Someone asked in the ProShow Enthusiast forum whether a flashing caption of sorts could be done with Producer. As a matter of fact, it can. No need for an outside editor at all! You can “do it all in Producer”. This is what this blog is all about.
Be sure the caption is the size required and placed exactly on the slide where you want it before the screen capture else the elements won’t line up when you insert the captured caption jpg as a layer. The blurred layer can be colored to suit your show. Adjustment to the White Point may be useful depending on the color chosen to make it show up better.
This isn’t the only method to achieve the flashing effect and may not be the best solution if you wish to put something underneath the effect. If you desire transparency, try using the Chroma Key to remove the background.
Here’s Ray Jacott’s cool demo. The effect appears in the first couple of seconds very briefly in the show.
“The Spanhoek Hotel”
The effect was key-framed this way in the tutorial. I didn’t give the timing for the key frames for the 3 second slide effect as the desired effect is bound to vary somewhat from show to show. You must have a handle on key-framing to work it out and also knowledge of how to apply variant amounts of opacity. The tutorial just gives an overview of the basic technique.
KF 1-2 0% to 0% opacity
KF 2-3 0% to 100% opacity
KF 3-4 100% to 0% opacity
KF 4-5 0% to 0% opacity