ProShow 8 provides a wide variety of useful enhancements for making shows faster and easier than ever before. ProShow 8 focuses on text handling, quick show creation through the wizard, and improved output and publishing options, while offering tons of additional enhancements that fit into your everyday workflow.
New! Caption Bounding Boxes
- You can now drag the box around a caption after enabling horizontal or vertical constraining to control the size of the text area in any slide.
- Text can automatically wrap to fit inside the box. Wrapping can be easily enabled and disabled.
- Text can optionally shrink to fit, allowing longer captions to automatically use a smaller font size so that more text is visible.
- Bounding boxes give greatly improved control over the exact positing of captions, resulting in better slide layouts.
- Bounding boxes can be used to prevent text from running over photos and videos in complex slide designs.
- Many of ProShow’s built-in slide styles have been updated to use caption bounding boxes for improved text handling.
- Bounding boxes enable more sophisticated Slide Styles that used advanced caption motion.
- Bounding boxes are enabled by clicking the icons for Text Box Size in the Caption Placement section of Slide Options.
New! Redesigned and Improved Wizard
- The redesigned wizard in ProShow makes it easy to quickly create a show. Just add some photos, videos, titles, and music, and
- ProShow will automatically choose effects and build your show.
- The streamlined interface lets you manage your photos, videos, titles and music in one convenient interface.
- The new wizard window automatically changes size based on your screen, giving you more space to work on larger monitors.
- In addition to letting ProShow automatically pick effects, you can now select custom effects for any piece of content. Perfect when you have a few photos you want control over, but want ProShow to handle the rest.
- When you’re ready to see your show, just click the Preview button and your show quickly starts playing. Unlike the wizard in older versions, there’s no need to click through several steps just to preview.
- Once ProShow has chosen effects, you’ll see the choices it made right in the wizard window. Easily replace effects you don’t like by picking a custom effect, or re-run ProShow’s wizard engine to have ProShow try a different configuration.
- The new wizard works great with effects that use the new caption bounding boxes, helping to ensure that your title slides and captions look great even when you’re using lots of text.
- The wizard can be started from the New Show window or the Wizard button on the main toolbar. You an even use the wizard on part of an existing show by selecting the slides and using the Remix button on the main toolbar.
New! More Music
- We’ve added 35 new music tracks to ProShow’s royalty free music library.
- The improved music library now shows you which tracks are already used in your show.
- These new music tracks are available now in both ProShow 8 and ProShow 7!
New! Font Browser
- Visually browse the fonts available on the system to find just the right one.
- Easily scroll through a list of all installed fonts.Sample text is displayed for each font, and the sample text used can be easily customized in the preferences.
- The font browser can also show a preview of the current caption’s text, making it easy to find a font that works well for the specific text being used.
- A character view optionally shows the standard characters for each font, making it easy to compare how specific characters look.
- Frequently use the same fonts? The font browser shows you a list of your recently used fonts, making it easy to quickly grab your preferred fonts.
- Getting more consistent captions in your show by using the font browser’s Used In Show list to quickly apply a font that is already used in your show.
- Available from the Captions tab in Slide Options.
New! Symbol Browser
- The new symbol browser makes it easy to see all the characters and symbols available in a font and insert any selected character into a caption.
- Works great with specialty symbol fonts like Webdings and Wingdings, as well as custom fonts that provide unique symbols and characters.
- Using the symbol browser lets you quickly discover tons of great symbols you can use in your captions that have been hiding in fonts already on your system.
- Available from the Captions tab in Slide Options.
New! Vertical Caption Alignment
- Captions can now be top, bottom, or center aligned.
- Alignment controls which direction the text expands in when additional lines of text are added.
- Vertical alignment is especially useful when combined with bounding boxes.
- Found in the Caption Placement section of Slide Options.
New! Caption Line Spacing
- ProShow Gold can now control the line spacing of captions.
- Custom line spacing can create better text layouts, improving the look and readability of captions.
- Line spacing can be customized for each caption, allowing each one to be optimized for the specific font being used.
- Available in the Captions tab of Slide Options.
New! AVCHD Output
- Create high definition video output for your TV using your existing DVD burner and DVD discs.
- AVCHD is a widely supported video format that plays back on any Blu-ray player.
- Allows you create Blu-ray quality video even if you don’t have a Blu-ray burner.
