies for the inconvenience.
As a workaround, you can try importing the image and caption in another program to create an image file. You can then import this image (that contains the caption and image) into the slide show.


In a program that costs as much as Producer, I find this answer unacceptable. This software isn't just about playing with photos; it's about creating a story or message, and in some cases, this requires words. A font and its style are part of the message. Would we use Comic Sans for a memorial show? Would we use an old English script for little Suzie's birthday party? We shouldn't have to use a separate program to type in simple text.

Barbara

Edit: Maybe if others who are also disgruntled wrote to Photodex about it, the company would get the hint that it's something they need to recitify.

mrcracked

Postby mrcracked » Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:34 pm

out of the 18,000 fonts i am legally allowed to use; less than 400 are open type or post script fonts. most open type fonts cost a bit of money and there is usually a true type font that closely resembles it that you can find for free somewhere.

if you get right down to it; besides the 8-bit font scenario, the whole caption system in proshow is lacking. i would rather the program supported vector graphics and imported .ai files. then i could use text converted to outlines in adobe illustrator and have much more flexibility.

it is just my opinion, but $250 is inexpensive for software. in the case of proshow with their 3 million bug-fixing updates...you get what you pay for.

Mark

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Postby BarbaraC » Tue Oct 23, 2007 2:47 pm

Mark, don't forget that each person works differently, wants different things, and has a differently sized pocketbook. Inexpensive software to me is what costs well under a hundred. Yes, I'd like to get what I paid for.

Going into a separate program to create a few lines of text, then discovering the last word of the first line should really be the first word of the second line and then having to go back into that separate program to rework it means that those who sell their shows for memorial services, weddings, etc. will be either charging more for their time or will be making less money for the amount of time spent. Business requires streamlining whenever possible.

Barbara

mlanders

Postby mlanders » Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:50 pm

Hi Mark,

i don't find that the caption system of proshow is lacking.
Before i builded presentations with Proshow i used Scala Info Channel Designer 1 and 3.
This SW is reguallary made to build online/network presentations - but i mostly made CD and Internetpresentations.
I bought the update for Scala 3 for 1400 $ and the caption system of Scala is a bit like proshows system - so much to the "buggy Sw"
Its clear that in the beginning of 3.0 of producer the SW was buggy, but even a 1400 bucks piece of update Software got bugs even after good and perfect testing of many many beta-testers

And now, Producer 3.1.2012 works perfectly - i can build perfect smoothing and running presentations, with some suggestions to make the SW better what i mentioned on other threads in this forum and forwarded some points to photodex.
But as far as i can see it works for me -

In Case of fonts - i do not know what's about open fonts (i think there are free to use)

I only know that in the manual of Scala its clearly said that some fonts could not be used because of its licensing status - If you want to use a special font you have to pay for it and you have it to embed it to your presentation so the client could see the font on his system, but that some fonts ar not embeddable because of the fonts licensing status.

So maybe it depends on this that you could not work with some fonts or maybe it is necessary to have "non-open fonts" so the licensing status is clear...

Michael

mrcracked

Postby mrcracked » Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:55 pm

you are supporting my case Michael

i am not the one who has problems with the captioning system in proshow. if i want text to do something proshow cannot handle i simply make it happen at another place in the production pipeline.

my point is simply that proshow is missing the typography features one would find in higher end programs. when you set up the caption you can set the kerning and leading, but cannot tween them with keyframes in the motion panel. you cannot adjust the outline or drop shadow characteristics other than to set their color. when you use a texture or gradient on a caption you lose any ability to tint that texture in the motion panel. you cannot adjust the rotation of a character individually or have text of different sizes in the same caption layer. you cannot adjust the timing of the fly in/normal/fly out effects with keyframes. you cannot adjust them at all actually other than to assign them. realistically i would not expect these features in a slideshow program; i want something to make slideshows. adding too much to the text will most times subtract from what you are trying to achieve in a show.

with photoshop...at least the non-elements version allow you to apply any layer style to text. in one text layer you can adjust the kerning/leading and size of any individual character.

