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In fact, that's exactly what's causing the interference with motion. Overlap transitions behave much more smoothly & won't interrupt movement.
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It's not a bug. It's how the transitions behave.
Another thing to note is that switchng to overlap-type transitions will decrease the overall duration of your slideshow by the sum total of the duration of the combined transitions. e.g. a slideshow with 11 images x 10 secs duration with 10 transitions of 2 secs...
I appreciate how thorough and friendly your reply was. I do understand everything you explained, and watched the YouTube video. I did already know everything you wrote to me and knew what the video demonstrated, so I guess I must have miscommunicated. It's like writing to a senator asking them to change or update a really terrible law, and instead of getting a response such as "Thank you for pointing this out - I will change it," or, "Actually this law makes sense and here is why...", I just get a circular "The law is the law" response back. This response isn't helpful.
I don't want to sound rude, or arrogant... but I just can't agree that this behavior
should be normal. I am certainly open to listening to why (from a programmer's point of view):
1) the user can't be prompted with a choice to shift only the current track, or all tracks, when a "cross" transition is added. It seems to me that such an option could easily be added to the software, considering the user is already given this option with just about any other edit that results in timing changes (i.e. lengthening or shortening a track asset, moving it to another track, etc.). I'd be perfectly happy to finally zip my mouth about this issue if someone could just explain to me why this behavior is actually
desired by your users,
necessary from a programming point of view, or both. But so far, all I'm getting is, "It's not a bug because we know about it and our opinion is that it isn't a bug. It's not a bug because that's the way we designed it to work." This is completely circular logic. I'm explaining to CyberLink why it would be best a different way, and I never get any kind of response other than "this is how it works," which of course I already know. The whole point is that the way it works really stinks and should be changed. Analogy: if turning off the car results in the car horn going off every time for 2 seconds, and I tell the manufacturer about this problem, how do you think it will make me feel (and how do you think it makes the manufacturer look) if they just write back, "No, that's not a defect. That's how we designed it." Maybe there is a really good reason for that car horn to go off, but it certainly doesn't help anything when the manufacturer refuses to share that reason with customers who are concerned about it.
2) an "overlap" transition cannot be achieved without the jerky stop-motion at the beginning/end of the clip. I'm skeptical about any such argument though, since other software that does crossfades (whether audio editing software or visual editing software) does them perfectly smoothly.
In other software, users are not faced with the impossible choice of doing jerky overlap transitions or cross transitions that destroy the synchronization of all the tracks. Neither choice is appealing. Until someone offers me compelling reasons for why cross transitions need to affect other tracks erratically, and why overlap transitions need to be so jerky, telling me "no, it's not a bug" without offering necessary rationale for its behavior will not advance the discussion at all. I hope that my text above clarifies and advances the discussion.
Side point: the terminology itself is baffling. In audio engineering (which I have considerable formal training in), "cross-fading" refers to when audio clips overlap each other and fade into each other (and in that process, the clips are shortened). But in PowerDirector, this term "cross" is being used as the alternative to this overlapping behavior, with "overlap" being the substitute for "cross" or "cross-fading." To fade two clips into each other simultaneously (fade one out while the other fades in), by definition, is referred to as cross-fading. This is true in other video editing software too, such as Adobe Premiere. I would suggest renaming "cross" to just about anything else such as "join," "touch," "neighbor," "adjoin," etc. The "cross" term is extremely misleading, not only to the trained user but also to the layman who understands the practical meaning of the word "cross." IN FACT, I think I may have actually gotten some of my terminology in this post confused - maybe I use "overlap" when I should instead use "cross," and vice-versa.