9 replies to this topic

[james]

Hi Folks,

This year my local club is doing the Seaspace Film Festival.

We want to do the show using a digital projector and PC - no slides or slide projector this year.

I am looking for a slideshow APP (for either MAC or PC - Preferably PC) that can do the following:

[list]Play photos to a music track or multiple tracks (we can string them together into one MP3 if necessary)

Sync slide transitions to the music track's tempo

Have a "slide sorter" display for moving thumbnails around[list]

I found a list of programs on about.com:

http://graphicssoft....wswpc/index.htm (Yes, their site is hella annoying) that seems like a good start, but before I start wading through them, I want to ask for y'all's help.

Has anyone found an application that will do what I want? The hardest part of the spec is surely syncing the transitions to the music's tempo.

Cheers
James

[marriard]

Pic2Exe from www.wnsoft.com - Windows based application

Cheap, highly featured and very easy to use. To see some samples of the results check out the following shows I put together (some old, some new):

Deep Sea Images Slide Shows

There is dozens of applications that can do this - this one is my favourite because they are the best I found, and they keep adding features without charging me more (lifetime upgrades)

M

[Mathis]

James,

I have used Pinnacle Studio Version 7. The software is really designed for video productions, but it does allow for still images too. I found this out by accident. The software allows you to add music (music choices are available with software or you can use your own MP3s). If you use the music that comes with software it has a cool feature that makes the music finish up the tract exactly where you want it finish (instead of just stopping a song abruptly right in the middle). You can also fade, dissolve, or use a variety of transition effects.

I have put together videos (of my personal dive trips) that started with a few minutes of still images and then transitioned to u/w video. It works real nice once you learn the software.

I hope this helps.

Mathis

[cjames]

You can do what you're talking about with adobe premiere or any video editing software easily if you have the images and the tracks a priori to the event. With this you can also do nice, more interesting transitions between slides.

[JackConnick]

IPhoto and IMovie do all the above and a whole lot more on Macs. Very easy to work with. You can create slide shows with any number of transistions and music in IMovie, export them as Quictime and run them on either Mac or PC. Cost? Free with OSX.2.

Jack

[craig]

IPhoto and IMovie do all the above and a whole lot more on Macs. Very easy to work with. You can create slide shows with any number of transistions and music in IMovie, export them as Quictime and run them on either Mac or PC. Cost? Free with OSX.2.

Jack

I think this is true of video packages in general. The issue with Quicktime is how high can the output resolution be. Anyone can create a video of imported stills, but I don't think James will be satisfied with 640x480 output resolution for his presentation. My experience with the ouput files using this technique is that they're way "huge-er" than they should be.

Anyone know of a platform-neutral, web-friendly slideshow delivery mechanism that offers 1024x768 or greater resolution? I suspect Macromedia may be the place to look only because I don't believe QT, Real, WMV or MPEG will do it.

[JackConnick]

If you buy QT Pro for $30 you can select resolution and compression and get much smaller files.

Jack

[craig]

Sure enough, QT can produce higher resolutions but authoring slide shows within QT Pro won't meet James' requirements. It is at least proof that QT could be used as the output format. BTW, at 1024x768 my 100 image output file is immense.

[cjames]

Is this for Seaspace in Houston?

[james]

Yep - I am on the team from HUPS putting on the film festival and photo gallery.

You guys will get to see some of my images on the big screen.

Cheers
James