CRAFTY ARTS: SLIDESHOW ALLEYS A Saga of Slideshow Stumbles plus Comments on CD Collections by Leigh Murray  36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36  INTRODUCTION Surprising Series This is the fifth article in the Crafty Arts series. As a non-artist and a mere dabbler in Amiga art, I didn't envisage this series going on for so long. I just thought I'd pass on a few very basic discoveries I'd made in various arty areas of Amiga use, and I thought that would take at most three articles. So the series has come as somewhat of a surprise to me. (And, by the way, I hope that others with more expertise will write articles in the same vein.) Slideshow Saga This time I'll relate what I've learnt recently about slideshows. While setting up Kids.Disk, Jigsaw and Fractal.Jigsaw (MegaDisc's MISC 171-173), I had a fair bit of trouble finding a suitable slideshow program, and I thought a brief description of my search might help other Amigans. Continuous Display Also, my experiences with those jigsaw disks, and with a couple of CDs, have convinced me that a slideshow can provide an interesting `art show' just gurgling away in the background, cycling through pictures. I decided to expand this article to include brief descriptions of the CDs, and cover some of the pictures available in the public domain which could be used in slideshows. SIMPLE SLIDESHOWS Two Types Basically, there are two varieties of slideshows: . ones that cycle through the pictures with no input from the user (they automatically swap to the next picture after a time delay), and . ones which need interaction (such as a click of the left mouse button) to change to the next picture. Pretty Pictures A timed display is perfect for displaying a collection of beautiful images, such as artworks, fabulous fractals, mean metal etc etc... This is the type of slideshow I used on the jigsaw disks. After clicking on the Slideshow icon, each picture stays on the screen for 20 seconds, unless the left mouse button is clicked to change to the next picture sooner. After all the pictures have been displayed or the Esc key is hit, ShoWiz (the slideshow program) exits automatically. For a large number of pictures, it is often nice to have the display loop endlessly, but I thought it was safer not to do this on the jigsaw disks in case people didn't read the doc first before clicking on the Slideshow icon, and didn't know how to get out of it. Informative IFFs A user-driven display, where someone clicks a mouse button or moves the joystick to change to the next screen, is ideal for displaying screens of information at the viewer's own pace. It is flexible and easy to use. Singalong Slides A slideshow of the words of songs can be useful for group singing. The words can be easily displayed on a TV screen or monitor to a whole roomful of people, and that way you avoid the need for songbooks or sheets. For instance, the words of Christmas carols can be typed in a large font on to a med-res 2-colour DPaint screen. Each screen is saved as an ordinary IFF, and then the whole lot is displayed as a slideshow. Suitable fonts include Platinum 54 and Marble 40 (which come on the ProFontsI disk). With such a big font, you only get a couple of lines of each verse per screen, but it makes a very clear display on a large TV screen, and is suitable for use in a big room; for use in a small room, a smaller font - allowing more words per screen - might be better. For singalong slides, you need a slideshow which is externally triggered (rather than a timed display). And if there are many screens, or if some of the screens need to be repeated at intervals (such as choruses), you may need a script facility. No Waiting Room Loading pictures from floppy disk can be a s-l-o-w process; big IFFs take ages. For some slideshows, long waits between slides may not matter much; for others, such as songbook substitutes, they might be critical (no words - no singing!). With memory caching, you don't have to wait while the next screen is loaded. This can be very useful if you are loading the screens from floppy disk, and here QuickFlix shines (see below). With the much faster loading times from a hard disk, memory caching would probably be less important. For a different wait-free technique, you could copy all the IFFs to RAM first (if you have enough memory) and run the slideshow from there to avoid delays while loading. Fades and Wipes All sorts of fancy fades and wipes are available with some slideshow programs. In most cases I found these distracting, and in some cases just plain awful (a 3D fractal faded in with a checkerboard effect looks dreadful), but they would be useful in certain limited circumstances, preferably with fairly plain pictures. The slideshow program with the mostest in the way of wipes is definitely ShoWiz, although another program, SlideShow, is also quite good in this area, with 15 different wipes. SLIDESHOW PROGRAMS Awkward Afterthoughts Making a slideshow of the pictures on the jigsaw disks