Can't Remove or replace graphics consistently

[nuseth]

I imported a PPT and recorded audio.
Then I realized I had some errors on the slides.
I want to replace the slides, but can't seem to do so.
I even tried deleting the old graphics and, in a separate test, even putting graphics over the tops of the old items but neither attempt seems to work.

So... how can I replace a slide after I have recorded audio on it, but NOT loose the audio?

[Piotr Sliwinski (MorrisCooke)]

Hi Nuseth,

that's a good question, and I'll start first with 2 workarounds that come to my mind:
Workaround 1. If a single source PPT slide is bad, you can insert one slide as a screenshot (or a PNG file) into a new slide and then record audio for this particular slide.

Workaround 2.
1) export all the video in your project to an MP4 movie - this will be Movie A
2) create a new project, in which you record the new 'good' PPT slide for the same amount of time as the previous 'bad' one - this will be Movie B
2) open it in iMovie
3) cut the part of the track with the "bad slide" from Movie A - but just the video
4) insert (just video) from Movie B into the empty slot just created
5) export the movie from iMovie -> this will be now the 'good' movie C.

Currently we don't have a separate slide editor in Explain Everything, and we would have to come up with a simple way of exchanging graphical objects with other objects. The problems you are having occur because Explain Everything records what is being done on the screen, and if some action is already recorded, then you cannot "replace it" with a single instance of an object. You'd have to record the whole action all over again.

The problem with erasing things is actually a 'feature'. There is a number of logical questions presented when you record something being drawn, and then delete it after recording the process of creating it.

Right now it works as follows:
if you draw something WHILE RECORDING, the drawing is stored as a path. After you finish recording (press pause or switch off the drawing tool) - the 'drawing' changes to an 'object', that you can move on the screen. If you then delete this object, EE will delete the object - but not the drawing path. So if you then press rewind and play back the recording, you will still see the path being drawn. Only the object got deleted.

This might get quite complicated, so this is why we do not allow to freely 'slide' back and forth through recorded tracks - we only allow to either record from the very beginning, or from the end of recording.

We might change the recording process in a future release, but right now it is simplified, so it should not cause too many problems. Currently if you want to delete the object that was drawn (not created from a picture) - and that action was recorded, you have to overwrite the recording with a new one. This does not include objects drawn while paused, of course.

If you tried PhotoPuppet HD, you would see that it is possible to rewind back even a single frame, but there we are dealing only with objects and not with drawn paths.

The bottom line is: we will think up a way of replacing single graphical objects on EE slides in such a way, that it replaces the whole object for the entire length of a recording, and does not change other things.

Stay tuned!