ProShow Slide Show Tutorial

[photodex]

How to make a slide show in ProShow.

Photodex Corporation, click here for more info and trial download.

Making a slide show in ProShow is as simple as selecting images, selecting music, and creating the show.

Here is a legend of the ProShow interface.

1. Use the Folder List to locate your images. The images will appear in the File List just below the Folder List. The thumbnails that appear are created automatically and help you find the images you would like to use when making your slide show.

2. Once you have located your images, you will need to drag and drop the images from the File List into the Story Board. You can move these files one at a time, or you can select multiple files by selecting various images by holding down the CTRL key while clicking on the images with the mouse. (You can also select all the images in that folder by clicking on one, and then hitting "CTRL + A").

3. You can add music the same way. ProShow supports MP3 and Wav files. Just select the folder that has your music, and drag and drop it into the Soundtrack section of the Storyboard.

4. When you drag the images into the blank Story Board, the images will appear in the order of the show from left to right. Each slide is numbered and there is a transition box to the right of the slide. The music will appear below the images in the Soundtrack bar.

The Story Board has several features, including the following:

A. Slide

B. Slide Timing - in seconds

C. Slide Transition

D. Transition Timing - in seconds

E. Soundtrack

5. Once the images and music are in the Story Board, you can set the Slide Timing (B), Slide Transition (C), and Transition Timing (D).

6. By clicking on the Slide Transition (C), you can set the Slide Transitions which will have the most effect on your final show. ProShow offers 170 high-quality transitions which also give you an instant preview of each transition, seen below.

7. You can make adjustments to the image by going into the Slide Options by clicking on Slide / Slide Options, or double clicking on the slide you would like to adjust. You can rotate, flip, scale, zoom, change brightness and colorize the image. As you can see below, the image has been zoomed.

8. You can add Captions and Titles to your show by clicking on the Captions tab in the Slide Options. This will pull up the window below. Add your text, drag it around the preview window to place it where you want it, change the font size, color and style.

9. Once you have included the images, music, set the transitions and set the timing, you are ready to save the show, and then output the show to the desired form. To do this, you will use buttons on the Toolbar.

10. To Save the Show, click on the Save Button on the Toolbar and then save the show in the desired location on your hard drive (note: This only saves a reference file with a .psh extension. This file references all of the images and sounds from their residing location on the hard drive. This is not the final output or the "freestanding" show. Saving this file allows you to go back in and edit the show at a later time.)

11. You are ready to output the file to create the actual show. ProShow offers many output options including, Video, VCD, AutorunCD, EXE and Screensaver.

Video - Mpeg file

VCD - Video CD, for playback on DVD players.

Autorun CD - for playback in another computer.

EXE - for playback on the computer the show was created on.

Screensaver - for creating a Windows® screensaver.



Now, click on the button of the final output you would like, and create your show.

12. If you are creating a CD, this is the menu that appears, which allows you to Choose the Menu and Title for your show. you can use different background images, including your own.

There is much more to this program than just this simple tutorial. Photodex offers a 15-day trial on their website, www.photodex.com.

[pepegot1]

ProShow is a good program that I have been using alot. One serious warning:If you use large wav files, the slide show initializes forever, as it copies the sound file to disk. I tried this on 10 different computers, and most failed to function in a timely manner. In fact, only two worked at all.

The work around is to use the smaller mp3 files. It makes a hell of a difference, especially on older machines. So, just convert your wav's to mp3's. My shows run about 15 minutes, with continuous sound all the way. Wav's are not practical.

[oldfart13]

Who is using this program vs. say, Ulead DVD Pictureshow or similar products? I can just imagine trying to make really big slide shows on DVDs that are many Gigabytes in size...a daunting task. Maybe okay for vcds, but their time is coming to an end anyway...

[muralin]

I have used both Proshow and Ulead Pictureshow. Here are the pros & cons of the Proshow based on my experience:

Plus:
- great UI
- very simple to use
- very good quality

Minus:
- very limited global slide options. e.g. you cannot choose slide transitions, choose default the font (type & size) for all of your slides in one shot. You have to change it on every slide. Painful.

- what you see is not always what you get. My titles show up differently when I view ona PC vs when I view it on TV (via DVD). In most cases, the title gets clipped.

- rearranging slides is a huge pain compared to Ulead. sometimes, when u select a slide, it selects a slide about 5-6 away from the slide u want to select.

- sometimes, to select a slide for editing (e.g. change title font etc), u have to select another slide and then select the slide u want to edit before u press "cntl-L" to edit. awkward.

- u have 2 choices for videos: Video and Video CD. DVD is not an obvious option under Video CD. If u want to do a DVD, u have to use video, create mpegs of individual slideshows and use another software (I use Ulead Movie Factory 2.0) to make the DVD.

