Online slideshow w/ music - free programs? and/or help getting Flash/FTP code online

LittleLisa

Two part question...

Hey grinners! I need your help! I just shot a wedding this weekend and would love to put together a slideshow with music that can be viewed online. Question #1- I'd love to find a free program, but I'm willing to purchase something since I know this is definitely a value added service for future wedding clients. Any suggestions?

A photog friend of mine suggested Show It. I really love the way their slideshows look... with the zooming and fading, etc. This is exactly what I'm looking for actually, but it's $100-200 depending on the features you want. (As an example, I believe this slideshow was made with Show It.) So if you know of a free program that does roughly the same thing please share.

Here comes Question #2...

I'm not sold on Show It, but in case I do decide to go with them I'd love (and appreciate) your help with the "how to". Show It creates your slideshow as Flash. So my question is how do I get it online? I downloaded the trial version and here are the instructions:

Upload the folder shown (side note: I have created the folder and know where it is on my computer) to your webserver’s public HTML folder to view the show online. The entire show folder should be uploaded and the name of the folder should be used as the link to the show.

For instance, if I have a project named show and I upload that folder to my server’s html documents folder at ftp.mysite.com, I should be able to view the show at http://www.mysite.com/show/

For more info on FTP and web servers, click below. (Which takes you here).

So I guess I need to know: where do I find my webserver’s public HTML folder? I have a domain name which I purchased thru godaddy. My domain name has forwarding set up to point to my smugmug pro site. The tutorial says I need an FTP program. Is that something that would be on my computer or something I can download? I'm stuck at this step.

Thanks so much for the help!
Lisa

urbanaries

Lisa, I played with ShowIt last night for the first time and am looking forward to hearing folks' responses! I have an FTP thru Yahoo! but it is forwarded to my smugmug domain.

LittleLisa

urbanaries wrote:

Lisa, I played with ShowIt last night for the first time and am looking forward to hearing folks' responses! I have an FTP thru Yahoo! but it is forwarded to my smugmug domain.

ShowIt is really cool, my biggest beef is that you can't burn slideshows to DVD or CD, BUT (in true David Jay style) you can buy them individually from him at $49 a pop. WTH!!??

I know! I thought that was just crazy! I mean I'm the one that's supposed to be making the mark-up on a show I create right? That's not too much to ask. That's one of the major reasons I'd like to find another option.

So do you think I should scope out godaddy to see if they have an FTP program?

RustingInPeace

Try the demo thru Photodex
I have been using photodex for a while and it is easy and affordable. It burns CDs, DVDs, ect.

BRATCH

I've never had an opportunity to try Show It, but I know that slideshows can be made with Apple's Keynote and I would assume the same can be done with Microsoft's Powerpoint.

I know with Keynote you can make slideshows in a couple of different ways. The best part about it is that all you do is make a presentation and then you can export it as a slideshow for web purposes. It generates all of your slides, html code and even any buttons you would like.

In order to get Keynote you have to buy iWork for $80, but you get Pages and Numbers with it as well which basically makes it the same as MS Office without the $300 price tag.

Of course if you aren't using a Mac this whole thing is a little useless, but I would say that Powerpoint has got to do the same thing.

On your second part about hoping there are "how-to" videos or information on how to put them online, Keynote can also export as an interactive Quicktime movie so all you would have to do upload the file and put a link online.

Hope that helps a bit,

BRATCH

LittleLisa wrote:

Two part question...

Hey grinners! I need your help! I just shot a wedding this weekend and would love to put together a slideshow with music that can be viewed online. Question #1- I'd love to find a free program, but I'm willing to purchase something since I know this is definitely a value added service for future wedding clients. Any suggestions?

A photog friend of mine suggested Show It. I really love the way their slideshows look... with the zooming and fading, etc. This is exactly what I'm looking for actually, but it's $100-200 depending on the features you want. (As an example, I believe this slideshow was made with Show It.) So if you know of a free program that does roughly the same thing please share.

Here comes Question #2...

I'm not sold on Show It, but in case I do decide to go with them I'd love (and appreciate) your help with the "how to". Show It creates your slideshow as Flash. So my question is how do I get it online? I downloaded the trial version and here are the instructions:

Upload the folder shown (side note: I have created the folder and know where it is on my computer) to your webserver’s public HTML folder to view the show online. The entire show folder should be uploaded and the name of the folder should be used as the link to the show.

For instance, if I have a project named show and I upload that folder to my server’s html documents folder at ftp.mysite.com, I should be able to view the show at http://www.mysite.com/show/

For more info on FTP and web servers, click below. (Which takes you here).

So I guess I need to know: where do I find my webserver’s public HTML folder? I have a domain name which I purchased thru godaddy. My domain name has forwarding set up to point to my smugmug pro site. The tutorial says I need an FTP program. Is that something that would be on my computer or something I can download? I'm stuck at this step.

Thanks so much for the help!
Lisa

LittleLisa

RustingInPeace wrote:

I have been using photodex for a while and it is easy and affordable. It burns CDs, DVDs, ect.

Thanks Rusting! I checked that out. That is definitely what I'm looking for! Now I just need to come up with some moula.

BRATCH wrote:

I've never had an opportunity to try Show It, but I know that slideshows can be made with Apple's Keynote and I would assume the same can be done with Microsoft's Powerpoint.

I know with Keynote you can make slideshows in a couple of different ways. The best part about it is that all you do is make a presentation and then you can export it as a slideshow for web purposes. It generates all of your slides, html code and even any buttons you would like.

In order to get Keynote you have to buy iWork for $80, but you get Pages and Numbers with it as well which basically makes it the same as MS Office without the $300 price tag.

Of course if you aren't using a Mac this whole thing is a little useless, but I would say that Powerpoint has got to do the same thing.

Thanks Bratch. I'm working on a (gasp!) PC with Windows Vista. But that's helpful for any of you Mac folks who might also be watching.

BRATCH wrote:

On your second part about hoping there are "how-to" videos or information on how to put them online, Keynote can also export as an interactive Quicktime movie so all you would have to do upload the file and put a link online. BRATCH

That's where I'm stuck. Everywhere just says "upload the file". How do I do that? Where do I upload to? What program do I use? I think I just need to know where to find and/or get an FTP program. Is it downloadable? Is it an online tool? Can I do this somewhere through godaddy, my website domain name host? Is there somewhere within my smugmug site that I can upload these files to?

jtfrazer

ProShow
Hi,

I'm a long-time user of Photodex's products. I started with ProShow Gold and moved up to ProShow Producer. It has been buggy at times but it produces great results. If you decide to go that way you might want to join this forum:

http://www.proshowenthusiasts.com/

There are lots of helpful folks there.

LittleLisa

jtfrazer wrote:

Hi,

I'm a long-time user of Photodex's products. I started with ProShow Gold and moved up to ProShow Producer. It has been buggy at times but it produces great results. If you decide to go that way you might want to join this forum:

http://www.proshowenthusiasts.com/

There are lots of helpful folks there.

Thanks Jim! I appreciate the feedback and the link to the forum! Gotta love forums. Seriously. What did people do before forums?

dangin

if you want a basic program that has a pretty good free version as well, i suggest Flash Slideshow Maker. it creates flash (.swf) files. it's quick, EASY, and if you're in a pinch, works wonderfully. i shoot weddings and many of my clients are fairly young and have myspace pages. i tell them to pick their favorite 10 images from the wedding and i throw a little slideshow together for them to post on their myspace pages. it's basically free advertising for me.

urbanaries

dangin wrote:

if you want a basic program that has a pretty good free version as well, i suggest Flash Slideshow Maker. it creates flash (.swf) files. it's quick, EASY, and if you're in a pinch, works wonderfully. i shoot weddings and many of my clients are fairly young and have myspace pages. i tell them to pick their favorite 10 images from the wedding and i throw a little slideshow together for them to post on their myspace pages. it's basically free advertising for me.

Whoa! this looks very promising. Very reasonable ($39) full version, and export to DVD supported as well as .swf files.

thanks so much for posting this! I have been looking for a one size fits all software (fast slideshows at the wedding itself, upload slideshows in my portfolio section of my site, AND burn long-running DVD slideshows to sell directly to clients!!!) I had a tall order but I think I may have found it!


(The one thing i can't seem to find is the zoom pan transition, I see that effect in a sample slideshow but not the trial version interface. )

Thanks!
Lynne

ShepsMom

Slideshow is a great idea. Is there anything available for Mac without arm and leg pricing?

ouigiman

jtfrazer wrote:

Hi,

I'm a long-time user of Photodex's products. I started with ProShow Gold and moved up to ProShow Producer. It has been buggy at times but it produces great results. If you decide to go that way you might want to join this forum:

http://www.proshowenthusiasts.com/

There are lots of helpful folks there.

I am with Jim on this one - I too started out with proshow gold and last year, upgraded to producer. I just love the added features producer offers (but yes - much more money). I had been using gold for over 3 years with great success (apart from the bugs from time to time).

Luigi

RustingInPeace

jtfrazer wrote:

Hi,

I'm a long-time user of Photodex's products. I started with ProShow Gold and moved up to ProShow Producer. It has been buggy at times but it produces great results. If you decide to go that way you might want to join this forum:

http://www.proshowenthusiasts.com/

There are lots of helpful folks there.

That forum ROCKS!

urbanaries

I've been eating, breathing sleeping slideshows for the past week (thanks everyone for all the great links!), and wanted to share an AWESOME stock sound recording website I just came across...

http://www.stock20.com/

HTH!!!

ian408

ShepsMom wrote:

Slideshow is a great idea. Is there anything available for Mac without arm and leg pricing?

iPhoto. Check out the Ken Burns effect

ShepsMom

Thanks Ian, i have IPhoto here, i've never used it, so this will give me a reason to spend more sleepless nights!

LittleLisa

I just wanted to share that I got a vote from a photog friend of mine for Proshow Gold to make DVD slideshows. It's just $70 and a step down from Producer (@ $250). He said he didn't bother with Producer because most of the features are really advanced. He didn't think that the difference was really worth it for him. Just his $.02.

I still haven't made up my mind what I'm going to do.

I did find a fun free little online program (slide.com) to put together a quick slideshow for a client for their myspace. I just wanted to get them a sneak peek of their pictures and allow them to share it with friends and family on their myspace sites. I figure it's fun for them and free advertising for me!

Here's the slideshow I put together for them. It's not fancy. Just for fun. The bride was really excited about it.

ShepsMom

Lisa, this is pretty cute, Can it be played at full screen? I'm doing Sweet 16 birthday photoshoot, and i'm sure she has MySpace somewhere . What teen doesn't? I think she might like the idea for her page. Can this slide be saved, or is it only viewable on their website?

LittleLisa

ShepsMom wrote:

Lisa, this is pretty cute, Can it be played at full screen? I'm doing Sweet 16 birthday photoshoot, and i'm sure she has MySpace somewhere . What teen doesn't? I think she might like the idea for her page. Can this slide be saved, or is it only viewable on their website?

I don't think it can be viewed full screen (as far as I can tell). I'm sure your Sweet 16'er would love it! I'm going to start offering these as part of my packages for all of my senior photo shoots. I don't think it can be saved. You can either share it right from slide.com via email or copy the code that the site generates and either post it on your own myspace/facebook/blog/what-have-you or email the code to your client for them to post on their own site.

One red flag I have is that once you add your images to slide.com others can click on the slideshow and it brings them to a gallery of the images which are not right-click protected. So you probably want to be sure to watermark your images before adding them, which I neglected to do this time. I sent out the code to my client before I realized that. Oops.

ShepsMom

Ohhh, bummer, i see how it works. Got to be careful with that. I'll see what i can work out. Thanks for the info!

jh4wvu

FYI...any of the flash slideshows mentioned here will allow anyone to access your images...

a) you just need the path to the xml file (which you can get by looking at the source code) containing the paths to the images b) if you use Safari, the image links show up in the activity log.

So if you are concerned with people grabbing the images then you might want to consider a large watermark across the image and of course use a very low quality photo in the show.

I actually have purchased SlideshowPro but haven't really used it because of these reasons...

Just my 2 cents.

Chris

ShepsMom wrote:

Ohhh, bummer, i see how it works. Got to be careful with that. I'll see what i can work out. Thanks for the info!

kapalua

Let me preface this by saying I have no affiliation with Showit nor do I know David Jay...

I think Showitweb is the best slideshow software for posting slideshows on the web. It is fast, easy to use, and produces stunning slideshows. However, the technology requirements for creating DVD slideshows is different, which is why I also recommend Talafoto for DVD slideshows.

$200 is an incredibly tiny investment for the return you get by posting stunning slideshows. I know that links to my slideshows fly all around the internet. Definitely worth it.

pigeon

Has anyone tried SoundSlides? http://soundslides.com/
From what I understand, many newsrooms use it for their audio slideshows.
I've downloaded a free trial version, and it seems VERY easy to use.

I've used Microsoft's free Photostory - and that's simple as well. Not sure if it has all the bells and whistles that you'd want, but here's the link:
http://www.updatexp.com/microsoft-photo-story-3.html

-teresa

stamina

<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/wings.gif&quot; border="0" alt="" > Pigeon/Teresa,
How did you get your audio slideshow onto your smugmug website?

I emailed smugmug help and they referred me to dgrin. I registered on dgrin and did a search for "soundslide." That's how I saw your post (there were only two results for the search word I used "soundslide"). I visited your website and saw you had an audio slideshow working. Is it a soundslide? Can you point me in the right direction, as I would like to get my own soundlides up and running on my own website.

Smugmug help, said:
if there is a embeddable code for you to copy, just put it in a caption or album description, in between html tags.

<html>
(soundslide code here)
</html>

I taught myself how to make my own soundslides, but I'm not familiar with how to get it onto my smugmug website. I was wondering if you or someone might know.

Thank you.

stamina

I am trying to help myself (stamina). I went clicked on Smugmug Tutorials, the Homepage flash slideshow link, and I'm reading what smugmug has said, something about a biobox...

stamina

Yes,
I did it by myself, continueing my own dgrin thread. I went to the dgrin TUTORIALS
SMUGMUG TUTORIALS
SMUGMUG CUSTOMIZATION
HOME PAGE FLASH SLIDESHOW

and I followed the directions. And I got it working. Well, by working, I mean it is playing an automatic still picture slideshow without sound, where my biobox used to be. Pretty amazing, just from copying and pasting text into different fields, especially since this is my first time doing this sort of thing.

However, it is not the "soundslide" audio slideshow that I'd made, that I would like to be there, though. I haven't figured how to get my "soundslide" url link there yet.

what to do next?

stamina

continueing...

I would need to copy/paste the embeddable code (whatever that is) into any one of my galleries description fields? And then, copy/paste the html tags mentioned in the prior posts..., before and after the code...

Am I getting close?

pigeon

Hey there...
Not sure that I can help you. The part of my web site that has the soundslides is *not* part of SmugMug... it's actually hosted elsewhere. I have the 2 sites integrated so that you can't tell they are separate.

So, I'm not sure if/how you can get soundslides up on SmugMug's site - maybe someone with that experience can chime in?

-teresa

stamina wrote:

continueing...

I would need to copy/paste the embeddable code (whatever that is) into any one of my galleries description fields? And then, copy/paste the html tags mentioned in the prior posts..., before and after the code...

Am I getting close?

stamina

:ivar that's ok.

I've decided that maybe it's not necessary to have the soundslide hosted on smugmug right now. If someone knows where to find the "code" from being a user of soundslides, that would be helpful for me to know. And if someone knows whereabouts in a smugmug website, to post this "code", that would be helpful.

For now, I've decided to just paste my link to the soundslides I make, into the galleries description field. Visitors can click on the link, and it will take them to the soundslide (as hosted by another website).

stamina

Following dgrin's tutorials, I was able to get a slideshow running in my biobox. And I was able to put my own header on my website. It's a curious thing, how you can tell the computer what to do with codes? Thanks, dgrinners!

greenngold1

Slideshows with music
I may not answer your question correctly but I'm going to give it a try. At a minimum I will be offering a couple of examples of what CAN be done with slideshows on Smugmug.

First, I have been doing slideshows for a long time using Adobe Photoshop Elements wuth great success. When they are complete with music I can save them as windows media files which Smugmug will accept. I can then upload them into a galley of my choice, including making it the ONLY item in the gallery. I then "feature" that gallery & it works well for playback.

Also, I found a site that will produce very unique slideshows with amazing transitions & can include music. It has a $30 PER YEAR membership that allows you to produce UNLIMITED shows with an option to convert them to Hi-res HD shows for an additional $5 per show. Dirt cheap! It is called ANIMOTO.COM and if you like it please tell them greenngold1@cox.net sent you there. I hope this helps make things easier for you. BTW, you are welcome to check out a couple I have loaded on my site, "jbauerphotography.com", a Smugmug Pro site. Good Luck.