Wish to use only one minute of a song

[egorth]

Need audio assistance with PSG 3.0.1967. New user wishing to use only 1 minute of a song that is 4 minutes plus in length for my first 11 slides then use another song for slide 12 and those following. Can it be done and is there an easy method to perform this task, hopefully without having to calculate times, since should I add or remove a slide, do not wish to have to recalculate new adjustment times?

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Yes, mostly -- if you attach the first music to the first slide (and click
the continue to play after it has ended) then attach the second to
slide 12 the same way, you can then go in and on the sound page,
"adjust times and fades" or words to that effect and trim it by moving
the slider. You will still have to "re-tweak" if you add or remove
slides, but you would end up doing that anyway to make it sound
right. See if that does what you want.

Where it gets more complicated is if you want to edit a song so
that you use the first and last parts of the song with a portion
taken out in the middle - and still make it sound right. That
usually requires an external editor (Audacity is free).

mikey

[egorth]

Mikey,

Thank you for replying. I did as suggested and it works, but not exactly as I would like for it to. First song starts in slide one and stops in slide eleven which is what I want, but song does not fade slowly out as I would like for it to. Song appears to go from 100% volume to Zero with no fading no matter what number I enter for a “Fade Outâ€

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Just a hunch here, but the delay you are entering for the fade out may be
relative to the end of the song not where you have the "end" slider set to.
Right next to the "end" slider is a dashed line - you can drag that the same
way to adjust the fade (you will notice it generates a greyed area between
the end and the start fade lines when you drag it). Give that a shot and
see if it does it for you.

mikey

[egorth]

The fader works while in the Sound Editor (Edit Fades & Timing) Window. I select a “Endâ€

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

What ?!?! Proshow a bug .... er "feature" ?!?!? Never !! (well, not
that I have seen anyone post about today, but it is still before 7am
here too). You may have uncovered something since from your
description it certainly sounds like you are doing it right. Short
of suggesting the "un-install / re-install" which has cured a number
of strange problems for people in the past, I don't have any other
ideas. I did run into one like that the other day on one I was
working on, but finally realized I was playing with the ending in
the editor for the sound but it was AFTER the end of the slides so
it was the show end that was chopping it off ... duh !! Here is
another idea that I have had get me before -- the pxc file gets
corrupted (it is a temp file that producer/gold use). Exit Producer,
delete the showname.pxc (NOT the .psh main show file !!!) then
restart producer -- it will take it a minute to come up as it rebuilds
the temp file. See how it works now.

One other thing you might try -- briancbb keeps coming up with
this one and it keeps fixing issues that people have so give it a
shot ...

If this fails, exit Producer and delete the cpic.opt and def.phd. files
in the 'my programs', 'photodex', 'producer' directory. These will
be recreated when Producer is restarted. For some reason these
can get corrupted and cause wierd problems, then try rerendering
again and burning.

If this fails I would uninstall and reinstall Producer. Not that I have
had to do this,but other members have. [from briancbb]

mikey

[egorth]

I took Photodex up on their “Customer Loyalty Programâ€

[SSteve]

Not sure if this is what you need or ??but will give you an idea.I use audacity.In making my show If I have a photo of one of my grand kids or what ever and I would like to insert a clip of some sort.And I know of a song that has it in it I used 18 wheeler once for one of my GK's keep on rolling or something to that effect about 6 seconds of music and clip.If I know what I would like to say find a song with the words in it then take it into Audacity and edit down to just what you want.If I can do it,must be easy and Audacity is a free one.Once I have it like I want it I check it and the size maybe 1 or so MB I take it into the recorder that comes with the computer and change the settings a bit and takes it down to about 150 KB.So taking a minute out of your song would be a breeze.
Steve

[egorth]

After spending a little time with ProShow Gold & Producer, I have solved my audio problem and the following is the solution (very easy I must say), but before describing the solution, will first review what I wished to do with the audio. I have tried to include all steps required, in case a new program user should wish to learn from this.

What I wished to accomplish:
I have a slide show with say 50 some slides. My plan was to use two songs for background music for these 50 some slides, but only wanted to use 1 minute and 12 seconds of the first song for the first 11 slides, then use song number two for remaining slides 12 to 50. The 1 minute and 12 seconds was found by left clicking, just above the end of slide number 11, on the Slide Show Time Bar (slotted horizontal bar above the slides in “Slide Listâ€

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Good info. Something to be aware of (someone else figured this
one out recently). If you have a 3 minute song and edit with the
"Fades and edits" button to trim off the first 2 minutes for example,
you are OK for a DVD, however, for a "shared show" (on the Photodex
site), you will notice that it still has to download the entire song even
if it has the first 2 minutes "trimmed" so it slows the download to
play time. Note that this is not the case if you use an actual sound
editor like Audition, Audacity etc to actually trim the first 2 minutes
off the song -- in that case, it is really "not there" and as such does
not impact the download time.

mikey

[Jerry Cole Profile Private message]

Egorth & Mikey
Thanks for asking the question, I thought I knew the answer ... but I didn't consider the fact that PSG only gives an apparent clip, and that the entire sound piece was loaded each time.

While that is a really good reason to use a sound editor, like Audacity, for the final version, using PSG to get the length you want first makes it easier to play with and get exactly right. Once satisfied with the timing, then one could edit the piece in Audacity (or similar) and replace in the show.

This thread has given me a new procedure to consider when clipping sound pieces.

Thanks Guys .... You answered a question I didn't even know I had!

Jerry

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Jerry - recognize that the "trimmed but still downloaded" only applies
to a "shared" show apparently. If you actually create a DVD, then it
will indeed be trimmed and not hanging around on the disk some where.
So, if you are creating a DVD, then using Producer/Gold's trims and fades
utility should be sufficient (but it is still nicer to have a full blown editor
that you can chop pieces out of the middle, move them around and/or
duplicate a chunk to get the length you want).

mikey

[Jerry Cole Profile Private message]

Thanks Mikey,
That makes life simpler ... I did download Audacity, but haven't played with it much. I have used PSG to trim and fade and sometimes "splice" music and sound effects. My main computer is down right now so I'm trying to soak up as much vicariously from the forum as I can before I get back to work on another show.

How have you found the learning curve in going from PSG to Producer? Lavina seems to produce outstanding things on PSG, so I know I still have a long way to go before considering an upgrade (not that I could keep up with her anyway)!!!

Thanks again for clarifying ... sound advise,
Jerry

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Well, I jumped from Gold 2.6 to Producer 3.0 when it came out
in December last year. I didn't find the problem too bad since
in general, what works in Gold also works in Producer. There
are just a whole bunch of new things to learn (like Keyframes).
The biggest problem we all faced then was the BAD thing --
the "Build A Day" -- it was really flakey and they were literally
coming out with a build a day for a while. It was almost impossible
to figure out what you were doing because you couldn't be sure
if it was you or just another bug

I was somewhat familiar with keyframes and have found the best
way for me to learn something is to see how someone else does it
or create lots of little "test shows" with just a few slides where
I can experiment with a new feature, learning how to make it do
what I want THEN build up a show using that feature. If you do it that way,
learning a segment at a time, it works pretty good. The ones who really
have a problem are those that see some neat features, (keyframes, funny
motion, templates, layers etc) and then try to put together a nice
show using all of the features at the same time -- AND they usually have
some horrible deadline like 3 days that they are working on besides.
They tend to get totally overwhelmed and head for the box of wine.

mikey