"Open Image Sequence" is handy for quick and dirty slideshows, but you're right, it's a nightmare when you have a mixture of vert and horz pictures. As I recall (I haven't used it for a while since I discovered Totally Hip's LiveSlideShow and Apple's iPhoto), QuickTime sets the frame dimensions based on the first image in the sequence. In the case of your show, that works out to be 188 x 250 pixels. So then everything else gets squeezed into that container.

Generally speaking, I don't recommend using Open Image Sequence for serious slideshow making. Take a look at Totally Hip's software. It's great for preparing slideshows for the Web. My only beef is that after you export to QuickTime from LiveSlideShow, you have to open "Get Movie Properties" and turn off the "autoplay" (unless you like it on) and turn on the "Movie Controller" unless you don't want it visible.

I hope this helps ....

Totally helps! Thanks Derrick. And I guess that if I'm spending this much time looking for the right solution I must be 'serious'. I've got the demo of Live Slide Show downloaded and will see what it can do...and we'll have to include something of a soundtrack just to put it through it's paces. I have some ideas I've been playing around with for that, so hopefully it won't be too hard.

And Mr. Story graciously also left a comment on the Automatic Slide Show version of the Balloon parade (generated by Digital Photo Slide Show - Web Slide Show feature),

"Digital Photo Web Slide Show is pretty nice stuff. It played well on my OS X laptop with Chimera 0.6 (after I approved it opening a "pop up") and IE 5. The HTML and JavaScript look pretty straightforward, so you can easily customize the appearance of your page."

This helps to keep me focused on putting together a photo-only solution (no audio / video needed) with a Webshots-like interface, hopefully using the Digital Slide Show templates. I pursued this a bit by emailing the software's author a month or two ago without a response, so I'll try again to see how editable the templates are (looks like very) and what the possibilities of putting together a template that supports both a thumbnail view and a automated / manual slide show view...like Webshots.

Enough already on the slide show stuff VO.

P.S. Interesting (for probably me only) to see that Derrick posted the comments using a link to Mac Dev Center as his website and derrick@oreilly.com as his email. When I asked for help, I did so to both his work and other-work (?). I wondered which Derrick was going to answer. He used his work handles, so to speak. The interest I have is in balancing, for instance, the work I do on behalf of the radio station (who so wonderfully allows me to experiment with my show and the work I do in preparation for it and in addition to it (like posting clips, slideshows, addition reviews of music) that I present on The New Jazz Thing website. An example to point out and ponder is seen in the Digital Photography Pocket Guide that Derrick wrote. It is linked to and sold on the O'Reilly store...I've seen links to it on stories about photography on O'Reilly. But Derrick links to the book on Amazon.com from his Story Photography site. In the comments, if he had linked to the Story Photography site, he might have a chance at enticing someone to buy the book from Amazon, where he probably is an affiliate and gets a cut. Or someone might get interested in his photography services. But he linked to the O'Reilly site and used O'Reilly email. Where do you draw the line? Does O'Reilly have a policy that outlines when you use what? Probably and it's just probably come common sense that Derrick uses that if he's contacted at all using his O'Reilly connection, he has to use those handles.

See, I told you I was probably the only one interested.

P.S.S. That Digital Photography Pocket Guide looks pretty readable. Wonder if I can get an autographed copy?!
11:55:35 AM    comment []  Google It!  

Continuing the pursuit of the right photo slide-show solution(first act of the multi-media weblog pursuit). I have a couple other VO Webshot albums...I know a bit about this. This is a pretty close approximation of the photo album interface I'd like, maybe with a different front page. It's got a page of thumbnails, so you can browse quickly and select an individual photo if you want. It's got a link to View Slideshow (here's the parade slideshow), which is very cool, allowing you to individually go back / forth or automatically have it start the slideshow (starting right at the picture you are viewing, if desired). The other thing I like about Webshots is the ability to download the slideshow for use as a rotating screen saver and for rotating wall paper (at least on Windows). The alternate front page for the album would probably be a title picture with title and description and links to the thumbnails and to start the slideshow. A downer on the Webshots is that it is really limited to pictures and text, adding any video or sounds or soundtrack is not readily available.

What would really be cool would be if the alternate front page would be a blog post, like this one, where you could just start viewing the pictures right in the blog post or start the slideshow and it would view right in the blog post. I think this might be asking a bit much right now, but I'll keep looking.
11:02:50 AM    comment []  Google It!