Any Experience of Making Slideshow with Sony Movie Studio?

[wangy26]

I read a lot in various forum about best software to make DVD slideshow. However, since I ready have the Sony Movie Studio software and I understand that it has the crop and pan function, I just wonder anyone on this forum has any experience of making slideshow with Movie Studio. Any help would be appreciated.

[SoundFX]

I use Vegas 5, the big brother to Movie Studio, but this should work about the same way. After you drop your still in the timeline, place the editing cursor at the beginning of your still so you can see it in the preview window. Click the "pan/crop" button on the very right edge of the video clip to open the pan/crop window.

In this new window, you will see your still (or video) with a dotted box around it, and a big "F" in the middle. At the bottom there is a timebar for position, usually with the cursor at the left end. The big "F" frame represents what part of the picture will be displayed on the TV screen. You change the cropping of the contents by dragging/stretching /moving this box around until the preview window shows you what you want the output to look like. To make movments in realtime, you have to define starting and ending points for the frame (these are called keyframes). After the points are defined (you can have many) as the clip plays the frame will animate from point to point and simulate motion/panning/cropping to your video/still.

I should prob get some screenshots for this, but see if this makes sense...say you just want to do a simple zoom in for starters. After opening the pan crop window, we will leave the frame unchanged for the starting point. To make the endpoint, click the button below the timebar that looks like a diamond with a right arrow and a vertical bar. This moves the cursor to the end. Then click the button next to it, with the plus. This defines a point at the end of the timebar. Now click one of the corner handles on the "F" frame and drag it towards the center, making it smaller. Now you have an ending point. Close this window and play your clip, you should see it zoom in, moving from the unchanged original point to the smaller area we defined for the end. Viola!

So why is there an "F"? You can rotate the frame, or flip it around backwards. Outside of the frame the cursor changes to a circular arrow, dragging inside the frame moves it, dragging outside will rotate it. The F lets know which way is up in case you drag too much like I tend to do. After a while you should be able to adjust the frame without even seeing the preview.

You will have to do this process for every still you want to animate. Sounds like a lot of work, but it's very easy after you do a few. Then just put tranistions between your different stills and render the final output.

Happy editing!

[wangy26]

Thanks so much for the help. I just have one more question. The duration of each still picture seems to me is set at 5 second. Is there any easy way to change the duration of any individual picture without affecting all the pictures to the right of it. If I just drag my cursor to the right then it will overlap the next picture...

[SoundFX]

Thanks so much for the help. I just have one more question. The duration of each still picture seems to me is set at 5 second. Is there any easy way to change the duration of any individual picture without affecting all the pictures to the right of it. If I just drag my cursor to the right then it will overlap the next picture...

If you enable the Auto Ripple function (option menu, Auto Ripple--or Ctrl-L) then changing a clip's duration will automatically adjust susequent events in the timeline.

[Shmulb]

You might want to check out this excellent forum dedicated to Moviestudio
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowTopics.asp?ForumID=12