was something of an afterthought; it was done simply to let people easily check the range of pictures on the disks. But it proved a time-consuming afterthought, because I found the task of setting up a slideshow was not as easy as I expected. All of the programs I tried were either unsuitable for my particular task, or couldn't display the pictures correctly, or had bugs to be circumvented. What I Wanted To Do This was what I hoped to achieve: . display up to 30 pictures per disk in a single slideshow; . start the slideshow by clicking on an icon; . the pictures had long names and were in several directories, so long pathnames/multiple directories had to be possible; . the slideshow should run through without any intervention; . all the Lo-Res pictures should be displayed correctly; . the slideshow program should be as small as possible; . the slideshow should run correctly on Workbench 1.3, 2 and 3 systems, including single-drive systems; . the disk would not necessarily be a boot disk, so programs needing non-standard libraries were out. I found that I couldn't use a CLI-initiated program via an IconX script because in Workbench 1.3 systems, the maximum number of characters on a CLI command line is only 255 (or thereabouts), and I simply couldn't fit anywhere near 30 longish pathnames in so few characters. Some slideshow programs have the capability to show all the pictures in a single directory if you tell them the name of that directory, but can't do this for multiple directories. So I needed some sort of script facility. The Ones I Tried The slideshow programs I evaluated were: Show (on Fish 323, a forerunner of Mostra), ShoWiz (version 2 is on TBAG 31), SlideMaster (on Fish 274), SlideShow (Fish 151 and TBAG 18), QuickFlix (Fish 106), IFF (on MegaDisc 32), and Mostra (the latest version comes on Fish 753). PicBase, which comes on Fish 527, also has a type of slideshow feature, allowing you to scan quickly through miniatures of all the images stored in the database, but it is not a true slideshow program. ShoWiz I had quite a few problems getting this program working satisfactorily because I started out with the older version, 1.0, which I just happened to have already on a MegaDisc GR disk. But do NOT use this version - it has a serious bug. The bug is fixed in version 2 of ShoWiz; this is the only safe version to use. ShoWiz has one quite unusual feature. It blacks out the Workbench screen and all the lettering on it while it is in operation. If for any reason the system puts up a requester (for instance, if a disk it needs is removed during a slideshow, or there is an error on the disk), then you can't see the requester. It's there but all you see is the mouse pointer on a blank black screen. Very confusing! To get out of this situation, a warm restart (press Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga) usually sufficed, but in some instances a cold start (turn the Amiga off for one minute) was necessary. ShoWiz has an excellent script facility. This allowed me to set up a continuous slideshow for all the pictures on the disk, with no restriction on long pathnames for each picture. If I'd wanted to, I could have had different wipes and different time delays for each picture - there is great flexibilty with the script. You can make a continuous display very easily, by using ! at the end of the CLI command line or Repeat in a script (I didn't use this feature for these disks). And you can play sounds and animations via the script too. Although ShoWiz is designed primarily to provide a timed slideshow, it can also be used in a user-interactive mode by specifying a long time delay for each picture, and then clicking the left mouse button whenever you want to skip to the next picture. ShoWiz is a powerful slideshow program, and not overly big for all that power. SlideMaster SlideMaster (v0.1 on Fish 274) can show any IFF picture, including HAM, extra half bright, hi-res, interlace, and overscan; there are 8 different wipes. It can be started from the CLI or Workbench, has an ARexx port and is fairly small. SlideMaster initially looked very promising for the jigsaw disks. It has a time delay mode, and wipes can be specified. But it has no script facility, and I couldn't use its CLI parameters because I'd need more characters for the pathnames than Workbench 1.3 would allow. Also it distorted one of the pictures on Fractal.Jigsaw, the one called Curlicue. Curlicue appeared to all other programs as a perfectly normal lo-res IFF, but SlideMaster treated it as if it were half the screen high, and squashed the picture horribly. So SlideMaster bit the dust. However, SlideMaster is small and powerful, and it may be worth checking out if you want to display a series of pictures. Note that to use SlideMaster for the type of auto-running slideshow I wanted, you would have to use the CLI option (perhaps via IconX) or the ARexx port. From Workbench, it only functions in extended selection mode (whereby you click on the SlideMaster