Has anyone successfully edited the slide show wizard?

[metmot]

As most of you know the VS11 slide show wizard has been changed from version ten. The changes I see are: The transition has been changed from fade to black to cross fade. This is nice although unnecessary now that we can also insert any transition in the time line and apply to the entire project. A good thought though, just a little late.

The other change however is silly. Apparently the engineers are so proud of the new multiple overlay tracks that they have found it necessary to incorporate it in a nauseating manner. I cant imagine who will want these floating bubbles and split screens in their presentations. So of course the first step in using the new template is to delete all the content from the overlay tracks upon import to the time line from the wizard. This seems to take a bit of time especially if you have to do it over and over again. I make a lot of slide shows. I still prefer the wizard even though this is a pain because it is the only way to insert pan and zoom randomly to the entire range of images at once which takes even more time than deleting the overlay content. I like to do this because I find that most times a good portion of the pan and zoom applied randomly is quite acceptable and will require no further tweaking. If you apply pan and zoom individually from the time line or story board it is much more time consuming over all to arrive at a decent finished product.

So my question is, has anyone modified the slide show wizard content file to get rid of this silly nonsense? Just give me a simple black start and finish as a default starting point for goodness sakes! If so, how?

What I wouldn't give for just one hour sitting down with the programmers in front of a real life project!!! Then they may say "oh yeah" I see what you mean. A picture is worth a thousand words some times. I can't afford the travel to India though.

Thanks,

John

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

I do not have VS 11
10 9 8 7 but not 11

I do not use the Wizards, may be I am loosing out.

But if you are having to edit the slide show afterwards then¡K¡K¡K¡K¡K..

It is possible however to replace the images in a slide show, keeping the transitions attributes etc.

But you have to keep to some simple rules.
Its ideal if your images are the same size (well aspect)
Your images have to have the same names. (in separate folders of course)

Create the first slide show using images called ¡¥image 001¡¦ ¡¥image 002¡¦ etc from say ¡¥folder 1¡¦

For your second show select the images from your hard drive, name the same. ¡¥image 001 etc in ¡¥folder 2¡¦

Now re-name ¡¥folder 1¡¦ to say ¡¥ folder 1 copy¡¦

When you open the first slide show VSP you will be prompted to re-link ¡¥image 001¡¦

Re-ling to ¡¥image 001¡¦ in ¡¥folder 2¡¦

As a test, try with a few images.

[metmot]

OK so here is what I did to solve this. I copied the File SS_TX Backup.wvs from VS10. It is the slide show template included with version 10 and located at C:\Program Files\Ulead Systems\Ulead VideoStudio 10\EditingStyle\Style\SShow\NTSC.

Paste it to C:\Program Files\Ulead Systems\Ulead VideoStudio 11\EditingStyle\Style\SShow\NTSC. You will then have two wvs files located in that folder. Make a copy of the existing one (the one I hate) in case you want it back which I cant imagine. It is called 02SS_Multi_Display02.wvs

Rename the one you just imported the same as the one you removed (02SS_Multi_Display02.wvs)

What you will now have is the simple show template from version ten without all the silly Lawrence Welk stuff at the beginning and end. You will however have the default fade to black transitions from version 10 but.....now with VS11 we can change them all to cross fades with a single click! This way I can still use smart pan and zoom to create a pan and zoom starting point for the project without manually adding it to each slide but don't have to delete all the silly overlay track pollution each time.

I havent tried to see if this will work with the many .wvs templates included with version 9 or not.

Well it worked for me. If you all don't care about the slide show movie wizard then ignore me. It this helps someone, fair enough.

John

[DLA]

I did many slide shows with VS10+ and as you said, very little modification is needed to the pan and zoom. I now have VS11+ and did not had a chance to do a slide show yet. By the sound of your complaint about the silly stuff, I might as well consider overwriting the slide show template of VS11+ with the one from VS10+ with your method.

[metmot]

The smart pan and zoom is the same, it is just a bunch of add on effects which are the annoyance. With VS11 we can now change the default fade to black transitions of the vs10 template with a single click. Those transitions were the only complaint I had for the VS10 template so now life is good.

[sj1805]

Instead of naming it to an existing template have you tried giving it a unique name to see if they both now appear in your available templates?

[Clevo]

I question I could ask here rather than starting a a new thread.

With pan and zoom... is there anyway of setting the default to Centre(Center).

Sorry to sidetrack but a search was frutless and it's kinda related.

[Black Lab]

You mean so every time you apply that filter it starts in the center? No, you can't set a default or save a custom filter. You can only customize the samples they provide.

[TubaDad]

I feel a few steps behind here and I could not find any clues when I searched, but I was not aware of the Slide Show capability and would like to know how to start a slide show with the wizard.

Not trying to hijack your thread, but I have done many slide shows in VS, but never knew there was a wizard that could help me.

So anyone have a quick note to get me started, that would be great.

Thanks,

[Black Lab]

Bruce, that's probably because when you installed VS you instructed it to always open to the Editor. To access the Wizards click on Tools then choose DV-to-DVD Wizard or Movie Wizard.

[TubaDad]

Jeff, You are right, I set the install to go directly to the editor. But whe I run the Movie wizard ofr DV to DVD wizard from the tools menu I still can't find the slide show templates.

Thanks,

[Black Lab]

Can't help you there. Never used 'em.

[metmot]

If you want to find the slide show wizard you select movie wizard from the tools menu. When it opens simply insert images from the menu on the left and that will open the slide show wizard automatically. There is only one template there to choose from.which was the basis of my original post.

The wizard has a couple of features which may give you an advantage over just building a slideshow from scratch in editor. First you can apply smart pan and zoom to the entire project. As I previously stated and was confirmed by another member, the software randomizes pan and zoom by trying to identify the logical focal point of the picture. It works reasonably well and you will find 60-70% of your pics will need no further tweaking once you import the project to editor. This is a time saver.

Secondly, you may if you wish insert music tracks in the wizard and tell VS to set slides to music duration. It will then divide the total pic times evenly to match the length of your audio. You may also use the smartsound tracks for generic background music which can be cool. This can be a time saver.

It used to be easier to rearrange pics in the wizard so you don't have to fight with the loss of transitions later but now that we can insert transitions as a batch in editor this is kind of a non issue.

That's why i was looking for a utility that will shuffle my pics to randomize them before inserting in the wizard, to save time on this step. I was very excited when my dad wrote me a small program to do that with. Saves me a lot of time. I will still share it with anyone interested. It is very nice. Shuffles pictures in a folder like a deck of cards and renames them 001-999 so when you insert them as a batch of pics they will appear in random order in the timeline based on the new names of them. This is a huge time saver as digilal pics will always appear in the order they are taken which tends to clump similar pics later when making a slide show. Windows has no easy way to change that. I have a 3 meg zip file containing this utility and instruction for anyone who can understand what the heck I am talking about and wants it. Just drop me a line at 78@charter.net Actually this would be a very nice addition to VS a command that will shuffle images which are already in the story board.

And finally to answer Steve's question a couple of posts ago. Yes I did import the template with it's own name and it did not show up in the list like the menus will from previous versions. I think they are fundamentally different file types.

John