Is iphoto the best choice to produce a cross-platform movie of a slide show?

May 9, 2008 3:33 PM

Is iphoto the best choice to produce a cross-platform movie of a slide show?

I've been charged at work with making a slide show of photos from an event. I'm working on a Mac. I know that I can use iPhoto to make a slide show and export it as a Quicktime movie. There are also some movies of the event that I'd like to integrate in the show if it can be done in a way that looks professional. We'd like to make sure the movie that is produced could run on either a Mac or a PC with no glitches. Is iPhoto my best choice, or should I be looking elsewhere?

posted by bchaplin to technology (6 comments total)

I would say Flash.
posted by Class Goat at 4:33 PM on May 9, 2008

Just to clarify: I don't have Quicktime installed on my PC because I've had horrible experiences with it in the past. It does weird things to default type assignments, and it has other unpleasant characteristics. I've been burned with it enough times so that even if I was assured all of the unpleasant things about it had been fixed, I still wouldn't install it. (These days, the latest gripe is that it's really tough to find an installation file for Quicktime for the PC that doesn't also install iTunes for you automagically.)

I'm not alone in being allergic to Quicktime. There are a lot of PC users like me. And that means that MOV is not universally playable. But everyone has Flash; it's a standard part of all normal browser installs. It might be necessary to use a browser to play it, but everyone can play Flash.

Apple users like to believe that MOV is a universal format, but it ain't.
posted by Class Goat at 4:43 PM on May 9, 2008

why not use iPhoto and burn it to a video DVD? then you just need a DVD player. send it to iDVD and it'll take care of the rest.

otherwise, do you have Keynote? (it's part of iWork.) you could possibly use that as an intermediary; Keynote can export to Flash. not sure if it'll transcode your slideshow though.
posted by mrg at 8:15 PM on May 9, 2008

iMovie will be your best choice, most likely. iMovie integrates with iPhoto, so it will allow you to bring in any content you have from iPhoto and arrange it on a timeline with transitions, text, and sounds/music. If you have iPhoto, you should also have iMovie - they are both part of the iLife suite. Here's a great resource:

http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/

Good luck.
posted by gaiamark at 8:17 PM on May 9, 2008

QuickTime is a horrible format if you're aiming for cross-platform compatibility. I wouldn't recommend Flash Video since the compression would probably ruin the pictures, but if you can export them as a slide show into Flash then that should be fine. Also you might want to look into other MPEG-4 solutions (e.g. DivX, XviD) if you care about quality.
posted by semi at 9:31 PM on May 9, 2008

Thanks for all the advice. I did try making a slideshow in iPhoto and exporting it to iDVD. When I tried viewing the DVD in Windows Media Player on a Windows computer, though, it wouldn't play! I'll keep researching other options.
posted by bchaplin at 11:17 AM on May 10, 2008