- Get up to 6 times higher resolution for your shows, providing considerably better quality and clarity on the same DVD discs.
- Requires only a DVD burner, DVD discs, and a Blu-ray player.
- Available from the Publish menu.
New! Publish to USB
- The new USB Flash Drive output option makes it easy to get your show onto a USB memory stick for playback on your smart TV.
- Most modern TVs include USB ports and support playing back video from a USB thumb drive.
- ProShow’s new USB Flash Drive feature provides a quick way to create a video in the standard format for playback on smart TVs, and will automatically create your video with all the right settings.
- USB drives are automatically detected – just pick the USB drive you want to save your show on, and ProShow does the rest.
- Available from the Publish menu.
New! Improved Blu-ray Output
- ProShow’s Blu-ray output has been upgraded to use newer video encoding, resulting in increased clarity and quality.
- Blu-ray resolution and quality presets have been enhanced to help get the best quality possible.
- Improved Blu-ray options window now provides estimates of the length of video that will fit on a disc with each preset.
- Blu-ray output can be accessed from the Publish menu, the toolbar in the Publish view, or the Publishing Formats pane.
- Support for dual-layer Blu-ray discs have been improved, making it easier to publish extra-long HD shows.
New! Automatic Volume Leveling
- ProShow’s audio engine can now automatically analyze soundtracks and correct for differences in volume.
- Automatic volume leveling helps to create a more consistent volume level across the soundtracks in your show.
- Reduces the need to manually adjust the volume of individual tracks.
- Allows for the strength of leveling to be adjusted as needed, or even disabled.
- Automatic volume leveling is enabled by default on all new shows created in ProShow 8.
- Volume leveling can be controlled from the Soundtrack tab of Show Options.
New! Combine Shows
- Easily merge any number of different shows into a single new show.
- Perfect for taking multiple shows and combining them into one video for uploading to Vimeo or YouTube.
- Control the order of shows, the aspect ratio, and optionally include a blank slide between shows.
- Available from the Tools menu.
New! Add / Remove Time
- Easily add or remove a chosen amount of time from the selected slides.
- Perfect when you need to change the overall show length by a specific amount, like when you need an extra 10 seconds of visuals to fill out your soundtrack.
- Works with any number of selected slides, so you can modify just a few slides, or adjust all the slides in your show.
- Choose to add time to the selected slides, or remove time.
- Adjust by any amount of time.
- Optionally modify either slide times or transition times.
- Add the chosen amount of time to every slide, or let ProShow automatically distribute the time across the selected slides. For example, you can add 5 seconds to each slide, or add 5 seconds across the current slides and let ProShow do the math.
- Accessed from the Slide menu in the main window.
New! Improved Presets in Video for Web, Devices and Computers
- ProShow’s general-purpose video file output, Video for Web, Devices and Computers has an all new set of video presets and profiles.
- Improved defaults for today’s standard video format, MPEG-4 H.264, are listed right at the top, making it easy to output shows in the current standard for video files.
- All presets and profiles have been freshly optimized to provide a good balance between quality and file size. Performance of encoding to x264 video formats has been improved.
- New categories make it easy to find specific profiles for common uses, like mobile devices, online services, and disc-based formats.
- The new Intermediate / Lossless presets let you create video files optimized for importing into other video editors with a minimal loss of quality.
New! ProShow Gold Now Includes the Device Plugin
- ProShow Gold 8 includes the additional video output support that was previously available with the Device Plugin (which was a separate purchase).
- With ProShow Gold 8, you can now output videos in H.264 video formats with no additional plugin required.
- This enables output for modern devices like iPhones and iPads, and enables the HTML5 Video output feature.
New! Additional Preferences to Customize ProShow
- New preference in Miscellaneous / Startup lets you automatically load the last used show when ProShow starts.
- New preference in Show Defaults / Default Slide Settings lets you create new slides that start with the show’s default settings, instead of the traditional behavior of inheriting the settings of the neighboring slide.
- New preference in Appearance / Main Window lets you disable the ability to reposition panes in the main interface, preventing accidental issues with panes getting repositioned or undocked.
- All preferences are accessed from Preferences under the Edit menu.
New! Even More…
- ProShow Gold can now optionally open shows saved in ProShow Producer, and will automatically strip out any settings that don’t work with ProShow Gold. Perfect if you want to give Producer a try and accidentally overwrite one of your existing shows.
