wlaidlaw Posted April 29, 2007 Share #1 Posted April 29, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) I am looking for recommendations for slideshow creation software for Mac. I am looking for something similar to Wings Platinum for Windows www.AVstumpfl.com | Wings Platinum | Wings Platinum 3 , where I can control the timing of each slide, the transition of each slide and have a visual time line of the sound track, so that I can either stretch, fade, repeat the sound track or change the timing of the slides to coincide with the correct bits of the background music. I am not looking for freeware but for a proper professional bit of software. I have had a look through the suggestions from Apple's own software search facility but have come up with nothing that looks half as good or as easy to use as Wings. I have tried running Wings in Parallels/Windows on my iMac but it is not smooth enough and in any case I want it to run on my G4 1.4 Ghz iBook to make the whole thing more portable. Any suggestions gratefully received. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted April 29, 2007 Posted April 29, 2007 Hi wlaidlaw, Take a look here What slideshow creation software for Mac?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
tashley Posted April 29, 2007 Share #2 Posted April 29, 2007 I am looking for recommendations for slideshow creation software for Mac. I am looking for something similar to Wings Platinum for Windows www.AVstumpfl.com | Wings Platinum | Wings Platinum 3 , where I can control the timing of each slide, the transition of each slide and have a visual time line of the sound track, so that I can either stretch, fade, repeat the sound track or change the timing of the slides to coincide with the correct bits of the background music. I am not looking for freeware but for a proper professional bit of software. I have had a look through the suggestions from Apple's own software search facility but have come up with nothing that looks half as good or as easy to use as Wings. I have tried running Wings in Parallels/Windows on my iMac but it is not smooth enough and in any case I want it to run on my G4 1.4 Ghz iBook to make the whole thing more portable. Any suggestions gratefully received. Wilson Flash and Dreamweaver are the best at this I think - LR is OK for basic stuff. You might try iMovie... Tim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted April 29, 2007 Author Share #3 Posted April 29, 2007 Flash and Dreamweaver are the best at this I think - LR is OK for basic stuff. You might try iMovie... Tim Tim, I had not thought of using Dreamweaver. I have D8 on my iMac and I will look at that tomorrow. The only thing is I have left my Dreamweaver 8 for Dummies book back in the UK. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeadams Posted April 29, 2007 Share #4 Posted April 29, 2007 I just bought SoundSlides for OS X for 35 dollars: http://soundslides.com/ Mike http://www.mikeadams.org Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsmith Posted April 29, 2007 Share #5 Posted April 29, 2007 There is only 1 choice FOTOMAGICO . You can project at HD 1920 x 1080, motion at 60 frames per second. Excellent audio capabilities. No others compare. I-movie is a joke. Look at the example on their web page. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsmith Posted April 29, 2007 Share #6 Posted April 29, 2007 FotoMagico "slide shows" look better than Kodachrome slides projected on a Leica projector ! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted April 30, 2007 Author Share #7 Posted April 30, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) There is only 1 choice FOTOMAGICO . You can project at HD 1920 x 1080, motion at 60 frames per second. Excellent audio capabilities. No others compare. I-movie is a joke. Look at the example on their web page. William, FotoMagico is about the best I have seen for Mac but it looks time consuming to use and seems nothing like as easy as Wings. The visual output is better than Wings and it has a great feature that it imports direct from iTunes without having to convert the tracks to MP3, which I have been doing up to now but the facility to match audio and slides looks a bit clunky, with dialogue boxes. On Wings you have a graph of the music with a graph of the slides below it. You can drag the timeline of each slide as you want to match the audio graph plus drag the timeline of each transition. On the audio track, you can cut and paste on the timeline graph plus control volume and fade on it. I will have a more detailed look at the pro version of FotoMagic next week, as I am travelling quite a bit this week and you only get 5 days on the demo version. Thanks for the suggestion. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stnami Posted April 30, 2007 Share #8 Posted April 30, 2007 Soundslides(internet ready) using it for a while simple and lets one get on with it. Flash/ Dreamweaver a steep learning curve to get it right,can a pain to set up for the net All Soundslides here http://www.artouko.com/imi.html Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted April 30, 2007 Author Share #9 Posted April 30, 2007 Soundslides(internet ready) using it for a while simple and lets one get on with it. Flash/ Dreamweaver a steep learning curve to get it right,can a pain to set up for the net All Soundslides here Untitled Document Steve, I have been using Soundslides but I am looking for something a bit more sophisticated. It also has the pain that it only imports MP3 files and all my audio is in M4a files, which means I have to convert it. Thanks anyway. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stnami Posted April 30, 2007 Share #10 Posted April 30, 2007 Well its Dreamweaver and Flash then nothing really matches that combo, much like Final Cut Pro the ants pants of software Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted April 30, 2007 Share #11 Posted April 30, 2007 Wilson, I've looked into this subject a bit but have almost no hands on experience. In addition to the above mentioned softwares: a) Final Cut Studio is amazingly powerful but v. expensive and complex SlideShowPro seems very interesting Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveEP Posted April 30, 2007 Share #12 Posted April 30, 2007 Another vote for FotoMagico. This is simple and easy to use, and I never even read the user manual (did it come with one?). The one thing I really like about FotoMagico is the way you can control slide to slide progression. Some on a time basis, some requiring a mouse click (or key hit) etc when you need to pause to take about things more. This seems to be missing on so many packages. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted April 30, 2007 Author Share #13 Posted April 30, 2007 Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions. The majority of these slide show programs are designed for websites, which is not what I am really looking for. I will be playing these shows on an XGA (1024 x 768) projector. Many of these programs cannot output in this resolution. In the end, I think it will come down to a choice of Fotomagico or running Wings Platinum in Boot Camp (it does not run well enough in Parallels) and burn a DVD for outside playing on my iBook. Leica M8 output on the projector looks fantastic. The next thing I need to get is a better screen than the old bedsheet and drawing pins I am using at present. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mat_mcdermott Posted April 30, 2007 Share #14 Posted April 30, 2007 I've been using Slideshow Pro. It's inexpensive, though it's not a stand-alone option, you need Flash. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
