Darren

Tutorial level: Medium

When you are working with a slideshow inside Visualizer Photo Studio, you should definitely open up Transition Studio, because this is where all the fun begins. You can make many adjustments to your slideshow from a timeline, add transitions, sounds and backgrounds, edit the duration of one or a complete range of frames - basically, it's your creativity that sets the limit.

In this tutorial you will learn how to work with the timeline, edit the duration and the time mode and add transitions to one or more frames. This tutorial will involve a bit of reading, so please take a break when needed to try out some of the features as we move along.

If you have not read the manual for Transition Studio I highly recommend doing so, as it gives you the basic feeling of the work flow. You can read and print the manual by clicking here (requires Acrobat Reader).

Step 1.

First you need to open the Slideshow Builder inside the Editor. From the toolpanel click on the Slideshow Builder icon to launch it. Now go to the Settings section and open Transition Studio by clicking the Studio button.


Welcome to Transition Studio. The place where all the magic begins.

Transition Studio is divided into sections, each section representing its own set of features. I will start by introducing you to the upper part. The upper part is where you can manually handle all your transitions and the duration of your frames. Once you have selected a frame from the timeline, you can jump to the upper part and select a transiton for your frame. Basic for all transitions is they work from A to B. As you will see, the transition is instantly active, giving you an indication of what the effect will look like once you build your slideshow. The selected transition is automatically added to the timeline, so you never loose the feeling of your timeline, and in the end your slideshow.


The upper part of Transition Studio.

You can also change the duration of the selected frame, by dragging the knob on the trackbar below the center image. If you right click inside the center image you can toggle the time mode to use either seconds or miliseconds (shortcut key M). You will notice that the duration of the selected frame will change when you toggle the time mode, and of course when you drag the time knob.

Step 2.

Let's have a look at the timeline and go deeper into the features it has to offer. First let me say "the timeline is your friend", and I really mean that. Once you get the hang of working with it you will know exactly what I mean.


Your friend.

The timeline is basically where it all happens. This is the place you can see how your slideshow is lined up, the time and transitions of the frames and where your actions are added. It supports drag and drop in a single and multi frame selection, you can add and remove frames and even reverse a selection of frames. This is the place you take control of your own slideshow and where your creativity kicks in - you are the boss.

If you have read the manual you are probably already familiar with the shortcut keys, which is good because you will be needing them to build up a proper work flow.

Okay, let's start with a simple but pretty important procedure and that is multi selecting a range of frames. To do this you need to have one hand free to handle the keyboard and the other to handle the mouse events. Before we continue I should mention that when you multi select a range of frames, you work your way up, not the other way round. This means you must select a frame greater than the selected frame to complete the multi selection.

Let's give it a try.

Multi selecting a range of frames.

By holding down the Shift key on your keyboard and selecting a frame greater than the current selected frame, you will select a range of frames. If you want to select a frame which is greater than what is visible on the timeline, use your mouse scroll button or the scrollbar to locate it. To exit a multi selection, click twice on your timeline.

Now that you have multi selected a range of frames you can add the same transition or time to your selection. You can also Copy the selection by pressing Ctrl+C on your keyboard or right click and select Copy from the popup menu.


Reversing a range of frames.

As you can see on the image above, I have changed the duration of my selected frames by dragging the time knob. You can also see that I have reversed the frames. The Reverse frames option is only active when you are working with a selection of frames. You can reverse a range of frames by right clicking on your timeline and select the Reverse frames option from the popup menu. You can also use the shortcut key R.

If you want to move your selected frames to a new position on the timeline, hold down your left mouse button and drag the frames to the position you prefer. Use your mouse scroll button while holding down your left button to navigate the timeline. Once you have found the spot, release the mouse button and your frames will be moved to the new location.


Dragging and Dropping a range of frames.

You can also delete the selection by right clicking on your timeline and select the Delete option or use the shortcut key Delete on your keyboard.

Step 3.

You have now successfully managed to work with frames directly on the timeline, so this basically wraps up the overall work flow for the timeline. In the next tutorial we will go even deeper into the timeline. For now I highly recommend getting the hang of what you have learnt so far. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Have fun and enjoy.

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Visualizer Image Group

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