Is there an app for easily making a slideshow that meets my criteria?

July 2, 2018 5:34 PM

In general, I want to feed in a number of photos (say 150) and have the slideshow be a specific length of time (say 110 seconds).

My main goal is to make the slideshow a specific length of time, for example 110 seconds, no matter how many photos I feed into it. Most slideshow makers just have presets for time per photo, i.e. 1 second, 1.5 seconds, etc.

Conceivably I could do this manually in a video editor, but if I'm using 100+ images then that's a fair about of fiddling, unless there's some batch method. (I'm using an older mac laptop and a newer android phone, although if need be I might be able to access other devices.)

Also, as the images will be portrait instead of landscape and the intended audience will mainly be phone users, I'd like the output to be a vertical/9:16-ish video, which I guess can be done with mobile presets on newer video editing software, but I was hoping to just use a more bare bones app.

posted by 1001 questions to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I'm lost at the phone users... are you thinking web app or such? You seem to be going along the lines of creating a video instead of a slideshow (at least to me). A slideshow on a Mac would be a bit of maybe hackery but say making a directory of random changing in number files to complete in X seconds... doable. The phone/9:16/video and I'm lost.

(Abusing the edit window)
I think I could probably make ffmpeg produce a video slideshow to meet your requirements maybe even the aspect stuff but I know of no off-the-shelf thing that does your thing (but it seems doable???).
posted by zengargoyle at 12:38 AM on July 3, 2018

You can't get much more bare-bones than a command line... ffmpeg is sort of the command line Swiss Army knife for video. Here's a technical documentation page for generating a slideshow video from images but if you google for “ffmpeg slide” you can find all kinds of more introductory tutorials.
posted by XMLicious at 12:49 AM on July 3, 2018

iPhotos allows you to time the slideshow to a music track so that it ends with the music. I think it also lets you define a complete duration without music, but not sure which version of iPhoto let you do this. if it's restricted by music and you don't want to use music, could you make a silent track to the length that you need?

I'm not sure how to address your question about mobile users.
posted by like_neon at 4:22 AM on July 3, 2018

Response by poster: The iPhoto suggestion was a good one as it meets much of my criteria. However, in the old version of iPhoto that I'm using (iPhoto '09, this is an old MBP running 10.9.5) the duration per slide has to be a minimum of 1 second. If you throw it 50 photos and select a 25 second music clip (and have it determine duration via the music) an error message will come up.

I installed a few slideshows from the app store but the apps crash whenever I try to open them (even though they supposedly work with 10.9.5).

May try the ffmpg route...
posted by 1001 questions at 1:32 AM on July 14, 2018