TCS - Midi Music and Multimedia SIG

Midi Music and Multimedia SIG

by Mike Henson
Tulsa Computer Society
From the October 2002 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

We had 8 people come out to the September meeting, where we had some fun with digital pictures. First, I showed off my new Olympus digital camera that I bought this summer. It is a 1.3 Megapixel model with a fixed focus lens. At 1.3 Megapixels, I can take pictures up to 1280 x 960 pixels, which is good enough for printing photos up to 5 x 7 inches. In order to print photos of 8 x 10 or larger, you really need a 2.0 Megapixel or higher camera. My camera does not have an optical zoom, only a digital zoom. But it cost me only $120 at Office Max, and they included a 32MB memory chip, so I think I got a pretty good deal.

After looking at my digital camera, we started the actual meeting, where we showed how to take all of those vacation pictures everyone took this summer and quickly make them into a self-running multimedia slide show. I gave everyone a handout listing a dozen or so such software packages, ranging in price from $16 to $50.

The first one we looked at is also the least expensive at $15.95. It is called Slide Show to Go, and you can download a demo of it at http://kronos.v-share.com/~v_shevine. This is a very simple package to use, you simply add pictures to the show, select the transition style, add some music and press go. You get to pick the duration of each slide, and you can add simple text messages onto the slides. You also have the option of creating a free-standing executable program that will run your show. It will even create the autorun.inf file required to play your slide show automatically from a CD. However, you will need your own software to actually burn the CD.

The other package we looked at is also a very inexpensive one at only $19.95. It is called Digital Photo Slide Show, and you can download a demo of it at http://www.digitalphotoslideshow.com. This package runs a slide show of all pictures within a single folder (or sub-folders). You put all of the pictures that you want to be in the slide show into a folder on your hard drive, then point to that folder and the slide show is ready. If you also drop WAV or MP3 files into the folder, it will play them as the background music during the slide show. This package can also create the files required to auto-play your CD, but you will need your own CD burning software. This package has a few more transitions that the other one did not have, and it has more control over the text messages that you can lay over each picture. This package also allows you to create a screen saver, wallpaper, or a web page from your pictures.

At the October meeting we will take a look at some of the newest games for your PC, so you can get ready to dazzle the kids this Christmas. In November, we will look at cheap video capture cards for your PC, so you can copy those home videos onto your computer and to a CD. Come join the fun at the Harmon Foundation, 2901 S. Harvard, on the third Tuesday of each month at 7:00 PM.



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Tulsa Computer Society 10/02/2002
Don Singleton, President