Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Home brewed advertising (what software to use?)

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-11-2010, 05:11 PM:

While I remain totally against filmed advertising, I've had a few inquiries from local businesses about pre-show slide type ads. But this town is too small for one of the turn-key advertising companies to come in here and get satisfying (for them) results, so I'm thinking of starting my own program. Any recommendations from any of you guys on what kind of software etc. to use to accomplish this? I'm already fairly good with Photoshop, inDesign and a few other things.

Posted by Jarret Chessell (Member # 5077) on 09-13-2010, 01:32 PM:

Powerpoint is likely your best bet. You can download a free stand alone viewer for the PC you want to run the slides off of. You'll be able to find a lot of tutorials online to improve your presentation as well.
Putting your photoshop skills to use and importing your work into powerpoint should be easy.
I think Corel has a slide program, and Macs can use Keynote which comes with iWork.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 09-13-2010, 02:04 PM:

Something called Proshow Producer is apparently the preferred product for this sort of thing. I haven't used it, but it has been recommended to me by people who should know.

Personally, I am a big fan of the multi-image slide show programs that were common in the 1980s (the ones with a dozen slide projectors synchronized with music and narration on tape, and sometimes with added lighting effects and/or 16mm film). The best examples of this sort of thing are (were) very impressive. Unfortunately, no one does these anymore, as far as I can tell, but we may be able to get something similar now that high quality video projection is becoming more accessible in more venues.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 09-13-2010, 02:12 PM:

Will the slides be static, with no video or audio? If there is no audio, do you want to have audio (music, et al) playing while the ad is shown?

I don't know if PowerPoint allows for multimedia, so it may. However, based on my experience with various software packages, the first tool I would start with is Sony Vegas Movie Studio. You can create the slides in the graphics tool you like (e.g. Photoshop) and then import them into Vegas to add audio, video, crawling text (text tickers), etc.

Since you can have multiple tracks of audio and video (still images are considered video tracks, even if they don't move), you can overlay tracks with varying levels of transparency, fade in and fade out, and there are more transition effects than you can shake a stick at.

You can then output the results to DVD, Blu-ray, video formats (AVI, MKV, etc.) of whatever resolution you want, so you don't need a PC running PowerPoint connected to the projector. I would check out something like the WD Live HD box or Roku box, or a Blu-ray player that can play videos across a network or USB memory stick.

In a perfect world, there would be no advertising in front of movies that people are paying full price for. However, if there must be ads, they can be done well and tastefully. The more relevant and the less offensive those ads are, I think the better they will be received and as a result, the more effective they will be. Everyone wins!

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 09-13-2010, 10:53 PM:

Go with PowerPoint. Most people or businesses will be able to deliver their slides in that format, and if not, they are composited easily from a photo and some text.

PowerPoint is also one of some very few progams that are able to directly address a second screen/monitor on a notebook or dual-output desktop graphics card. You shouldn't do without dual screen, it's the only way to keep your cluttered desktop from being seen on the screen. Every notebook nowadays has extended desktop monitor output to do that. PowerPoint is also quite nice to edit slides on the fly, adjust text, dates, etc. just a second before (or even while) you project them. Video-Editors are not so flexible. Powerpoint can handle sound as well.

- Carsten

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 09-14-2010, 06:19 PM:

I'd be curious to try this in both programs. Does anyone have some sample slides that they'd be willing to provide for the experiment?

I'll post the end results if people are interested.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-15-2010, 12:28 AM:

Scott - I have Sony Vegas, I think it's the "lite" version but that should be more than enough. I got it with the idea of creating DVDs from old videos I have but it will work for this application too -- but I'm wanting to really "ease into" this whole thing so we don't get complaints. So I'm thinking just silent slides for the moment. (Our nonsync music will still be playing of course.) Powerpoint might be easier overall.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 09-15-2010, 06:01 PM:

'Creating' is only one part of the job - you need to be able to get the result on the screen. No one wants to see desktop, app windows, dialog boxes etc. on a cinema screen. So you need to put the slides on the secondary monitor. That's not as easy as one might think. Most windows apps are not 'aware' of a second monitor - their windows need to be placed there manually, the mouse is visible, after playback the GUI elements come back on the second screen as well.

I don't like PowerPoint too much in general - but it has a 'switch' to send just the presentation to the secondary monitor, while showing an overview and control desk ('presenter screen') on the first. Very safe to use with a smaller risk to blame yourself.

