Adjustable-speed Random Slide Show?

December 19, 2005 11:22 AM

Help me find (or failing that, make) my ideal screensaver. I'm running OS X, and Apple's built-in image folder Slide Show is too slow for my tastes, but there doesn't seem to be any way to adjust the speed...

I've fooled around with Quartz Composer's "image folder slide show" preset, and I like the adjustable speed, but now it displays the images in a fixed order every time; there doesn't seem to be any way to randomize the order that a list of files gets viewed in. Ideally, I just want something that works like the built-in slide show you get by selecting a folder of images, but with an adjustable speed.

posted by wanderingmind to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I don't have it handy right now, but Quartz Composer definitely has a random control.

You might find something on http://quartzcomps.com/

This page on ResExcellence has a tutorial on building screen savers in QTX.

I'll try to remember to check back on this thread when I get home. Sorry I don't have more useful information now.
posted by ijoshua at 12:41 PM on December 19, 2005

I'm not in front of my mac, but this hint explains how to modify the preference file for the finder slideshows. Betcha one of the xml keys in that file is for "picture speed".
posted by Popular Ethics at 1:05 PM on December 19, 2005

LJoshua: QC has a random clip that just steadily outputs random numbers, but no apparent way to shuffle a list. I've tried hooking the random number generator up to the part that calculates which image to index out of the list (performing appropriate math to get it from 0.0-1.0 to 1-< # of images>), and the result is that it loads and displays a new image every time the random number changes - which is several dozen times a second. I may want a faster random slideshow, but that's a little ridiculous.
posted by wanderingmind at 2:32 PM on December 19, 2005

He doesn't want to modify a Finder slideshow; he wants to modify the slideshow screensaver. That said, this probably can be tweaked in a plist file somewhere, but I'll be darned if I can find it.
posted by designbot at 5:37 PM on December 19, 2005