- u can save individual slideshow but i have not found a way to save a collection of shows. ulooks like u have to do it manually every time u have to put together a collection of shows.

- i have a set of slide shows (12 slide shows each with about 30 slides and each with 1 mp3 background audio file). It takes 2 minutes before the slideshow will start. I would like to see the slideshow start immediately. May be it is copying the audio files to the hard drive before it starts to play the slideshow.

[pepegot1]

Muralin
That is exactly what it does, copies to the HD. That is why using large WAV files is nearly impossible.

[reijndert]

I think the program is great.
It generates MPeg2 streams so you can author your very own DVD. You have no control over the bitrate ( defaults to 7.5Mbps ). Also you cannot rotate multiple slides.
EXIF support is not present, would be nice if the program would recognise the orientation of a slide ( included in the EXIF header of the picture shot with a modern Digital Still Camera ).

Can Ulead generate MPeg2 streams?

[pepegot1]

Ulead VS 7.0 can produce Mpeg2. The encoder in this newer version is better than VS 6.02, which I previously used.

[reijndert]

Ulead VS just for a picture slideshow on DVD? It seems like 'overkill'.
The demo of pictureshow crashes on my machine even after a reboot.
I will try videoshow, but I think it's too expensive for my needs...
What's you reason to use this program in particular?

-rh-

[pepegot1]

Not at all. If you want a nice slide show, it does the job easily. You can have a combination of video and slides, if you like. You can put the sound just where you want it. You can annotate the slideshow easily.

[Umen Pich]

Proshow gold is great and sucks in the same time.

It is great for the effects, audio syncronize, easy operation

But their quality still sucks !

I wonder how you guys can be satisfied with that blurish picture.
It lacks clarity even in the highest possible rates
If somebody here says that quality was good, they just haven't seen a good quality.

Second -- do not support more than 720x576 pixels. It says it was out of standard. HA-ha-haaaaaa ! for custom setting !!!
Hey you guys from Photodex, do you know the limitations of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards ???

Also I wrote them 3 months ago that making a CBR slideshow is at least stupid. Today I tryed their latest version. What a dissapointment -- the same blurry picture and the same CBR etc..
So I had the idea to make a temporary mpg file (with a resolution of 1280x960 -- which is the resolution of my raw material) by using their effects only and then to recompress with tmpgenc (CQ mode).
But noooo ! It was out of standart to have so many pixels. Bad, bad, bad.
I don't know why and on which stage do they put all this blur.
Even if you pre-resize your pictures the blur exists in the final result

[magwell]

I tried this program to make a simple VCD slideshow. The moment I clicked create, I received the following error message:

PROSHOW caused an invalid page fault in
module ALL.DNT at 0167:019c3f1d.
Registers:
EAX=00000002 CS=0167 EIP=019c3f1d EFLGS=00010202
EBX=052af6e0 SS=016f ESP=053bf0bc EBP=053bf0d0
ECX=00000004 DS=016f ESI=04d32f80 FS=11ef
EDX=04d33000 ES=016f EDI=00000001 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f 7f 07 0f 6f 4e 08 0f 7f c8 0f 71 e0 0f 0f ef
Stack dump:
052af760 053bf238 04eaf400 4d19dd42 4d19dd42 00ff00ff 00ff00ff 4d19dd42 4d19dd42 4d19dd42 4d19dd42 04eaf400 00000000 028d3c70 00000001 00000002

Then the program shut down completely. Several reboots and further attempts always resulted in the above. Bottom line: this software sucks!

[pepegot1]

If you do not have the 1547 version of ProShowGold, then I can understand your problems with it. The new version was loaded with bugs(Ver. 1545) I could not burn anything. Make sure you have the 1547 version, if it is the Gold you are talking about. Now, it works flawlessly. It is a very good program and you can adjust sound volumes so that a particular slide/video clip can be heard above the main sound track, which can lowered.

[pepegot1]

Muralin

If you have the Gold version many of your objections disappear.

1. Try DVD Disc to create DVD's or ISO files.
2. Click on a slide and select all. Now make your changes and they will be universal.
3. If titles go off screen on TV play back, try to keep them in the safe zone when you create them

[magwell]

If you do not have the 1547 version of ProShowGold, then I can understand your problems with it.

I was using v2.0 build 1547, just downloaded the other day.

[randerson]

I have used ProShow for quite a while now, but mostly for posting on the web. When I have burned to DVD, the quality is EXTREMELY POOR on both my monitor and TV screen. The show looks GREAT when played back within the software, it is only when burned to DVD ( Compression I guess ) It has been suggested that I sharpen my images within the program at about 30% which I have done, but with no increased results. I am using the most current version of ProShow Gold