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Home >> Photography >> Digital Wondershare Flash Slideshow Builder Back in the day when I was pretending to be a wedding photographer, I created slideshows for my clients. I would create a slideshow for display on my website using ShowIt Web Pro (SIW) and I would create separate slideshows for DVD playback using ProShow Gold (PSG). SIW is the product marketed by David Jay, a professional wedding photographer in the USA. It appears that David Jay collaborated with Gary Fong on the basics of the application, because Gary Fong also markets a slideshow program called Album Showcase. There are some differences between the two, but after I saw a show created with Gary Fong’s version, it would seem obvious that the two products share the same underlying DNA. SIW only has one purpose; to create a Flash slideshow for internet display. It’s rather dear at USD $200 (Gary Fong sells his for USD $150), but at the time I bought it, SIW seemed like the best product available to do what I desired. PSG is also a slideshow application, but it has a lot more functionality and output options than SIW. It also costs a lot less money at USD $70. While I primarily use PSG for creating DVD slideshows, the current version of PSG can also create Flash shows for internet display. I tried this out, but I’m not as happy with the results as I am with SIW. PSG can also produce video CDs and executable files, so it provides greater flexibility than the one trick pony, SIW. Ignoring the output options, I think PSG sets the standard for user interface, options, and flexibility in slideshow applications. The layout is intuitive and a new user could very quickly create his or her first show without much difficulty. So, here we have SIW that can produce very good Flash slideshows, but costs dearly. Then we have PSG, which can produce great DVD shows, but is not so great for Flash shows. Is there room for another player to offer an application to create Flash shows for a reasonable cost? Wondershare Flash Slideshow Builder After I installed Wondershare’s Flash Slidehow Builder (FSB) and opened it up, I was pleasantly surprised by the workspace, which has some resemblance to the workspace of PSG.
On the left side of the workspace is the file browser to locate your folder of images. On the larger right side is a section to view the thumbnails of those images (adjustable for thumbnail size). At the bottom is a timeline to insert your images in the order that you want. Along the top left are four tabs for browsing, selecting different templates, doing some advanced and/or enhanced edits to the show, and finally, to publish the show in the format you desire. While I mentioned Flash and HTML output, there are actually a few more options such as:
Along the top right are small icons to:
Some basic image editing is available too, but as I worked with finished files, I did not dig deeply into these editing options. Image editing is accessed by double-clicking on an image.
Some of the advanced editing features allow you to use and control movement within each image in a show. You can set the movement for randomness or dictate the movement for every image. I generally don’t use movements for my shows and at most, I would only consider a left to right movement for a panoramic style image.
Similarly, you can also randomize the transition between images or individually select each one. I keep thing simple with just a plain old fade into the next image for all my shows, as a simple fade is the most classy. Curiously, there does not appear to be a way to set the time/duration for each transition, as is available with PSG.
Below the timeline is a space where you can insert an MP3 music file. When I first started using FSB, I was just playing around and tried to insert whatever music file I happen to have available on my Sony notebook. The music files were from the Japanese rock band, the Surf Coasters’ 10th anniversary best of compilation CD. Trying to insert a music file resulted in FSB popping up an error window advising me that I did not have the proper codec installed on the computer to use the MP3 file. I copied over some MP3s ripped from domestic CDs and had no problems with these files. Thus, I suspect some kind of weird formatting or ripping issue specific to the imported Surf Coasters CD, which should not be an issue if you use files ripped from non-import CDs. Playing around with the first show, I got a bit heavy-handed and threw over 200 images at once at FSB. After a bit of tweaking with the Duration setting, I ended up with a show over 14 minutes long with three MP3 files inserted. I tried to publish the show, but FSB failed to create the Flash file. Cruising around Wondershare’s support webpage, I came across an FAQ that advised me that FSB has a limit of 200 images. That’s what I get for being a heavy-handed fool. Two-hundred images may sound like a lot, but it actually isn’t for me. I regularly used close to or over that number for a single seven or eight minute show synced to a long song. I don’t like shows that linger too long on a single image and my preference is for each image to be displayed for between 1-2 seconds with another 0.5-1 second transition time. If you work with 30 images per minute, it’s easy enough to go over 200 images by the time you reach seven minutes. For my previous wedding jobs, I would create multiple shows for each significant event of the day:
For most of my jobs, especially for Chinese couples, the reception is a huge part of the day and is where I easily take half my photos. Thus, it requires a long song to ensure I show enough of the reception’s moments. However, I admit that this is a pretty specific requirement for me and most people interested in FSB will likely not have problems with the 200 image limit. After getting more realistic with what FSB can do, I worked with 35 slides and a single song to create a show about three minutes long. While FSB does offer some basic editing of the music track, such as for fading and length, there is no option to sync the music track to the number of slides so that the duration matches the length of the song. I had to manually adjust the duration several times to try to get an appropriate sync with the music track.
