Can someone guide me in the process of matching an layer from one slide to the next? I have a slide with multiple layers one layer and I want to continue the in the next slide picking up exactly where the first ended. I copy and paste the geometry, but what I am having difficulty with is the timing. If the first slide is 6 seconds and the the animated layer lasts for part of that six seconds how do I make it cut to the next slide and continue the animation in perfect unison? I hope I am being clear, if not please let me know and I will post with more details or links to a example.
I “think” I know what you’re talking about, because I “think” I was trying to do the same thing – sorta?
I have a 4-line text block that I want to “slide” in from the bottom, one line at a time. I’d like the first text line to rise to about the half-way point of the slide, then the second line to start rising while the first line continues to rise to the top and stop. As the second line is rising, I want the third line to begin to appear, while the second line continues to rise to it’s position. And so on. I tried this using ONE slide, but I can’t make it work, even by adding a delay for each text line (each is a separate layer), where the delay increases for each line.
The only thing I could get to work was to animate the first line up to the center. Now duplicate the slide. Copy the geometry of the first text line from the first slide and paste it into the second slide (by now it will be about half way up). Then add the second line of text (down at the bottom). Now animate the first line from the center of the slide to the top, and start the animation of the second line of text. Now duplicate THAT slide and repeat the process for the second line and the third. And so on. I wanted it to appear that the four lines of text are “building up” from the bottom one line at a time.
The problem I see is that the TIMING has to change for each slide so that the animation appears to move at the same rate – and that’s the hard part.
You can’t control the rate of movement of an animation on the slide, only when and where it starts and stops. And its speed increases as the length of the slide decreases. It’s also tied into the distance the layer moves on that slide. If two “blocks” of text start at the same spot on the slide (say at the bottom) and the first block moves to the TOP of the slide but the other block moves to the bottom of the slide, the top block HAS TO MOVE FASTER to cover the larger distance in the same amount of time as the other block which is moving a shorter distance, when you consider that the slide itself has a specific time (say 6.0 seconds).
There isn’t any way to control those factors, so it becomes difficult to create that type of timing and movement.
If anybody does have a solution to this, please let everyone in on it.
This is exactly what I am talking about and I think I understand the way that you did it and I will attempt the same. I think it would be a HUGE benefit to FotoMagico 4 to be able to control with precision the timing and separate animation, geometry, timing controls for individual layers.
I agree completely!! There are a lot of other “settings” I’d like to be able to control in FM4 as well.
When you consider it’s supposed to be a slide-show presenter and it has some really cool features, I think those features should be diverse and creative. Otherwise, you might as well just go back to showing slides in something like MS Powerpoint (boring!)
I have been using FM since its inception and I do believe it is the best, most fun slide show creation tool out there. They clearly are trying to make it better and better, lets hope they are listening!
I too have been using Fotomagico for several years and at first used Proshow Producer ($400.00 at that time) and then afterwards Wnsoft before changing over to Mac. Wnsoft has an excellent product and can do so much with it but they don’t have it for Macs. Yes, one can make a file to run on Macs and is excellent in playback quality. I thought it couldn’t be matched in output quality by any other product it but to be honest when I play a Fotomagico Standalone Presentation using my MacBook Pro and Sony Bravia TV with HDMI and audio cables it too is excellent quality, smooth animation and pin sharp. Well done Fotomagico! I just wish Fotomagico had the features Wnsoft has but to Fotomagico’s credit they are improving in this area. I really appreciate having the multiple layering feature now available and better audio control. I should mention Wnsoft had been suggesting for several years they were working on a Mac version but around a year ago they mentioned it won’t happen soon and by now wonder if it will happen at all. They too have constant upgrades and issues with their software with each upgrade (I know because I worked through some of them) so in all fairness we should expect issues to work through with Fotomagico too. I have contacted Fotomagico several times on issues and their feedback/contact is excellent and in fact already received feed back in an hour. I certainly will use Fotomagic Pro and already have clients who are very pleased with the Presentations we built for them.