Pardon my peabrain but I still can't get the crossfades in group mode. I know how to crossfade one at a time, but I don't really want to do this on 150 photos.

do not put any crossfades in manually. Simply insert your images, then drag them so they overlap each previous one. Then under TOOLS, make sure the auto crossfade is selected.

if you still have trouble, email me at mreed@reedassociates.com and I can send you an avi showing how it is done.

It is also covered on page 79 of the manual.

One of the very nice things about Studio 8 is that you could create a transition to your tastes between the first two photos in a very long sequence. Then you could select all the photos in the sequence and select "Ripple Edit" (or something like that). Your transition is inserted between every photo you've selected. VERY nice feature.

Course, you were unable to render or burn anything aftewards, but "let's not bicker about who killed whom."

I'm afraid you need to setup each crossfade individually!

Ian G.

Ian G -

there is an auto crossfade feature. whatever overlaps, gets turned into a crossfade. see page 79 in the manual.

True, but you have to create each overlap individually.

Ian G.

I am not able to create this ripple edit. Could you please eloborate on the steps? This will be very useful, if i can acheive it.
Thanks.

Do you mean to ask how to do it in Studio 8? (You can't in MS.)

I'm going out on a limb here since I have not tried this, but I read somewhere that you first make all 150 pictures into a group. Then you position your cursor at the edge of the last picture and drag to the left. This will overlap ALL the pictures the same amount. When done, ungroup the pictures.
I may not have the details correct, but I'm quite sure you can overlap all the pictures with just a few mouse movements. Then, as others mentioned, just so the auto crossfade.

Hi, I missed your mentioning Studio 8 in your last post :-)
I wish MS has that feature...

I couldn't get that to work. Not sure if this is possible in MS3, bu it's a no-brainer in Vegas 4. I just tried it on the demo. You can configure whether there's auto-overlap of multiple events dragged onto the timeline, and how much overlap (in terms of frames) there is. Very slick.

MitchK

I seem to remember one more little gimmick - that is to hold either the Ctrl, Alt or Shift key down when you are dragging the last slide - this will drag all the slides together. Something like that...

No, sorry. I just tried that. It's the Ctrl key. But this trick is used to lengthen or shorten the entire slideshow to match the length of the background music. So it does not create any overlap, it just shortens (if you drag left) all the slides exaclty the same amount.

But there still should be some way to add a simple crossfade to ALL the pictures at once. I can't imagine doing 150 pictures one at a time.

I just tried every way I could imagine - and cannot get it to overlap automatically, or create an overlap on multiple images when selected.

I really dont think there is a way to do this other than manually drag them to make the overlay... this would be something to escalate to Sony Screenblast support... maybe they would consider adding that functionality to a future release update.

Im going to keep playing with it- but I really dont think it can be automated.

I'm a newbie to Screenblast but this would be a great feature. I have used Video Factory for many months and was always bummed by this issue. I have hated dragging my many still pics over themselves and then selecting cross-fades, etc. for each transition... If anyone finds a quick and easy "fix" please post !

- JayMan

You're all on to something: automatically crossfade a group.

I'm assuming you have the pictures side by side
1. Turn Ripple Edits off and Automatic Crossfade on
2. Switch to Selection tool (Edit-->Editing Tool-->Selection
3. Select all the pictures and create a New Group (right click -> Group> Create New)
4. Copy the Group (right click --> Copy)
5. Position the cursor where you want the transition between photo 1 and 2
6. Paste the Group. Finished.

This has the disadvantage of adding transitions you don't want (overlap of different pictures and and also the same). It's fairly easy to figure out what ones you care about. For 4 pictures you get 7 transitions. (Confession: I had to write 1 2 3 4 on a piece of paper and below it write 1 2 3 4 shifted over in order to see where the transitions were coming from)

If you want fancy transitions (Iris: 36 diamonds set 4x9 with a yellow border slightly feathered) I think you'll need to go through and add them manually to every other transition.

I hope this helps,

Suzan