Making slideshows

4 Responses to Making slideshows

1. peter nicolaas velleman says:

   June 1, 2010 at 8:00 am

   good morning; many thanks for the review on proshow gold – i purchased this and what a differnce it has made to compliing a decent dvd – far better than any other i have used !!

   many thanks

   pv

   Reply
   • Allan Jackson says:

     June 1, 2010 at 11:43 am

     You’re most welcome, PV.

     Reply
2. robyn says:

   October 2, 2010 at 12:25 am

   I’ve been doing extensive research on this topic. Basically I’ve come up with the following conclusions – and I know it is a touchy topic, so I stand to be corrected.
   Pro Video/Slide editing programmes:
   1)Avid: steep learning curve, for major productions,but it is the industry standard for a reason. Not for your purposes, but I’m working from the top down.
   2) CS5 Premiere vs Final Cut[Mac Only]: The jury is still out on which is better…very touchy topic. I’d say for the Indy producer/advanced amateur. A steep, but not insurmountable, learning curve.(tuts avail on lynda.com for both. Again, way more advanced than your needs, but FYI.
   Everything else as far as pro video editing goes is not really worth looking at.(Let the wrath begin).
   3) Blender; Lives etc: Semi-Pro. very steep learning curve, but free. I’d rather pay the money if I’m getting into serious editing.
   4) ProShow Gold/ Pro. Amateur, but better than the rest. I think that it is the best amateur slide editing software available.I personally think there is not much difference btwn gold and producer, unless you really need something specifically added (refer to comparison list on their site) – coz like you say, you can get the additional DVDs. The click in,click around,click out for each slide can be tiresome though.I have only just discovered this programme yesterday, so I’m still messing around with it…does it ship with music tracks, coz then I’m buying it.And please tell me I can create my own menu page backgrounds… The randomize settings/styles are a huge time saver.I think with some tweaking, this could be a nifty little programme.
   5) iMovie [Mac only ]Amateur. Saying that though, I know of an ad agency who produce corporate videos with it..so it has possibilities.Nice effects, especially the menu page, but grabbing the clips when placed can be a pain, and the Mac only thing can get annoying.No randomise setting, so it is traditional frame by frame editing. Oh, and you can’t put captions where you want them on the screen -well, I couldn’t anyway. Big note though: comes with garageband, which I cannot find a comparable PC programme for. So unless you want to pay someone else for music, or spend some time making your own,you will need a programme that ships with music already available. Mixcraft is supposed to be comparable to garageband, but the demo download didn’t reveal much and the interface seems far more clunky.
   6) Windows DVD/Movie maker: It’s okay. I like the DVD menu pages of DVD maker. But it needs a lot of tweeking to get the slideshow/clip composit to feel right, and has a powerpoint feeling about it that I just don’t like.iMovie is better, coz the workflow is smoother. But both require time investment when editing – so if I’m going to be spending a good few hours editing anyway, I’d rather then just put in some extra study time to learn CS5 Premier/Final Cut and do it properly, and have the flexibility and wow factors that come with them.
   7)One True Media: Ultra amateur, but very effective.OMG. Great for cutesy montage stuff – which I have had to do lately. Free to share on Youtube etc without premium effects, but only $3 to download with all the effects that you want. I like the interface for wham-bam-throw-togethers,and yes, the styles are cheesy, but it’s perfect for on deadline Pre-Primary School concert montages. Yes,my life is very sad. It has a leg-up on ProShow in that it is one more step away from the traditional Powerpoint type slide show (slide>transition>effect>slide) with its little flash theme animations going on between and on the slides.It is much better than http://www.slide; http://www.animoto is okay but the styles are limited and it’s expensive; .stupeflix themes are too limited and boring.

   If you don’t want the cutesy stuff, then their business offering is quite good: http://www.spotmixer,which has a similar interface. Only downfall is that each theme has a specific number of slides to be used, which can be limiting. And to download is $79 each – ouch. But one can load on a website and pay-per-click, and other interesting payment options. And again, they have a those flash animations which can be intriguing, and the time-saving randomise (how I love you so). It’s promising, and I’m going to revisit it a few more times to try to figure out some applications.
   Powerpoint and online alternatives: V.amateur. I hate powerpoint, but that’s just me. There was this wierd online alternative(presento?)which seemed intriguing, coz the landing page shows all the slides at once, and then the presentation walks along a path that you can set, zooming in and out and flipping around while it goes. I couldn’t get my path to actually work, but maybe someone more patient than I could have fun with it.
   http://www.similarsite.com/ http://www.alternativeto.com (verbs) powerpoint – the alternatives will keep you busy for a while,but I didn’t find anything that seemed fantastic. Videos are always better than slideshows – so I feel that the trick is to make a slideshow as video-like as possible.
   9) http://www.wix (free website builer with mini-pages that can be animated); flypaper and other flash based slide/presentation programmes available on and offline are a good alternative, coz they have those animations which can open up the genre a bit. It’s own little offshoot research project that could keep a person going for a few months. Offshoot of an offshoot: I had the idea of creating a flash website(eg on wix), then downloading it to use in offline presentations…so that it looks like you are clicking through a webpage rather than a slide show. Wix won’t let me but maybe someone knows how to expand on this?

   Now if I could have made this thesis a video/flash/slide/xxx mashup, think how much of your precious time you could have saved.

   Reply
   • Allan Jackson says:

     October 10, 2010 at 8:59 pm

     Nice contribution, thanks.

     Reply