This probably the biggest weakness I came across with FSB compared to PSG. In order to test the music track with the slideshow’s duration, I would have to playback the entire show to confirm proper synchronization, which is time consuming. In PSG, I can simply click a little square within the music edit window to synchronize the show to the music. If I find that the song actually has too much dead air at the end of the track, I can do one of two things:
After doing one of these edits, PSG allows me to playback the slideshow from anywhere within the timeline, meaning I do not have to playback the entire show to confirm the synchronization. This saves a lot of time, as I only need to playback the last few seconds of the show to confirm and this feature alone allows me to put together a basic slideshow in PSG in all of 15-20 minutes, whereas the same show would take me two or three times as long due to having to playback the entire show over and over again just to hear the ending portion to confirm synchronization.
Once the timing and music is finished, FSB offers a large number of templates to showcase the slideshow. It’s quite varied and there are basic themes ranging from weddings to valentines to more advanced themes that offer a more edgy style of presentation.
I like plain and simple, so I use one of the more basic templates that offers some user controls at the bottom of the Flash screen to pause, play and skip backwards and ahead of the current image. Yes, if a viewer decides to use those controls, it would disrupt the timing of the show to the music, but I think having the ability to pause and play a show is important. You don’t want a viewer to be frustrated that the only way to see certain images is to sit through the whole show again (or you could choose a template that provides direct access to the thumbnails). Once you’ve set all the parameters for the show, it’s time to produce the show in the format that you desire. As its name would imply, creating a Flash slideshow is the first option and probably the one you would use most often. This creates a slideshow in one convenient file that can be inserted very easily into a webpage and uploaded to your web host’s server. The default size of the Flash show is 720x540 pixels, but you can set a custom size for one dimension and the other will automatically adjust to keep the aspect ratio.
Critiques I would also like the application to be faster, as it seems like FSB has to do some rendering in the background whenever I edit something simple like the duration of the images. Overall editing functionality is not up to the standard of ProShow Gold, which offers a superior user interface and editing power, but PSG is also more expensive at $70 and the quality of PSG’s Flash output does not compare to FSB’s quality. To maximize PSG’s image quality, you need to select the highest broadband connection setting from the Flash output options. While this will maximize the image quality, the transitions still end up pixelated and this is not what you would expect or want from a publicly displayed Flash show. FSB allows you to add text to your images with a number of different display options, which is fine for simple text lines. However, I wanted to add multiple lines of text to the first slide, which was just a blank, white slide I created in Photoshop. There is no option to center or justify the text, so I had to manually center the text by using the spacebar key, but for some reason, the first text line refused to stay centered in the actual show, even though the text box clearly showed a manually centered text line. I also had some challenges with trying to use text with my ending slide and eventually gave up in favour of creating text slides in Photoshop and inserting them as my beginning and ending slides. Much faster and easier than to try and get the text feature in FSB to work the way I wanted. While the output offers a good quality show, I'm troubled with what appears to be a glitch in the Flash show when a show has finished. In my output stage, I chose not to loop the show and to add a Replay button in the show when it ends. However, after uploading the show to my web server, the show plays back normally, but when it ends and I click on the replay button, the music starts normally, but the slides do not replay again. Conclusion If Wondershare could improve the editing parameters, make it faster and address my critiques, it could be a heckuva Flash slideshow application and an easy recommendation over ShowIt Web. Ideally, I would love to see FSB offer more PSG-like editing options while maintaining the same high quality Flash output. While it may be suitable for the consumer, FSB is not there yet for professional use; however, I do acknowledge that for $40, this is not an application that is catered for professional users. Link to Wondershare Flash Slideshow Builder Click here to see a sample show I created using Flash Slideshow Builder - I placed it on a separate webpage instead of here, because the show will start automatically once the file is downloaded and I didn't want you to be surprised by some music playing for no reason 8^) |
Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2010 Edwin Leong |
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The most important work section is the timeline, as this is where you sort your photos and input a time for display. FSB calls the display time "Duration" and you can adjust the duration for each individual slide or make one adjustment and have it applied to all the slides. You can also move the individual images to different locations within the time line.
In looking at this screen shot at right, you would think that if you match the slideshow duration time with the music's time, you would have a synchronized slideshow. However, you would be wrong and the slideshow time you see here is what I had to manually adjust in order to get a proper sync of the 35 slides to the single music track. And, of course, I had to preview the show several times to get the duration correct.
The output options in FSB >>