elgenper Posted May 1, 2007 Share #15 Posted May 1, 2007 FWIW, I use Apple´s own Keynote (part of the iWork suite), and I like it a lot. It is extremely flexible, lots of effects (to use sparingly... ), individual timing (both duration and fade) for each frame, sound, again for each frame if desired, or just as muzak behind it all. Animations, frames, text, you name it... Very professional finish, very smooth on a fast machine. Considering you also get an excellent word processor with desktop publishing potential ("Pages") in the package, it is quite cheap. I think there is a demo version (normally, Apple isn´t much for demos...). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsmith Posted May 1, 2007 Share #16 Posted May 1, 2007 William, FotoMagico is about the best I have seen for Mac but it looks time consuming to use and seems nothing like as easy as Wings. The visual output is better than Wings and it has a great feature that it imports direct from iTunes without having to convert the tracks to MP3, which I have been doing up to now but the facility to match audio and slides looks a bit clunky, with dialogue boxes. On Wings you have a graph of the music with a graph of the slides below it. You can drag the timeline of each slide as you want to match the audio graph plus drag the timeline of each transition. On the audio track, you can cut and paste on the timeline graph plus control volume and fade on it. I will have a more detailed look at the pro version of FotoMagic next week, as I am travelling quite a bit this week and you only get 5 days on the demo version. Thanks for the suggestion. Wilson Wilson, FotoMagico is far from time comsuming. It's so ridiculously easy there's no manual. Just watch their short demo and watch how they built it. In 20 minutes , their nothing else to learn. It's also very, very fast . You can produce a HD slide show in 5 or 10 minutes and "wow" an audience. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsmith Posted May 1, 2007 Share #17 Posted May 1, 2007 FWIW, I use Apple´s own Keynote (part of the iWork suite), and I like it a lot. It is extremely flexible, lots of effects (to use sparingly... ), individual timing (both duration and fade) for each frame, sound, again for each frame if desired, or just as muzak behind it all. Animations, frames, text, you name it... Very professional finish, very smooth on a fast machine. Considering you also get an excellent word processor with desktop publishing potential ("Pages") in the package, it is quite cheap. I think there is a demo version (normally, Apple isn´t much for demos...). Keynote like PowerPoint is flexible, but the output quality is total crap. It's for charts and graphs with pictures added for audiences who don't care about image quality. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsmith Posted May 1, 2007 Share #18 Posted May 1, 2007 Wilson, a) Final Cut Studio is amazingly powerful but v. expensive and complex I tried Final Cut Pro HD , The problem is , with a HD timeline you cannot "run" your show out of your laptop at "best" quality mode. If you want to drag your Quad G5 around it's ok. Or you can render and output your show to a $50,000 Hi Def tape recorder and bring that to your audience. FotoMagico is the only Mac program that will run a Hi Def quality show with pan and zoom and smooth transitions AND run without "stuttering" and a laptop. I spent a year researching this and tried every program on the market. It lets you quickly project a 50mb image file so you can zoom in and out without ever losing quality. If you output DVI "out" to LCD projector, DVI "in", your images with look like 20 foot versions of your cinema display. If you ever saw a 2/14 glass mount film projector, that's what it looks like. Of course you have to have a HD projector. I use Canon Realis series. If you don't care about quality and just use a 1024 x768 projector and input thru the RCA terminal, your images will look like you shot them with a point and shoot digicam.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted May 1, 2007 Share #19 Posted May 1, 2007 What i need is a software program that has lots of actions in it. i work two huge modeling and talent conventions each year and shoot images and project them in front of thousands of people but keynote and powerpoint just don't get the job done they way i like although i have to use them for certain parts of the show . The area for me showing 1000's of images of the weeks shoot to keep folks excoited for 45 minutes before the show actually starts , keynote is just to boring. i need action here , any help would be great. i also need it to be simple because of design time to implement is not there. I get about 2 hours to process the raws and load it up to run . We use barco's and 12x18 foot screens or close to those dimensions. This is a big show with 4k viewing. Fotomagico looks interesting but does it have lots of actions , like dissolve, spin , wipe and many more Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
elgenper Posted May 1, 2007 Share #20 Posted May 1, 2007 Keynote like PowerPoint is flexible, but the output quality is total crap. It's for charts and graphs with pictures added for audiences who don't care about image quality. Ahem, don´t know what you put into it to get crap out..... Since the entire Apple OS is colour managed, and Keynote is no exception, if you import good images with the resolution and tone scale needed, that´s what you´ll see on your monitor. If you import thumbnails and pull them up to full screen, they´ll look like crap. On my calibrated monitor, and using good Digilux 2 or Nikon D200 shots, they look the same in Lightroom and in Keynote, just as they should. Now, if you use the average projector found in a meeting room, it will probably look like something on a cellphone screen, but that would be the same with any software... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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