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Help Me Horrify My Loved Ones with a Slide Show

witch_iewitch_ie Registered User regular
edited November 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
My family is coming to visit for Thanksgiving and I wanted to take some time during their visit (no more than an hour) to show them the pictures from my recent trip abroad. Essentially, I want to create this on my computer and then play it on either our PS3 or 360. What I want to know is what type of format do I need to use to do this? It would be great if it could display captions with the pictures and play music too, but those would just be perks.

I'm running Window's Vista and have all the basic programs that comes with as well as Microsoft Office for Home and Students. I would prefer not to buy additional software to do this if at all possible.

witch_ie on

Posts

  • RaereRaere Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Powerpoint?

    Raere on
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  • witch_iewitch_ie Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Powerpoint would be fine...will that run on the 360 or PS3 though?

    witch_ie on
  • edited November 2008
    witch_ie wrote: »
    Powerpoint would be fine...will that run on the 360 or PS3 though?

    Does anyone know if you can turn powerpoints into video? Something I've never tried to look into before but might be possible. Otherwise another option is putting all the pics onto a flash drive in a folder and then pop in a burned cd or another usb drive and play the music from there. Doesn't solve the caption problem though, but its a simple workaround. Otherwise you could try the built in windows move maker.

    BlackbeardonGuitar on
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  • TachTach Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Well, you could just stream your pics directly to the 360- it has a built in slideshow feature. I watch video and listen to music the same way.

    Tach on
  • witch_iewitch_ie Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    What format would I need to use to stream the pics directly and how would I do that connection wise? I will be combining pics from multiple cameras, which I was just planning on putting together on my computer in whichever format I needed for the consoles.

    witch_ie on
  • CyvrosCyvros Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Does anyone know if you can turn powerpoints into video?

    I thought you could, but I just checked and you can't. You can save it as a GIF, but that's rather useless. There might be some add-on you can get to do this, though.
    Otherwise you could try the built in windows move maker.

    Movie Maker might be an easier option than PowerPoint. Just don't clog the show up with dizzyingly unnecessary and fantastically confusing transition effects (same goes for PowerPoint, really). :P

    Cyvros on
  • DeathPrawnDeathPrawn Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    The absolute simplest way is to copy your pictures onto a USB thumb drive, plug it into your 360, and use the built-in slideshow feature. It won't let you do stuff like captions, but it'll work with absolutely zero prep time. I believe it will allow you to have music playing in the background.

    DeathPrawn on
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  • PheezerPheezer Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited November 2008
    DeathPrawn wrote: »
    The absolute simplest way is to copy your pictures onto a USB thumb drive, plug it into your 360, and use the built-in slideshow feature. It won't let you do stuff like captions, but it'll work with absolutely zero prep time. I believe it will allow you to have music playing in the background.

    This is what I would recommend, except to have the music separate and playing on an iPod or CD player connected to your home theatre receiver. That way if someone wants to fuck with the music they can do that without breaking anything else or getting confused by horrifying technologies. I'm thinking about your retarded aunt or whatever here, everyone has at least one.

    Pheezer on
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  • Kate of LokysKate of Lokys Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Pheezer wrote: »
    DeathPrawn wrote: »
    The absolute simplest way is to copy your pictures onto a USB thumb drive, plug it into your 360, and use the built-in slideshow feature. It won't let you do stuff like captions, but it'll work with absolutely zero prep time. I believe it will allow you to have music playing in the background.

    This is what I would recommend, except to have the music separate and playing on an iPod or CD player connected to your home theatre receiver. That way if someone wants to fuck with the music they can do that without breaking anything else or getting confused by horrifying technologies. I'm thinking about your retarded aunt or whatever here, everyone has at least one.
    Also, you can still have captions if you do things this way, it'll just take a bit more work. I was tasked with doing a slideshow for my sister's bridal shower/wedding reception, and I just used Photoshop to build up a nice little template that looked like a page out of a photo album (complete with a textured, slightly patterned background, a thin black frame around the photo opening, and even four little white triangles at the corners). Then I pasted a photo into it, resized it so it fit in the opening, used a handwritten-style font to scribble a caption at the bottom, and saved it with a sequential filename - [siblingname]001.jpg, etc.

    It didn't take me long at all to do my sister's - maybe a few hours all told, including scanning some stuff in - but the guests thought it was the prettiest, nicest thing ever. If you have the time to spare, I highly recommend putting the bit of extra effort in.

    Kate of Lokys on
  • unilateralunilateral Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Cyvros wrote: »
    Does anyone know if you can turn powerpoints into video?

    I thought you could, but I just checked and you can't. You can save it as a GIF, but that's rather useless. There might be some add-on you can get to do this, though.

    Not that you will probably want to spend $100 on it, but there is a program called Wondershare DVD Presenter which will convert your powerpoints into video and then you can burn them to DVD. I grabbed it off giveaway of the day about a year ago. I haven't had a chance to use it yet (more like a reason), but the interface looks nice!

    unilateral on
  • CyvrosCyvros Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    unilateral wrote: »
    Not that you will probably want to spend $100 on it, but there is a program called Wondershare DVD Presenter which will convert your powerpoints into video and then you can burn them to DVD. I grabbed it off giveaway of the day about a year ago. I haven't had a chance to use it yet (more like a reason), but the interface looks nice!
    Sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

    Cyvros on
  • Joe ChemoJoe Chemo Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    Actually, converting your powerpoint presentation to video may be easier than you might think. There are a number of websites that host presentations, and some that convert to video, although only one with sound that I can think of.

    That would be AuthorStream. When you host it can output to .mp4. I remember that the sound only works if you insert sound a particular way, so be sure to read the fine print.



    I recently had to make a slideshow for a funeral -- I ended up using a desktop screencapture program to record myself playing the slideshow, and then I had to do some editing and converting to get it into the right format and added a soundtrack before I burned it to dvd to play at the funeral. I did this with 100% OSS software on my linux comp, so if you want suggestions on free tools for making videos, let me know. It was a pretty roundabout way of doing things, but it wasn't hard.

    Joe Chemo on
  • EverywhereasignEverywhereasign Registered User regular
    edited November 2008
    I'm seconding (thirding?) the USB drive with the pics on it. I've done similar things using iDVD and you will have your Great Aunt Sally try to mess with it. Simple is good here.

    Having given loads of "This is our trip to <blank>" presentations, I'd try to make it less then an hour unless the family is really really interested in what you did, many people get bored of these things quickly. I tend to do two types. One is picking out the really really cool shots, and grouping them by theme. All the underwater ones together, all the group shots, all the scenery. This tends to keep it shorter and stop the trend of having 15 sunset pictures scattered throughout.

    The other way is for the people who really care about the trip and may be interested in doing something similar. Then I usually take the same photos as before, put them in chronological order, and then tie them together with photos that explain more detail of where I was, rather then what I saw.

    Also make sure you have the wireless controller in your hand and you can quickly pause and back up. People may want more detail for some photos then your timing allows.

    Everywhereasign on
    "What are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the goddamn Batman!"
  • BasarBasar IstanbulRegistered User regular
    edited November 2008
    http://animoto.com/

    Solution to all your slideshow problems.

    Glad to help :)

    Basar on
    i live in a country with a batshit crazy president and no, english is not my first language

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