As announced at our last two meetings we will be including individual CMPG photographer's slide shows to play during the 2012 Photo Exhibition at Airport Plaza.

We will have two "informal" voting nights on submitted slide show creations at our regular meetings:

Wednesday, November 16
Wednesday, November 30

By "informal" we mean that the judging will not be as rigorous in acceptance as photographs chosen for the show. However, you do need to adhere to following guidelines to submit:
1. Total side show duration may not exceed 3 minutes. Any over that time will be disqualified.
2. You may include your name, titles and ending screen, on screen captions and background music.
3. As these presentations will be playing during the exhibition the background music will be kept low. You should also select a music which is suitable for the PG audience at Central Plaza and does not interfere with people viewing our photographs. Blaring rock, hardcore rap, etc. should not be used (and I like Eminem). Instrumental tracks are the safest route.
4. Use a standard file format: AVI, mpg, wmv, etc. No auto run ".exe" files will be accepted as we're joining all these shows together for continuous play.

Should any changes be recommended to your show on our voting nights, you'll need to bring your final, revised presentation to the December 14 meeting - NO LATER.    

Keep in mind that slide shows have transition time between slides, so don't try to cram too many photos into your presentation. For example, mine will be about forty images with a title and closing screen. As my music track is 2:50 each slide will be on screen for under 3 seconds with a 1.5 second fade transition in between. Use your best judgement here.

As accepted slide shows will be joined together into one large playback please keep your slide show's final output file size as small as possible without losing too much in quality. As a general rule of thumb 100MB should be about right for a three-minute presentation.

No doubt there will be some questions so reply to this post. Have fun and show your best work.

I just found out about a free slide show builder PhotoDVD 4.0. Really easy to use, just follow the prompts and persevere. I will admit I stumbled around but finally figured out how to do it, so you can do it, also.

While the name implies it is for burning discs, it has a variety of PC outputs, avi, mpg, etc.

I happened to get it on a disc from Digital Photographer magazine. But I did google it and saw it on the web with a free download for home use.

It is easy to tailor the timing so you can keep the show under the 3:01 minute reject button.

You might find it useful.

Thanks - I'll check it out. I also have DVD Fab 8 whcih is quite good as well.

FYI EVERYONE

I just checked and found that PhotoShop Elements 9 has a very nice slideshow that outputs as WMV format (plays with VLC and MS Media Player).

Fairly simple if you keep poking at it.