Slideshow Software Wanted

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:

• 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

I found a list of programs on about.com:

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/slideshow...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

Try Totally Hip's LiveSlideShow. It's what Watt uses on his trips, and seems to do a pretty good job.

Not sure if it auto-syncs to music beats, though, but it will stretch out the presentation to fit one song, I think.

What I would like to see is high resolution ouput, music, and platform-neutral distribution. Using standard video tools limits your resolution options and I don't like the idea of EXE files as output even though they're useful for presentations.

LiveSlideShow wouldn't let me have their demo and their user feedback doesn't look too good w.r.t high resolution.

I wonder if flash is a possibility? I know James isn't looking for something like that, but I want to see web delivery, hi res, and reasonable size!

Unfortunately, most digital projectors are 1024 x 768. Perhaps we can rent one w/ higher resolution if they exist.

Let's try to stick w/ stuff that meets the Spec. It doesn't need to make an EXE for Seaspace's purpose.

I'll look at both of these posted and evaluate. Not sure what to do about the "tempo sync" thing. Our club president saw someone do it with slide carousel's and now really wants it for our show.

Cheers

James

1024x768 is "high resolution" in video terms. I don't know how to distribute in mpeg or quicktime at that resolution but it's what I want to do. I suspect that's what you want also, so I suggest looking carefully at that.

I can easily do "tempo sync" manually in Premiere. In fact I generally always do it. I don't know how produce 10x7 output in Premiere, though.

James,

I have also been experimenting with apps, trying to find the ideal slide show software. Have you tried Power Point? I think that Power Point 2002 seems to be the best (for many reasons) so far, and I believe it meets all your specs. However, you are right on that none of the programs (that I have found anyway) offer the ideal audio synch capability. Power point does have user defined audio synch (SLIDESHOW>REHEARSE TIMINGS), but I am finding the repeatable precision of the recorded timings is sometimes lacking. I need to do some more experimenting with it.

Comments?

ProShow Gold is at the top of the list. Do a search to find their website.

Cheers

James

James,

Thanks for suggesting ProShow Gold. I downloaded the trial version and am giving it a try. It looks very promising. It says the audio synch can be done manually. Does that mean you have to adjust the duration of each slide by typing in the individual durations, or is there real-time selecting slide transitions (e.g. by hitting "enter") as you listen to the soundtrack?

for precision to 1/100 of a second, with image files of arbitrary sizes/formats, start your music, then run:

animate f1.jpg -delay 31 f2.gif -delay 416 f3.tif -delay 326 f4.jpg -delay 49 f5.jpg -delay 129

ImageMagick runs under

Windows '95 and later ('95, '98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP)

Macintosh (MacOS 9 and 10)

VMS

OS/2

Linux/Unix

http://www.imagemagick.org

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:

 

• 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

 

I found a list of programs on about.com:

 

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/slideshow...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

Try pic2exe from www.wnsoft.com - I posted it earlier but my post seems to have gone top la-la land.

It should do pretty much everything you want. I use it for all my slideshows. Very high quality and very reasonably priced.

M