in every NLE or compositing program i have ever used you can apply any effect from the effects panel to text in addition to adjusting them fully. you can adjust kerning and leading on the fly with keyframes and have control over the individual characters.

with indesign..which is actually a layout program and cannot really be used for anything motion; (although i have cheated with some features and copied their effects into other programs), you can do anything to the text.

so let me clarify my initial comment. proshow does many things nicely. it supports limited text usage which is better than every other slideshow creation program i have seen to date. however; nowhere in photodex's list of features does it claim that proshow supports opentype fonts. if you want to use opentype fonts my suggestion would be to find a workaround (which i initially suggested), or use another piece of software that does and which will probably be more expensive.

and not trying to call you out, but i think you may be confusing opentype with open source. open source software is software that is usually free, and anyone can have access to the code to help make improvements. opentype is an font type which supports advanced typography features. they are generally not free, but more expensive because they have more features. additional information can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/type/opentype/


I was not meaning to incite conflict, but rather point out what i have observed from my experience.

Mark

mlanders

Forward your wishes as suggestion to Photodex...

Postby mlanders » Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:47 am

Thanks Mark for telling me what open fonts are - really never heard of it - because i was more involed in website business than in presentations business - so i learned

Why don't you make a feature suggestion to photodex.

Some things i miss for instance that you mentioned is that every character of a word can fly out on a different time or fly in...

The idea with kerning and Keyframes in very very usefull and would be a perfect solution -
- timing of the normal text fly-ins&outs: again perfect:
suggest it - maybe with a screenshot how it should look like...

Every time i discover something i think: "Hey, this could be usefull - this is something i need!"
I make a suggestion to Photodex.
I do it often this way and hope that some of my suggestions will take place in a future release of producer...
Often programmers do not see what is needed from the users eye because they only look from their point of view and look from what they know they often do not see our little or timeexpensive workarounds to get a result that we want to see...

And in my presentations i need maybe other things and workarounds than you and i never thougt of time setting of the normal text, because i nearly never use it - so if everyone who works with producer suggests things that he/she need for his presentation producer becomes more and more powerfull.

So this is my suggestion for everyone who thinks:
Why is this or that not better...
Forward your thought as suggestion to photodex - if it's possible with a screenshot - and of course here as a point in this forum, because photodex is reading here, too.
You can be shure:
If they can handle it and it's usefull they will build your suggestion into a future release of producer - i think and i hope so.

Michael

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Postby BarbaraC » Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:00 am

Michael, after having a long, long telephone conversation with a manager at Photodex, I agree with you that it's important to give them a clue as to what we want and what we're thinking. My impression is that they're extremely open to suggestions. I've already written to them about providing greater support for fonts.

Mark, your alternative methods are what I use, but the problem comes in when there's text in each frame. Just as an example, imagine a template that works for both wedding and funeral shows ( :shock: ) and a bit of text is expected in quite a number of the slides. It becomes a real burden after a while, having to leap back and forth between Photoshop and Producer instead of typing that text directly onto the slides. This occurred just yesterday when I needed any one of several fonts that would have worked well but that Producer couldn't handle. I didn't need a lot of fancy effects, nor did I need to adjust spacing. I just needed a specific style of font, and it was unavailable in Producer.

Barbara

magnusg

Don't worry

Postby magnusg » Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:13 am

After I read your posts I checked and I can see most of the fonts that I have got on the internet.
So, there are hundreds of other fonts that you will be able to use.

They jsut need to be Truetype TTF
So, you're not stuck with windows only.

Check this site out
http://www.dafont.com/

Blessings!
Magnus
Last edited by magnusg on Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Postby BarbaraC » Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:17 am

Magnus, I have such an incredible collection of fonts that I've both downloaded and purchased that have to use a font manager. What I'm running into is that, for whatever reason, the fonts I most want to be able to use are the same fonts that Producer can't handle. :(

Barbara

mlanders

...fonts...whatever is needed

Postby mlanders » Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:18 am

Hi Barbara,

i think you know this link here, but it helped me often fo find a font thats maybe close to the customers font he want to have or its exact the same - maybe some of them work in producer:

http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Michael

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