Help with putting photos to music

JayLJohnston wrote on 9/15/2010, 10:52 AM

Hi Everyone,
I'm using VMS10 and I would like to make a slideshow of photos. I understand how to scale them to 1920 pixels wide in picasa, and then insert --> slideshow, but my question comes in the timing of things. I would like to be able to modify the timing of each photo to coincide with a piece of music. Sometimes I may want to show a photo for 2 seconds, and other times 1 second, then other times 3.5 seconds. Is there an easy way to manually adjust the timing between photos? How would you go about this? All input is greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 9/15/2010, 12:55 PM

I'm unfamiliar with "insert --> slideshow"; is that a new feature in VMS10?

If you end up with a regular project timeline with all the photos as individual events then you can drag the edges left to shorten or right to lengthen them. It's that simple.

JayLJohnston wrote on 9/15/2010, 1:03 PM

Thanks Chien,
Maybe I'll do it that way...that seems like I'll have more control over it anyways. Insert --> Slideshow pops up a window where you drag photos into it and it times them (I think equally) and inserts them into the timeline. I like your idea better. I'm not sure if it's new to VMS10 or not as this is the first edition that I've used.

aquaholik wrote on 9/15/2010, 1:18 PM

It will take quite a while to put it together. You might want to consider inserting "beat" marker on the time line while playing back the music. After all the markers have been added, you can then drag and drop and adjust the length of the photo to fit inside those "beat" marker. It is easier to keep track of it that way. Forget about insert slideshow option if you want to be able to customize it.

ritsmer wrote on 9/16/2010, 12:55 AM

... but you can also use the Vegas Pan/Crop (the little rectangle down right in each thumbnail on the timeline).
With Pan/Crop you can adjust the first still to i.e. 16:9 1920x1080 or whatever - and then click Copy and then select all other stills on the TL and then Paste Events Attributes - and so in a snap change all stills.
With Pan/Crop you may also do some zooming/panning etc in the stills and so add a little movement to your still-video.
I always put the music on the timeline first. Then play it pressing M for every beat. So you quickly have a (near) visual of the beat of the music.
The stills, however, may not change to every 1 beat (in a 4/4 song) you can achieve some interestering effects changing at i.e. 3 giving some "downbeat" mood - if your viewers do notice, that is... :- )

JayLJohnston wrote on 9/17/2010, 7:04 AM

ritsmer, hitting M while listening to the track is awesome. I tried it out this morning before work and wanted to keep playing around with it. Thank you SO much for this suggestion!!

I wanted to tell you of a few issues I saw, which may be due to ignorance of the product by me since I'm a beginner, but thought I'd share anyways. First off, if I hit pause and then play from the pause point, hitting M will only put markers at that pause point, but not afterwards. Also, if my piece of music spans out and I have to use the scroll bar to catch up to it, then all markers are placed at the beginning of the track from there on out. FYI...thanks!

Chienworks wrote on 9/17/2010, 9:09 AM

Press the backslash/pipe key | on your keyboard after doing such things before pressing the M key again. This forces Vegas to update the scrolling cursor to match the playback head. This ins important because markers are actually placed at the scrolling cursor position, not at the playback head position.