listersgirl | (no subject)

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Question for you all: if someone wanted to create a slideshow of photos on a Mac (but not through the internet), preferably with the ability to set the length of time that each photo would stay up, what program would you use? What if it were a PC?

I...feel like this is totally obvious, and I'm just missing it completely.

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iMovie. You will have more control over timing.

Oh, excellent - that's what we'd sort of come up with, but since I don't use Macs, I had no idea how it really worked.

If you have exporting questions, I can help. iMovie natively exports quicktime files, but I can talk you through converting them to Divx.

.wmv is not an option, though.

Powerpoint

I second this, especially if it has to run on both (and if to-the-second precision is sufficient). I'm not quite sure what format iMovie can publish, but it might also work.

...that would be the obvious one that I couldn't remember, right there. :)

Just be careful. The problem with using powerpoint is that it has to be played in powerpoint, IIRC. I don't you can export a powerpoint slide-show as anything other than a powerpoint slideshow.

Powerpoint *exists* for Macs, but unless you have Office installed, you don't have it. It doesn't come with the mac, and it isn't free, and I don't know of any standalone players.

Quicktime *is* available for PCs, and it is free. Additionally, files exported by iMovie can be played in the multi-platform VLC player, mplayer, quicktime alternative, etc.

Well, it's going to be one or the other, I'm just not sure what equipment there'll be yet. But this is all very useful.

This ended up sounding defensive, which wasn't what I intended. If you only need to show/project the slideshow, then powerpoint will work fine. But if you need to distribute the slideshow, if people are expected to download the slideshow and watch it, you are better off using a different program. Even transferring the slideshow between computers get tricky, because Powerpoint loses track of the music.

Specifically, I was thinking of this recent discussion: http://community.livejournal.com/vidding/1013504.html

I see that someone suggested WMM. If you export with the right settings, that will look and sound fine.

Macs can play back .wmv files -- there is a free plugin for Quicktime called Flip4Mac that works much better than the old WMP for OSX.

It's just for display. In fact, it's just so that people have something to look at while sound clips (on a different program) are playing. :) But I feel much more competent now.

KEYNOTE! Keynote is the PPoint equivalent for macs. Any post 2003/4 mac should have shipped with it.

I just used it today!

iMovie publishes to most video formats, and gives you precise control over timing.

On WIndows, you can do the same thing in Windows Movie Maker, which came with Win XP.

Aha! I knew there was some random thing on my laptop, but I couldn't find the equivalent on my work computer, but that's because it's still Windows 2000. Thank you.

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