Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Preshow slide show software

This is topic Preshow slide show software in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Gunnar Asgeirsson (Member # 3882) on 03-16-2014, 04:16 PM:

Hello guys,
Just a quick question.
What are you using to play the slideshow commercial preshow before the DCP start playing.

I have a 3 screening room cinema and at the moment the slide show preshow is just video slideshow that loops from a hard disk media player. Witch mean i have to render new video slide show every time new slide are added or slide are removed.
I would like to make it more easy and use some kind of software that can play this slides show loop. I am thinking about just program powerpoint to loop this slide show but before i do that i would like to hear what you guys are using.

I know about software like Scala infochannel designer and Site Scheduler but they are so expensive and overkill for just preshow slideshow.

My wet dream is if i can program the slides through the internet and add and remove slides when i am home (so i dont need to go to the cinema just because of new slide)

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 03-16-2014, 05:33 PM:

You can use something like a Popcorn Hour media tank. You just dump the files on a USB stick and it will play them in order on a constant loop. This way you make a separate file for each advertiser, and just add/remove the individual ads. Just use a naming convention that orders the files on the USB drive in the order you want them to play.

This is how we play lobby previews. We download the previews off YouTube as 720p M4P, add text for the title and date using Windows Live Movie Maker (Win7), and then save as a windows movie file. These play non-stop on a loop in our lobby.

For the projectors, you can either do one box for all three projectors, or use an HDMI splitter to do split the signal to all the projectors. We have our booth configured so there is an HDMI and Toslink cable running from each projector to a central media rack.

What might be even easier is to convert each individual ad to a DCP using DCP-o-Matic, then ingest on your servers or LMS. This way you can just build a preshow segment as part of your program, and schedule it to start X minutes prior to the show start time.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-16-2014, 05:41 PM:

We use Powerpoint. It sure sucks in general, but we have gotten used to it. We use it for more than five years now.

The good thing about it - you can prepare shows on every office equipped computer, even cross platform. We have advertising clients delivering their slides to us by email, we just copy/paste them into the current show. If it needs some tweaking, no big deal.

It can output slides to a dedicated secondary monitor output, which means, you can keep the screen black and clean. This works with basically every notebook (primary screen laptop display, secondary screen through VGA/DVI/HDMI). The same machine plays iTunes music in parallel for our screen in the background. Unless you want to play HD video within a presentation, even old notebooks running XP can do the job.

We prefer this over every other option because we can make changes very quickly, basically even WHILE the show is playing. No rendering.
Adjust a date, correct a typo, erase an outdated slide, just do it, you do not even have to restart the show for the changes to appear on screen.

You can have the presentation file on a drop-box account, thus being able to edit it from your home, while the local machine reads the same file and projects it in the evening.

I'm not a huge fan of MS Office, but I haven't found a better solution in 5 years. Our staff is also easy to train on basic functions since most people can deal with the MS office UI anyway.

- Carsten

Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 03-16-2014, 06:18 PM:

quote: Gunnar Asgeirsson
My wet dream is if i can program the slides through the internet and add and remove slides when i am home (so i dont need to go to the cinema just because of new slide)

Xibo.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 03-19-2014, 04:05 PM:

There are tons of Digital Signage solutions out there that provide their own content creation.

While PowerPoint is really your least favorite solution, you often get content delivered by customers in PowerPoint. So, you're often facing the challenge to manually convert this stuff into something that's being accepted by your Digital Signage platform. But I mostly solved those problems by simply rendering those PowerPoints to a movie via some external tools. [Wink]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 03-19-2014, 04:26 PM:

Acrobat Pro lets you create PDF slideshows, defining the type of transition, the length of time each page displays for, etc. While importing from Powerpoint might be a bit messy, it has the advantage that the end product can be played back on any computer (or even a tablet or smartphone) with PDF reading software on it.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 03-19-2014, 04:58 PM:

Libreoffice can apparently do pdf transition effects too (though I've never had the need to do it) and it's free software.

Posted by James Skinner (Member # 7385) on 03-21-2014, 03:49 PM:

As a software designer I am just dumbfounded as to why DCP servers don't have more capabilities for preshow. Why don't they support popular video file format, stills, looping, etc.

I find it simply amazing how few technical capabilities these very expensive boxes have.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 03-21-2014, 06:28 PM:

It's a clear 'keep it simple and safe' approach. Everyone with a decent experience in mainstream computer media handling knows how fragile this is. I don't want any twisted preshow crab crash a machine just before the main feature.

- Carsten