- When working with Slide Styles, you can now filter effects by recommended time. Easily find effects that work best with short durations or effects designed to last a little longer.Once you’ve found the perfect effect, you can now apply the effect’s recommended time to the slide instantly by clicking the Apply Timing button. The slide’s time will be automatically adjusted to match the recommended time for the effect.
- Always prefer to use the recommended effect times? A new preference sets ProShow to automatically ask you to apply the recommended time when you apply a Slide Style effect.
- The Slide Inspector pane (enabled from the Window menu) now lists the fonts used on the currently selected slide, making it easier to figure out which fonts are used where.
- New compatibility warnings appear when you access certain older output formats that are no longer widely supported. This helps avoid creating output in a format that may not be easily viewed. Each warning includes a recommendation on the best output format for today’s technology. Of course, you can always continue creating output in these legacy formats if you have a specific need.
Tons of Fixes and Enhancements
- Improved video formats used for online sharing service to improve compatibility and quality
- Improved video import to automatically correct rotation for videos taken on most cell phones
- Improved Collect Show Files feature to detect and warn when the destination path is too long
- Improved caption fly in/fly out effect behavior so that custom times are maintained when selecting a different effect
- Improved random transition selection to prevent incompatible transitions from being applied
- Improved Slide Style creation window now displays selected categories in alphabetical order
- Improved the message shown the monitor resolution is too low for ProShow to function to indicate that display scaling may be the issue
- Improved the scale of position values for layers and captions in the Customize Menu window to improve usability and consistency
- Improved visibility of the expand/collapse icons in the Video for Web, Devices and Computers window
- Improved wording in sharing service upload confirmation windows
- Fixed application of master volume option on video output
- Fixed incorrect tooltip for Preview Zoom in Slide Options window
- Fixed status indicator after installing updated package from Download Effects and Content window
- Fixed update problem in Slide Options after reordering slides in the Slide List
- Fixed issue where Edit Theme window could show the wrong icon for some transitions
- Fixed issue with incorrect highlighting of effect filters in the Edit Theme window
- Fixed issue where incorrect list of effects could be displayed when Show Enabled is used in the Edit Theme Window
- Fixed issue where page thumbnails in the Customize Menu window did not always update appropriately
- Fixed issue where toggling caption visibility in the Customize Menu window would not properly update the Loop All / Play All option settings
- Fixed issue with incorrect display of menu preview when using 4:3 menus for output
- Fixed issues with the display of the grid when using a 4:3 menu in the Customize Menu window
- Fixed issue where multiple files could not be dragged+dropped into the Timeline correctly
- Fixed issue where the Slide List could incorrectly indicate the open slide after deleting one or more slides
- Fixed issue where flagging and unflagging slides did not support Undo/Redo
- Fixed issue where select all/none buttons did not properly enable/disable when importing content from a third party service
- Fixed issue where shows opened from the Recent menu were not added to the current project
- Fixed issue where some images could be flipped when imported
- Fixed issue where toolbar for Lightbox could fail to appear
- Fixed issue with alignment of text of the Writing Disc window
- Fixed issue with incorrect tab changing in Slide Options when toggling caption visibility
- Fixed issue with incorrect warning when deleting a Transition Style that had previously been applied to a slide in the current show
- Fixed issue with missing entries in the Slide Options captions list
- Fixed issue with rendering custom video files when audio is disabled
- Fixed issues with extension used in Flash FLV output
- Fixed issues with size of output windows on low resolution monitors in Windows 10
- Fixed issues with zero-byte videos being created during Blu-ray output
- Fixed problem where dragging+dropping a file into a layer that contains missing content wouldn’t properly mark the content as found.
- Fixed problem where Find Missing Files could report that files are still missing after they have been found
- Fixed problems with audio tracks that use ending trim and negative offset values
- Fixed stability issue when creating Blu-ray output
- Fixed stability issue when the Music Library does not properly download thumbnails
- Fixed stability issue when undoing a change while the Soundtrack tab of Show Options is open
- Fixed stability issue with applying certain transitions after a blank slide
- Fixed stability issue with setting a custom thumbnail when creating a transition
- Fixed stability issue with toggling effect filters in the Edit Theme window