Making a picture slideshow in osx to show using windows xp

May 3, 2007 12:26 PM

Is there a way that I can make a photo slideshow with mac os x and burn it to a cd or dvd and then pop it into a windows xp computer and have it play?

This is almost a "look around google and try out some apps and ask my friends" question, but it's for work, and I'm in a bit of a hurry. I was given a folder of pictures that I need to make a slideshow of. Nothing fancy like music or transitions. I'm using a mac. Is there a program or easy way to put the pictures on a disc and then be able to do a slideshow on a windows computer. I would need each picture to be displayed for around 8 seconds.

Possibly obvious answer to my question: If I have a disc of pictures that I put in an xp machine, can I use something built into windows to show the pictures as a slideshow with 8 seconds per picture? I just don't have access to a cd or dvd burner at the moment, so I can't test this and if someone could confirm it for me, I'd appreciate it.

posted by davidstandaford to technology (10 comments total)

Powerpoint for Mac has the option of making your slideshow into a Quicktime movie.
posted by clh at 12:30 PM on May 3, 2007

I don't have powerpoint, and I'm hoping there is a free solution. Also, would show pictures in a quicktime movie cause a decrease in quality or increase in size of the presentation as opposed to a more classic/traditional photo slideshow type thing?
posted by davidstandaford at 12:36 PM on May 3, 2007

How about the "Impress" (like PowerPoint) part of OpenOffice.org?

Here's a link - see the third paragraph. OpenOffice is free for Mac and Windows (and Linux).
posted by amtho at 12:41 PM on May 3, 2007

If you want something that's even more platform-agnostic than that, you can easily make a slide show in iDVD, and then burn a disc that conforms to the standard DVD-Video specification, so it's playable in any set-top DVD player.

I just made one of these for my father, and it works well; you can set the transition time on each slide to anything you want, or make it manual so they don't switch until you click the button on the remote ... you can choose whether you want it to display the name of the file at the bottom, etc.

You'd probably want to export all your slides as 720x480 pixel PNG or TIFF files (not JPEGs, because you don't want the lossy compression), then in iDVD just drag the folder of pictures to the main menu of the project and it will create a new slideshow. On the slideshow's menu page you can change the various options, add music if you want, etc.

I think you can have 99 images per slideshow, and I don't know if there's a limit on the number of slideshows per disc.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:52 PM on May 3, 2007

If you make a slideshow in iPhoto, then import it into iDVD and burn it, that won't play on just any DVD player? I thought it did...
posted by bricoleur at 1:04 PM on May 3, 2007

Or, maybe I should have read Kadin2048's post more carefully. What he said.
posted by bricoleur at 1:05 PM on May 3, 2007

Windows XP does have a built-in slideshow feature, but AFAIK, you can't easily change the length of time that each photo is displayed.

A workaround is as follows:

Burn the pictures to a CD and insert it into the PC running XP. Right click on the desktop in XP and select Properties. In the dialog box that pops up, select the Screensaver tab. Select the My Pictures Slideshow Screensaver and hit Settings. From there you can change the length of time that each photo is displayed, as well as the source folder for the photos (I believe you can choose to get the photos directly from the CD). Adjust other options as you see fit and hit OK. Select Preview to begin the slideshow. Don't move the mouse during the slideshow or it will exit. Don't forget to set the screensaver back to the original one before you hit OK (or just click Cancel and nothing will be saved).

It's not perfect, but it should get the job done.
posted by roomwithaview at 1:21 PM on May 3, 2007

I'm making the slideshow (using NeoOffice as opposed to Open Office, but same thing), and burning that to a CD seems to be exactly what I needed. Although I use neoffice as a word substitute all the time, it never occured to me that it comes with a powerpoint equivalent as well (so boy was this a waste of a question).

Anyway, thanks.
posted by davidstandaford at 1:29 PM on May 3, 2007

Why not do it with HTML? One HTML page per image, using Javascript to do a timed delay to change to the next page? Then it could be viewed using any standard browser.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:46 PM on May 3, 2007

Actually, a single HTML file could do this, with a list of all the picture files in an array. I've done this; it wasn't very hard at all.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 1:48 PM on May 3, 2007