I understand what you're saying, and if that's the behavior you're seeing, it would also make sense that the transitions break.

However, I don't see that behavior at all. If I have a bunch of images all in a row and I select a bunch of them and change their duration, the selected ones get shorter and the clips to the right automatically fill in, keeping the row intact.

The behavior you've described sounds more like what happens when you've got A/V content on several tracks and PD can't reduce the total duration of the selected clips because it can't pull up the content on the other tracks.

Please take a screenshot of your timeline and save it to a JPG or PNG file, then use the Attachments button below the forum's text box to share it here.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

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Quote I understand what you're saying, and if that's the behavior you're seeing, it would also make sense that the transitions break.

However, I don't see that behavior at all. If I have a bunch of images all in a row and I select a bunch of them and change their duration, the selected ones get shorter and the clips to the right automatically fill in, keeping the row intact.

The behavior you've described sounds more like what happens when you've got A/V content on several tracks and PD can't reduce the total duration of the selected clips because it can't pull up the content on the other tracks.

Please take a screenshot of your timeline and save it to a JPG or PNG file, then use the Attachments button below the forum's text box to share it here.

Thanks for the reply! I was working on another slideshow today and was not having the problem as I described above UNTIL I had separated out some pictures from some others and left a gap between the two sets of pix. Then when I tried lowering the duration of the second set (all highlighted, no transitions yet), the first half of the pix got a blank put between them and kept the same amount of space occupied, and the second half of the pix all stayed together and had no blanks between them. See the attached pic with a before and after (top is before lowering duration). I don't understand why it leaves the blanks in the first place and I really don't understand why it put blanks between the pictures only in the first half of the group

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me on this one. It seems to be very random but I'm sure there's something in here that will make sense once someone points it out!

Quote It seems to be very random but I'm sure there's something in here that will make sense once someone points it out!

Your screenshot is very helpful, and if you expand the view on your timeline to take in more clips, you'll see the cause.

As I mentioned, PD is trying to accomodate your request but it's running into a problem with clips on the audio track. In your case, its the audio track following Fife and drum bumping up against it and causing the clip line above to fracture.

Here's a screen recording showing the issue:



As you can see, the solution is to temporarily move the audio clip directly under the clips you're shortening so that all the other clips to the right can move up in sync. You then can put the audio track back, although you may need to trim it to match the shorter duration of the images.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote

Your screenshot is very helpful, and if you expand the view on your timeline to take in more clips, you'll see the cause.

As I mentioned, PD is trying to accomodate your request but it's running into a problem with clips on the audio track. In your case, its the audio track following Fife and drum bumping up against it and causing the clip line above to fracture.

Here's a screen recording showing the issue:



As you can see, the solution is to temporarily move the audio clip directly under the clips you're shortening so that all the other clips to the right can move up in sync. You then can put the audio track back, although you may need to trim it to match the shorter duration of the images.

Thanks so much for your help, this will certainly solve this mystery. I understand what you're saying about the two audio tracks running into each other, thereby forcing PD to put blank spaces between the pix. To ask a further question though, the audio tracks following the one you see on the screen are all cross-faded so they already overlap each other. I would <assume> that the crossfade would just get larger as the downstream audio tracks are pulled to the left, but apparently that's not the case, and PD spaces the pictures to keep the overall length the same as it "can't" move the downstream audio. Does my logic make sense? I am going to try locking the audio track and see if that makes a difference.

Again, thanks for your insight!

Quote I would that the crossfade would just get larger as the downstream audio tracks are pulled to the left, but apparently that's not the case, and PD spaces the pictures to keep the overall length the same as it "can't" move the downstream audio. Does my logic make sense?

Yes, but there's no way to shorten the crossfades as part of another operation. You can manually change the length of a crossfade transition that's applied to two clips, but that won't change the length of either clip at all. You'd need to do that to the first clip and let the following clip(s) slide up - assuming they're not impacted by other clips

Quote I am going to try locking the audio track and see if that makes a difference.

It doesn't

Basically, I see this is a workflow issue, and the quickest way around these obstacles is to change how, when, and where you make these edits. One way to do that would be to approach this in segments.

Since you've got photos and want to set them to music, a straightforward change would be to start with the first song and group of pics and tweak the durations so they line up with the music. Then, either save that as its own project or move everything to the far right of the timeline before starting on the next section.

The goal is to take care of the main alignments individually so the other clips won't impact the ones your working on (and vice versa). If you've saved each clip as its own project, you can then create the master/final project and insert each project on the timeline as an Expanded Project.

At that point you can do the audio transitions and make any length changes on the final image in each section. You might actually find it easier to produce each section individually, and then lay the produced sections end to end in the final project so you won't have to worry about anything slipping out of alignment.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote

Yes, but there's no way to shorten the crossfades as part of another operation. You can manually change the length of a crossfade transition that's applied to two clips, but that won't change the length of either clip at all. You'd need to do that to the first clip and let the following clip(s) slide up - assuming they're not impacted by other clips



It doesn't

Basically, I see this is a workflow issue, and the quickest way around these obstacles is to change how, when, and where you make these edits. One way to do that would be to approach this in segments.

Since you've got photos and want to set them to music, a straightforward change would be to start with the first song and group of pics and tweak the durations so they line up with the music. Then, either save that as its own project or move everything to the far right of the timeline before starting on the next section.

The goal is to take care of the main alignments individually so the other clips won't impact the ones your working on (and vice versa). If you've saved each clip as its own project, you can then create the master/final project and insert each project on the timeline as an Expanded Project.

At that point you can do the audio transitions and make any length changes on the final image in each section. You might actually find it easier to produce each section individually, and then lay the produced sections end to end in the final project so you won't have to worry about anything slipping out of alignment.

Hi,

Guess what? Locking the audio track allows me to re-duration the pictures with ni side effect of putting blank space between them to maintain overall length! I did two slideshows last night using this technique and I never got any separated pictures - they all got the new duration and stayed together

Thanks for your help with this!