Making Your Clips and Slides Dance to the Beat of Your Audio

[George Tyndall]

A few days ago, I posted a request for help with Detect Beats.

I got plenty of responses and, as is often the case, the simplest works the best. My thanks to RJ Johnston and all the other members who replied.

Here is the procedure that I used for the embedded video:

1) Add your music to the Timeline
2) Click Play and then, at each beat where you want a slide to change, push the asterisk that is above the numeric keypad to the far right of your extended keyboard; this will result in an un-numbered marker being placed on the Timeline
3) In the Icon view of the Project panel, drag your slides to the sequence you would like them to appear in your slide show
4) Select all the slides
5) Right-click on any of the selected slides
6) Click Create Slideshow
7) Leave Ordering set to Set Order and Video to Take Video Only
8) Select Place Images/Clips at Unnumbered Markers
9) For Image Duration, be sure each image lasts for at least as many seconds as there are between beats on the Timeline
10) Set Transition Duration to the minimum required (2 Frames)
11) Click OK and--Voila!--PRE7 will drop your slides at EXACTLY the beats you chose
12) If any of your slide durations are either shorter or longer than the space between beats, simply drag the slide(s) in the appropriate direction to fill in that space

[ridon127]

Thanks George for posting this..Sounds simple enough maybe I can do it without much trouble..

The pictures are beautiful. Hope you post more!!

[Chuck Engels]

Very nice tutorial George

[Steve Grisetti]

Nice pacing, George!

[George Tyndall]

The above procedure works well even if one is planning to subsequently modify the clips or slides in their entirety or to keyframe some or all of them one-by-one.

Here is a shortcut if one wishes only to pan and zoom each slide but prefers to do the P&Z in PSE rather than in PRE. Note that the following procedure is to be done AFTER you have already got you audio on the Timeline and you have already placed your un-numbered markers in PRE7. In addition, it is helpful to have already placed your Title slide(s). Leave the CTI at the final edit point (the end of your last title slide), then proceed as follows:

1) Save the completed slideshow in the PSE7 slideshow editor but do not close the editor
2) Output the slideshow from the editor to PRE7, which should be already open
3) Right-click the slide show which will be at the end of the Timeline in PRE7 then choose Break Apart Slide Show (any audio will disappear)
4) Group all the slides and drag the group to the CTI.
5) This method preserves the P&Z of each slide, however, the "downside" is that one must now adjust the duration of each slide to the duration between the un-numbered markers. This IS a bit tedious but less so, IMO, than using the method at the top of the thread and then being required to keyframe each slide's P&Z, especially when there are lots of slides (I've got 56 of them in my current project). On the other hand, one can do a lot more with keyframing in PRE7 than in the PSE editor, so if you've got only a few slides and you intend to do lots of editing with each of them (add Effects, Transitions, etc), then I would stick with the procedure that I described at the top of the thread.

[JohnnyO]

George: Thanks for sharing your techniques with us. It is always very helpful when someone shares their workflow.
Very nice slideshow

[George Tyndall]

George: Thanks for sharing your techniques with us. It is always very helpful when someone shares their workflow.
Very nice slideshow

You're welcome!

[Bobby]

Sorry to be a bit negative here, but I tend to be a perfectionist.

I think your slides are just a bit off the mark, just changing a bit behind the beat. Perhaps this may be a problem on my end, Internet feed speeds, etc. but that is what I see here.

I have said before that it is really difficult and subtle to get the slide change exactly on the (perceived) beat and I tend to just do it manually (when I do). I would try shifting the video a frame at a time, until the photo just POPS on the beat.

Again, not trying to be negative...

[George Tyndall]

I think your slides are just a bit off the mark, just changing a bit behind the beat. Perhaps this may be a problem on my end, Internet feed speeds, etc. but that is what I see here.

I've noticed, too, that in compariosn with the PREL version, there is a very slight lag of the pics with the audio. I am assuming that is a function of the internet, but i am not sure. When I have time i'll make a DVD from the PREL then report back.

[Chuck Engels]

Hey George, where did the video go?

[George Tyndall]

Hey George, where did the video go?

Oops! I may have deleted it in error when I added a second video to my album. I'll check on that ASAP.

[UKPal]

This method definitely sounds like it's worth giving a try. Thanks George.