Re: [ARSCLIST] Slides and inconvenient media

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/04/07, Tom Fine wrote:

> I have investigated this for filmstrips. I have one I'd love to put
> together for the AES Historical Committee website. Have permissions
> and everything but haven't figured out the best way to do it. What I
> last was learning toward was breaking the audio into "slide 1," "slide
> 2", etc and doing it in Powerpoint, saving the file as a
> standalone-self-running Powerpoint presentation (Powerpoint 2000 and
> beyond, and maybe earlier have this as a Save-As option). This should
> then work on any Windows machine. I suggested that we also offer the
> Powerpoint file for Mac users. Now, the problem is that file size very
> quickly bloats up with decent-quality audio. I decided to bring audio
> down to 192K MP3 since it's just an LP record soundtrack. I need to go
> back to the main WAV file, break it into slide-sized files, get rid of
> the low-frequency frame-change signals and then coordinate with the
> JPG's of the frames. The filmstrip is actually neato. It was part of a
> series "How People Work" for elementary kids about different careers.
> This filmstrip features "Recording Engineer" and centers around a
> Reeves Studios sound-for-video mixer. It's a well-executed and Reeves
> was in that transition time when there was still a lot of tube gear
> next to the early 70's solid-state gear, and this was back when
> commercials were shot and edited on film.
> 
> So what do you ladies and gentlemen think about using PowerPoint for
> this? My thinking was: 1) ability for standalone-self-executing
> version; 2) semi-universal format and 3) ability to wed sound with
> still image on a frame-by-frame basis. Drawbacks are: 1) proprietary
> format, and 2) given the usual performance of Microsoft Office apps,
> no guarantee it will behave or look the same on all computers. We also
> discussed doing this as HTML with javascripts to play the audio but
> some web browsers won't look or operate the same as others and some
> firewalls/security apps would prevent the sound-player from starting.
> The AES server and webmaster setup is not able to host something like
> Flash, so it can't be a server-side app.

If you think about it, a slide show is the same as a titling sequence in
a movie - a sequence of still images each shown for several seconds.

So almost any cheap video editing program should be able to import
individual image files and a WAV file to make a timed slide show. 

As there are so few different frames, compression will be very
effective. I think you might get an AVI file of reasonable size. 100
stills is only as many frames as there are in four seconds of film.

Pretty well any media player on any platform can play an AVI, provided
you use an older codec.


More ambitious software to consider would be Main Actor
http://www.mainconcept.com/site/index.php?id=4

Or if you want to put on an impressive show, Resolume:
http://www.resolume.com/
(which can be downloaded and tested as much as you like - it puts a
watermark on the display until you buy a license)

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx