[ale] NewbieQ on OO/Impress for photo slide shows

[aaron]

A few thoughts to add to robert's....

On 2008, Dec, 02, , at 8:31 PM, Robert Reese~ wrote:
>> ALErs -
>>
>> With no prior experience I'm using OpenOffice 'Impress' to package
>> about 100 digital photos as a slide show. Since the files are good
>> quality photos, the resulting presentation is getting _BBEEEGGGG_
>> (c.250MBy). The problem: it's become glacially slow to work on!
>
> Wow, I'm kinda impressed it hasn't crashed yet; not that anything  
> is wrong with
> OOo or Impress, but the resources being used on a file that big is  
> a lot.

Depending on how "gee wiz" you want the transitions between slides
to be, OOo Impress may not be the best approach (other suggestions
below).

>> What is a good image size/resolution for JPEG slides to be viewed
>> on computer display - say 1680x1050 (WSXGA) or smaller? Would the
>> answer be very different for a typical digital projector (bearing
>> in mind the viewing distance would be considerably larger and
>> having no idea of the usual projector's resolution)?
>
> 1024x768 landscape, and flip that for portrait.  It won't fill the  
> monitor you
> mentioned, but few people have that size.  As for the output, I'd  
> recommend a
> .jpg at 85% (usually indicated as "15" for the quality).
>
> Unfortunately, older computers are still going to have issues with  
> 100 1024x768
> files packed together under Impress.
>
> However, have you considered alternatives to using Impress for  
> making a
> slideshow?  There are a whole slew of free and easy Lightbox-based  
> or MooTools
> based solutions out there.... so easy in some cases as to simply  
> drop a file or
> three into a folder full of photos and sending out a link, or, as  
> you indicate
> later, burn to a disk.  A benefit of that is your autorun need only  
> feed the
> default browser an html page.... no software to install or mistrust.

What Robert said, with the note that the most likely projector  
resolution
will also be 1024x768, which is about 25% better than the standard video
resolution which most projectors also support.

Also, not sure of the batch export options with Impress since I haven't
used it much, but it may be possible to organize the images there then
export them (in the size reduced format?) with numeric file names in the
correct order.

Not a Linux solution, but if you can get your files to a Mac with  
iDVD, the
program has a facility for automatically making a video slide show  
that can
even be automatically timed to an audio track.  You can have it save the
original, full quality images on the disk in addition to the video DVD
slide show, so it makes a hybrid Video / DATA DVD.  I believe the  
companion
iPhoto integrates so that you could use it to organize the slide show  
order.

>> Is there some automatic way to have the slides imported (or
>> alternatively saved) in a reduced format, or should I use some
>> other tool like GIMP or ImageMagick to resize them? (They aren't
>> all the same size due to some cropping and some images coming from
>> different cameras.)
>
> I can't answer that other than to suggest sorting by size into  
> different
> directories and running individually tailored resizing scripts on  
> each of the
> directories.  I'd think ImageMagik to be the best solution, but I  
> really don't
> know either well enough.

Yes... ImageMagik is probably the best solution for batch image  
processing and
format conversions. I use it frequently on my Mac's (thanks to Fink!).

>> If most users have Ms 'PoserPoint' to view the slides, should I
>> expect major problems with a presentation exported from OpenOffice
>> as '*.ppt'?
>
> I don't think so, but you never can be sure... even people with PPT  
> have
> problems with other PPT users!   But you'll have less problems with  
> a solution
> as mentioned above.


TBOMK, most of the cross compatibility issues between Impress and  
PoserPunt are
with fonts and minor formating shifts, most of which can be avoided  
by choosing
the True Type fonts from the standard M$ list that are commonly  
installed on
Linux platforms as well.  Straight photo presentations should transport
transparently.

>> I was targeting CD and planning to include the original photo files
>> in a separate directory. (There would be space.) DVD would be OK if
>> there were advantages to the medium or some especially handy
>> packaging tool available.

As noted above, of you can get to a Mac with iDVD...

peace
aaron

>
> If you go the PPT/Impress route you will need to make sure you have  
> a viewer on
> the CD/DVD for people to install.  Furthermore, you will have to  
> make it easy to
> do so as well as ensure people trust your disk.  And what about Mac  
> users?  With
> a browser-based system you can simply tell the machine to fire up  
> the default
> browser and load the page/s.  ;c)
>
>
> NOW, if you decide to continue using Impress/OOo, do keep in mind  
> that you can
> export to HTML which uses meta-refresh instead of Javascript to  
> advance to the
> next slide.  However, I don't know if all browsers on all systems  
> support the
> meta-refresh method locally.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Robert~
>
> P.S.: Congrats on  your progress and your venture into Impress and  
> OOo!!
>
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