Question

I’m doing a theatrical performance, and I need a program that can read images from a folder and display them full screen on one of the computer’s VGA outputs, in a predetermined order. All it needs to do is start with the first image, and when a key is pressed (space bar, right arrow), smoothly cross-fade to the next image.

Sounds just like power-point right? The only reason why I can use power-point/open-office is because the “fade smoothly” transition isn’t smooth enough, or configurable enough. It tends to be fast and choppy, where I would like to see a perfectly smooth fade over, say, 30 seconds.

So the question is what is the best (cheap and fast) way to accomplish this? Is there a program that already does this well (for cheap or free)? OR should I try to hack at open-office’s transition code? Or would it be easier to create this from scratch? Are there frameworks that might make it easier?

I have web programming experience (php), but not desktop or real-time rendering.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Answer 1

I’ve been using Impressive http://impressive.sourceforge.net/ for my presentations, it uses OpenGL to render the transitions. Impressive does not only show pdf presentations, it is also able to present images from a folder.
I have to admit that I have never used it under windows but I think the command will be quite similar:

impressive your_folder_with_images

will give you a first impression with randomly selected transitions.
The command has several options to customize your image presentation.

impressive -l

for example lists all available transition classes.

impressive --transition Crossfade your_folder_with_images

is what I like to use most of the time.

Cheers
Thomas