How To's

How To use Auto and Manual in ProShow Producer

Overview

While working with keyframes in ProShow Producer, you may notice the green and amber "lights" that are visible for each movement value you can adjust. These are your auto and manual motion indicators. While they are simple in description, it may help to understand how these options affect your show and why they are present.

Defining Auto and Manual

Let's start with a definition. When your motion is configured to manual mode, the amber light, Producer is using your settings for that keyframe. When your motion is configured to auto mode, the green light, Producer is automatically calculating that setting because you have not yet set it to anything specific.

Remember that a keyframe is simply a point in time during your slide. This means that if you have a specific setting configured for a keyframe, rotation for example, Producer will switch to manual for your rotation setting automatically - because you have specifically changed it.

In most cases, you should never need to change the auto and manual settings for your slides. This article describes what the features do and how they impact your show so that should you wish to change them, you understand what that change will mean.

Create an Effect using Auto and Manual

The easiest way to understand how manual and auto settings work is to create an effect that demonstrates both of them.

Create a new show in Producer and add an image to a slide.
Double-click on the slide to open the slide options window and click on the Motion tab.

Notice, first, that without making any changes to the slide motion, you have two keyframes, both of which are set to manual mode.

This is the default appearance of the Motion tab. Notice that there are two keyframes, the starting and ending position, and that both positions are currently in manual mode.

Both of these keyframes are in manual mode because they have specific settings for the starting and ending positions. The slide motion will begin from the specific position indicated in the starting position, and it will end in the specific position indicated in the ending position. These are not adjusted by Producer, so they are manual.

We need to configure some motion to see the impact of manual and auto settings.

Drag the layer to the left side of the slide in your starting position, and drag it to the right side in your ending position.
Press the green Play button to see the motion you have created.
Now we have motion, which begins with the slide's starting position, and finishes at the ending position. To see how auto and manual influence your slide, we will need to add another keyframe.
Click on the green + button in the keyframe timeline to add a new keyframe.

You will now see another keyframe in the keyframe timeline, keyframe 2, between the starting and ending positions you originally had.

Notice that you now have a keyframe 2, which is highlighted. The motion values for keyframe 2 are set to Auto by default, also highlighted in the image.

Why are the values for keyframe 2 set to auto? This is because, again, keyframes represent only a point in time. You have added another keyframe, but you have not made any specific settings for that keyframe. That means that Producer is still going to make sure that keyframe 1 and 3, your starting and ending positions, will be in specific places - but that keyframe 2 has no specific settings, so it is automatically being calculated to make sure that the starting and ending positions are accurate.

Let's make one final change to the demonstration to show how manual mode alters the way the motion works.

With keyframe 1 and 2 selected, as seen in the image above, drag the layer in the keyframe 2 preview window to the top of the slide.

Notice that the Pan values for keyframe 2 have changed to manual mode. This is because you have specified a location for keyframe 2 by moving where you want the layer to appear.

By dragging the layer to the top of the slide in keyframe 2, you have changed the Pan value to manual mode, as highlighted.

Now press the green Play button to preview your effect. This time, rather than the layer moving directly across the slide from left to right, it moves to the top of the slide and then to the right side.

Summary

To summarize, a keyframe is a point in time that will be in auto mode unless you make a specific change to what you want to happen during that keyframe. When you specify that something should happen during that keyframe, it will change to manual mode, reflecting that you have manually set something to happen, whether that takes place as motion, or an effect, or any other option that you can use with keyframes.

As previously stated, you should not need to change a keyframe from auto to manual modes. Producer does an excellent job of making this determination for you. Should you want to change this value to make sure that a layer behaves the way you want it to, however, you now understand how the feature works with your slide shows.

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