What software?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark Hamilton on February 3, 2008 at 5:16pm

First off, what a great looking site. The easiest audio slideshows tool is SoundSlides -- you have to prep the audio in a separate sound editor (such as Audacity), which means you can have as many tracks as you want. Once the photos and audio are married in Soundslides, you have a control over transitions, titling, timing, etc. The learning curve is shallow and the resulting file is a .swf. (http://www.soundslides.com/)

Permalink Reply by Scott Capper on February 4, 2008 at 5:01pm

Thanks Mark. This was my first option. Unfortunately our app developers at swissinfo nixed the idea - too hard to integrate was their answer. If it was just me, Id' go with Soundslides immediately. As it's not just me...

So any other suggestions welcome (but I will keep this one and try and defeat software guys - content shall rule the day!)

Permalink Reply by Tom Priddy on February 5, 2008 at 2:36pm

Scott,

Oh, I see . . . the software guys don't want to do a little extra work once to avoid having you do a lot of extra work every week . . . Hmmm. Anyway, I agree with Mark: Soundslides is the way to go. Plenty of sites integrate these shows into their flow. I'm sure you can get some advice from the forums at soundslides.com. There are a lot of people there who have fully integrated Soundslides into their sites. Good luck.

Permalink Reply by P Cardilla on June 21, 2008 at 2:25am

I am a developer and I have been working on integrating SoundSlides with our web system. Specifically I am interested in generating the data dynamically from a database. I've been working at it for about a day and I have had some success quickly. Right now my issue is that the "Demo" screen precedes the presentation even though it was created with a registered version (honest).

I think I have determined the problem to be a value being passed in from the xml file. I just haven't figured out how that value is calculated so I can't generate a valid one.

But like I said, I've only really been working on it for a day.

You can see a demo if you go to http://www.scsextra.com/pcss/index.php?id=17

That is a slide show being populated dynamically as readers contribute photos through an online form.

Permalink Reply by John DeMings on September 7, 2008 at 6:46pm

I can't get the .swf file past my website developers either, but I can save Soundslides as a QuickTime movie and load that. There's a trade-off: saving as QT requires a plug-in and loses the Ken Burns motion and any added text in the bottom third of the frame.

Permalink Reply by Don Himsel on September 8, 2008 at 8:45am

Yes, that's a problem I've encountered as well. We'll be moving to producing our slideshows in Final Cut Pro soon. Have you tried a Flash conversion?

Permalink Reply by John DeMings on September 9, 2008 at 3:43pm

not yet, Don. It seems we've a new website coming down the pike with unknown features. (Why don't they spend more time asking what's needed?) I've mentioned some of the issues and now i'm hoping for improvement.

Permalink Reply by Don Himsel on February 6, 2008 at 10:24am

I've used Soundslides too. Seems to be the industry standard. You could build in Flash. I've played around with ProShow Gold but haven't applied it to projects.

Permalink Reply by Joe Klementovich on February 6, 2008 at 3:00pm

I've worked with soundslides and the downside is that you have to have your soundtrack spot on and work the photos around it. Give swishmax a try it's cheap and easy to figure out so you can be productive. You can import video, sound, images and put text over all of it.