- Carsten

Posted by Jarret Chessell (Member # 5077) on 09-16-2010, 06:04 PM:

DVD's are annoying for slide shows. You need to burn a new disc to change anything. You're also limiting your resolution to 480i/p. If you use slide show software like power point you can put up sharper pictures, have more detail and have easier to read text. As an added bonus, if you have a PC hooked up, you can use the PC to play dvd's over your vid projector when needed.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 09-16-2010, 08:53 PM:

quote: Carsten Kurz
'Creating' is only one part of the job - you need to be able to get the result on the screen. No one wants to see desktop, app windows, dialog boxes etc. on a cinema screen. So you need to put the slides on the secondary monitor. That's not as easy as one might think.

That's one of the reasons why I headed in the direction of using Sony Vegas. You can output HD video, save it to a USB drive or put it on your network, and then have a Roku/Boxee/WD Live/Blu-ray player play the slides and you don't have to hassle with a PC.

Once you get the process down, it should be no more difficult than a slide projector or DVD player. The differentiating factor between the hardware would be which ones would throw up the least amount of interface litter and how they handle powering up and down.

I have a friend with a Roku box, and I'm testing an Iomega Screenplay box (which I am not all that thrilled with), but the WD Live box is the one that I'm also interested in.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-16-2010, 10:03 PM:

I really hate PowerPoint. While it is a presentation program, it is not a graphic design program. Unfortunately, lots of people think it is and all of them are wrong. It sucks for design on account of its own built-in limitations and sucks even worse for all the problems that occur when attempting to export the PPT imagery to real professional graphic design applications.

I have to vent about this because quite a few of our customers, particularly military customers, bring in their "logos" and what not saved in PPT format. It really sucks.

For the actual design work a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop can deliver the best, most professional results -not to mention feature the best portability to ad agencies, service bureaus, etc. PowerPoint PPT files and nothing else from Microsoft compares. PowerPoint is a decent "container" for a slide show but that's about it.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-17-2010, 10:43 AM:

I'll probably wind up using Photoshop to make the slides and then using Sony Vegas to put the preshow together. We have an Oppo DVD player that has a USB port on it, so that should work fine. There's also a freebie Windows program "Windows DVD maker" that makes a nice slide show, but as has been pointed out, a new DVD has to be burned to make changes.

I think I'm going to start off just putting up a lot of historic photos, trivia about the theatre and stuff like that, to get the audience used to "looking at stuff" before the show starts. Then start putting ads in later.

Thanks all for the input. Lots of good info in this thread.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 09-17-2010, 11:17 AM:

You will find that any mediaplayer, DVD player etc. will show their menu/OSD on it's (only) output while you try to start a show. You will also have little control on the timing, what to do when it ends when you are not paying attention to it, etc.

As a result, people will experience more Oppo advertising than your clients ads ;-)

As a minimum, you need a separate controlmonitor and getting used to blank the projector while you fiddle with the players menu system.

For simple JPEG slides, FastStone Image viewer will also output to the second screen in a dedicated way.

If anyone knows a mediaplayer with autostart, playlist support and full OSD disable - please name it.

- Carsten

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-17-2010, 07:12 PM:

You can set this player to play endless-loop, disable the screen saver and so forth. The key is to start the preshow before anyone comes into the auditorium, that's a bit of a no-brainer. It's also possible to hook up another TV to it (standard video output) and be able to view the menus and such while the projector itself isn't running.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 09-18-2010, 09:57 AM:

For a fixed preshow loop, that might be okay.

We advertize our upcoming movies, so we have to add/take out slides every other day or adjust date/time. It's not a good idea to have our staff re-render a video every time for a minor change. We just cut/copy/paste individual slides in PP just before the show. If there's a typo, we correct it within seconds even while the presentation is running.
We also do interactive slides between 35mm trailers, so we need that amount of realtime control.

We have a DVD Player with Flash-Slots and video/JPEG playback capability, but it has proven to be unusable for what we wanted to do. It's our backup MP3 Player now.

- Carsten

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 09-21-2010, 02:48 PM:

Mike,

Please post your results when you get something that you're showing in the theater. I'd be interested to see what you did!

Posted by Daniel Cook (Member # 6151) on 04-24-2011, 09:51 AM:

we use powerdirector 9 to create slide shows then export them to full hd videos 1920x1080 the saving of the files takes a long time like you would expect, however powerdirector is a very easy to use bit of software and can create professional looking shows with transistions etc. if you so require them.

we then run the slide show through a laptop however it could be put onto a disk then played via dvd player etc. we connect the laptop via hdmi - DVI connection from the laptop to the projector

we normally include, a welcome screen, information for the cinema contact numbers etc., we have movie trivia displayed questions/answers etc. and we have what films we have coming soon.