By
Bill Reid (CRC Editor)
With both print and slide
scanners it soon becomes obvious that a good presentation programme
would be required to make the best of them. A/V is something that I
have never managed to get into, but with the ProShow programme I am
able to put together a very professional looking A/V show with
little effort! Little effort!! You need to scan all the slides first
and that is quite a job when 2-300 slides are involved. However with
the slides scanned it really is a simple job to highlight the slides
and with the cursor simply move them all onto the ‘editor’
section. The easiest way would be to number each slide in correct
order as you scan them and then they would all go into the editor as
you want them, and any re-editing would be reduced to the very
minimum.. Moving the slides in the editor is also very simple.
Highlight a single slide or a group and click the cursor on them and
move them along (to the left or right) until you reach the spot
where you want them to be and let go the cursor button. Likewise you
can cut and paste the slide(s) in the same manner. If you have
already scanned the slides, you can still number them, by using the
‘Rename’ menu. With anything up to 999 slides start the first
slide renaming with ‘000’ and continue with 001-999 accordingly.
That will keep them in the correct order even when you go into two
and three figures.
A tip on film scanning if you
are new to it! The
scanning programme is preset at 100% exposure. This is fine if you
are using a well-exposed (average) slide, but if there is any
under/over exposure, you can reduce the exposure (scanning) time
down to –50% or anything up to +200%. This is equal to double
exposure time over or under 100%. N.B. I am using the Film Scan 35
as offered by Photoworld.
The ProShow screen is split into
four sections. Box 1. Your Computer’s drives, for finding the
folders or files. Box 2. The photo file box, where you view the
photos and where you can move them into the editing Screen (Box 3)
and Box 4. The Presentation Screen, where you see an enlarged image
of the first slide in the editor or wherever you last placed the
cursor. Below this screen are buttons to run and stop the slide
programme, to check slide positions and timing. If you have a sound
track then that will play in precise synchronization.
Back to the Editing screen!
Along the bottom of the main screen. Here you see a set of 8
slides (in order) and a left and right arrow, or slider allows you
to move through them. Click an a slide and as well as showing up on
the larger screen, another box opens where you can make all the
settings for how the picture will appear on the final screening.
Also to set the duration of the picture and the duration of the
dissolve, and style, between the next picture. Each can be set up to
any timing up to 60 seconds. You can then add text to the slide,
having the use of the full Font, size and colour settings, shadow
text etc. You can also change the Brightness, Contrast and density
of each slide. This doesn’t change the actual photo, only the
slide presentation. With another menu you can now add a sound track.
The system uses the standard WAV format, but for space saving a good
resolution mp3 file will do.
As your slides multiply and the
sound is added you need to consider if the final presentation will
fit onto a single data CD, and I can assure you it is only too easy
to finish up with too large a data file. You can of course, reduce
the data size by using your graphic programme to lower the graphic
resolution and/or reduce the mp3 resolution. I wouldn’t recommend
reducing the graphics lower than 400-500kbs and the mp3 resolution,
below 128kbps. You may just get away with 96kbps, providing the
soundtrack is mainly speech and the music kept to a low volume. Mp3
resolution is similar to the differences between 15ips, 7.5ips &
3.5ips on reel-reel tape recorders. The sound quality drops or rises
according to the change of speed. However providing the piece of
music you are using doesn’t have musical frequencies higher than a
particular kbps level can handle, you will not hear the difference,
except when you go lower than 64kbps. It is interesting to learn
that Digital Radio uses 64, 128, 160 and 192kbps in general and they
will change the resolution according to the contents of a programme.
Radio 4 uses 64kbps for mainly speech but will raise it to 128 for
music and stereo. Radio 2 uses 128kbps as standard, while Radio 3
and Classical FM will use 192 as standard and will drop to 160kbps.
From this I think it is safe to say that 128kbps will suffice for
most of our AV presentations.
ShowPro will automatically set
all your timings to syncronise with the sound track length. However,
there is a limitation on this as it may reduce slide timing to a
moment or two, therefore it is more professional to try and choose
pieces of music that fit close to the final number of slides you are
using and the duration you prefer. Because you have such fine
control over the slide and dissolve durations you can fine-tune the
presentation to perfection. E.G. I found that the music stopped or
carried on by parts of seconds, either way, but by changing the odd
slide or two from 8 seconds to 7.30 and the set 2 second dissolve
time, to 1.3secs I finally got the music to end with a neat time
lapse before the final slide dissolved. To help with the timings,
both the presentation duration and dissolve times are shown at the
top of the Picture Box and you can see every change you make.
Now to picture quality!
Obviously, ProShow is designed to be viewed on a Computer
monitor. Both picture and sound is excellent. Likewise, as a
computer file, they looked good on my 6-foot screen when using the
computer projector, therefore I have no hesitation on recommending
this programme. However, you can also save your shows as ‘Video
Files’ that should work from a DVD player. This avoids
having to use a computer and is an easy way to share your
presentation with family and friends. It will even allow you to save
video files in the American NTSC TV system. However this is a new
technology and many DVD players don’t have the facilities. However
I have tried saving a video file, in both video formats available
and I am sorry to say, I wasn’t impressed with the picture
quality, and it is even worse on the big screen, so perhaps the
technology needs to be improved before this system is fully
acceptable, though saying that, possibly on a 14”-17” TV or
monitor they could well be acceptable. You will also have to check
that your ‘Windows’ version and graphic card is up-to-date
enough to handle this technology. You require an mp3 and WAV player,
and a DVD drive that can handle the video systems: VCD, CVD, SVCD
and XSVCD. SVCD is recommended for the best picture quality. This
choice at least gives a chance that your family and friends may at
least have one of them and you need only produce a CD in that
format. No doubt all these systems will be programmed into up and
coming DVD players.
N.B. Some of the fancier
dissolve presentations will not work on some of the above video
systems, but will revert to a standard dissolve. They certainly work
on SVCD.
ProShow is a downloadable
programme from the Internet. Go to http://www.photodex.com/downloads
and download the ‘free’ 15-day trial version, which is fully
working for that period. If you are happy with it you then go back
to the web site and purchase the ‘key’ that will unlock the
programme so that it works fully and permanently. The cost is $19.99
and quite worth it if you want a really good computer AV
presentation programme.