How To's

How to Work with Keyframe Placeholders

Overview

When using keyframes in ProShow Producer, you may occasionally encounter a type of keyframe that was once referred to as a "Ghost" keyframe, now known as a keyframe placeholder. This keyframe can appear when you are creating a slide that contains multiple layers and multiple keyframes, with different keyframe times on each layer.

A keyframe placeholder appears in your keyframe timeline, and it looks like this:

You can see the keyframe placeholder highlighted here in yellow.

The Basics of Keyframing

To understand keyframe placeholders, you must first understand the basics of keyframing. Each keyframe in the timeline represents a specific point in time during the slide. Let us start with an example:

When you create a new slide and open the slide options to the Motion tab, you will see that the default keyframes appear as keyframe 1, at the starting position, and keyframe 2 at the ending position. This means that you have specific settings you will be using at the beginning of the slide, keyframe 1, and at the end of the slide, keyframe 2. Each keyframe represents a point in time during which you want something specific to happen.

When you are working with multiple layers, each layer can be given different keyframes, but the timeline for the slide always remains the same. If your slide time is set to 3 seconds, you can have as many keyframes as you would like, but the timeline itself, 3 seconds, does not change. This is the most important part of understanding keyframe placeholders. No matter how many keyframes you add and no matter how many layers you include, the timeline for the slide stays the same.

What, then, is a keyframe placeholder?
A keyframe placeholder is a keyframe, or point in time, which exists for one layer on the slide, but not for another.

Creating a Keyframe Placeholder

We will now create a keyframe placeholder using a series of steps in order to better understand why they appear. Begin by creating a new slide in ProShow Producer, using any image you would like.

Add a second layer to your new slide by using the Layers tab of the slide options, or by selecting it in the file list, holding on the keyboard, and dropping it on top of the new slide.
Open the slide options for this slide and select the Layers tab. Arrange your two layers so that you can see both of them at the same time. The easiest way to do this is by placing one layer at the top half of the screen, and the second layer on the bottom half.
Click on the Motion tab and select Layer 1 in the drop down list.

This is how your Motion options should appear. Notice that Layer 1 is positioned on the top half of the screen, while Layer 2 is positioned on the bottom half. This allows us to access both layers. Also note that the keyframes are currently unaltered.

Now we will create the additional keyframe for Layer 1 that will cause our keyframe placeholder to appear. Remember that a keyframe placeholder is a keyframe that exists for one layer, but not another, on the slide.

Click on the green + icon in your keyframe timeline to add a new keyframe to Layer 1. You will now have three total keyframes for Layer 1.
Click on the space between keyframes 2 and 3 in your keyframe timeline. This will select that keyframe space for editing.
Now, click on Layer 2 in the preview window, which is the left pane showing your layer position. Make sure that you click on Layer 2 in the preview window, and not using the drop-down list.

Notice that you now have a keyframe placeholder, highlighted in yellow, visible on your keyframe timeline.

You have now caused a keyframe placeholder to appear. What does this keyframe mean? Notice that the position of the placeholder matches the position of keyframe 2 for Layer 1. Because you selected Layer 2 using the preview window while you had keyframe 2 and 3 selected for Layer 1, Producer assumes that you want to make edits to Layer 2 specifically at that point in time. To do this, it creates a placeholder.

What are keyframe placeholders useful for? When you are working with multiple keyframe arrangements across multiple layers on a slide, placeholders appear to assist you with the timing of your effects. Using our example from above, let us say that we had a three step motion for Layer 1, and decided that we wanted Layer 2 do add a third step at the same time. The placeholder allows you to use the same keyframe time from Layer 1.

If you make any adjustments to Layer 2 while the keyframe placeholder is present, it will become a normal keyframe. The placeholder serves as a marker so that you can more easily match timing between layers on your slides.

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