icon then, holding the Shift key down, click on the pictures you want to show). SlideShow To quote from the Fish entry for SlideShow v1.0: "Very nicely done slideshow program written in assembly language. Features forward/backward presentation and creative screen wipes. Currently works only with IFF lo-res pictures." Each click of the left mouse button will display the next slide, while a click on the right mouse button will display the previous slide. There are fifteen different wipes. SlideShow was not suitable for the particular task I had in mind. It won't handle hi-res or HAM, but for the jigsaw disks, that didn't matter at all. What did matter was that it does not have a time delay mode - you need to click the mouse buttons to go forward or back - and, more importantly, all the pictures need to be in the same directory as SlideShow. By the way, the disks it comes on (Fish 151 and TBAG 18) have several good pictures suitable for slideshows (different pictures on the two disks). Show and Mostra Mostra had two problems for my intended use: it needs arp.library in libs: (so unless Mostra is on a boot disk which has arp.library, or you have arp.library on your own boot disk, you can't just click and go), and all its files have to be distributed with it (totalling a hefty 77K). Mostra's forerunner, Show, is small, but it too needs arp.library. Neither program got to first base for this exercise. I am a registered user of Mostra and use it all the time for displaying pictures in SID2; they do a great job together. Mostra correctly handles a wide variety of picture sizes and resolutions more consistently than other viewers I've tried. It is suitable for use in slideshows (as long as you have arp.library) and it has an excellent script facility. But it was not suitable for the jigsaw disks. IFF This one by Nic Wilson is tiny. The latest version of it is on MegaDisc 32; an earlier version (v1.7) comes on Fish 642. This is an excellent IFF displayer, and I used it to display the small images on two of the Pix Starter disks (START 3 and 4) because both FullView and MegaView have problems displaying small pictures. IFF was not, however, suitable for the jigsaw disk slideshows. IFF does have a type of slideshow facility, in that it can display a series of pictures that are listed one after another on the CLI command line, but it has no time delay feature; you have to click the mouse button between each picture. It has no script facility either (in only 3K, that's not surprising!), so you are limited to the total CLI command length of 255 characters for Workbench 1.3 systems and about 512 characters with Workbench 2. (And the version of IFF from MegaDisc 32 doesn't work correctly for multiple pictures - it displays only one.) So, IFF was `out' for the jigsaw disks. QuickFlix QuickFlix (v0.13 comes on Fish 106, or v0.12 on TBAG 20) is an excellent slideshow program, but it was too big for my jigsaw disks (at well over 60K). It is, to quote its Fish entry: "an IFF slideshow and cel animation program that takes full advantage of the Amiga's multitasking operating system, supports all the graphics modes, can run with internal timing or be triggered by an external source, caches images in memory to achieve rapid frame rate, etc." One quirk of QuickFlix is that it uses a joystick rather than the mouse or keyboard for triggering the change to the next picture. The really good feature of this slideshow program is the memory caching. That is, it buffers images, queuing as many as memory can hold. This can be very handy for some situations, such as projecting the words of a song (see above). PICTURES FOR SLIDESHOWS Picture Sources There are a lot of great pictures readily available in the public domain. Some of the best sources are the TBAG disks and the MegaDisc GR series. And you can always create your own masterpieces if you have artistic skills. TBAG disks contain many interesting pictures, ranging from cartoon characters to ray-traced goodies. Some of the pictures I like include: . cartoons - Mickey Mouse (as the Sorcerer's Apprentice) on TBAG 18, Bugs Bunny on TBAG 36; . scenes - a beautifully detailed medieval Castle and a Spaceship on TBAG 1, Mt. Rushmore and a gorgeous Strawberry on TBAG 18, Cindy and Coca-Cola on TBAG 74, a fierce-looking Ice Giant character on TBAG 75 (this appears to have been done by the same artist as an interesting scene called Refection on TBAG 73); and . people - Beatles TBAG 70, Einstein TBAG 36, Terminator TBAG 18 and Trek Crew TBAG 22. MegaDisc GR disks with potentially suitable slideshow pictures include: . raytraced - GR 35, GR 128, GR 158, GR 160, GR 168, GR 176 A & B; . space images - GR 3 and 4 (Neptune), GR 24 (Orion etc), GR 61 (nebulae, constellations), GR 134 (planets); . Star Trek - GR 89, GR 91, GR 128-130, GR 142 A & B, GR 160; . animals and flowers - GR 17 Graaf Slideshow (truly superb, beautifully detailed pictures); and . assorted - GR 161 Tolkien Slideshow, GR 23-34 (12 disks of digitised pictures; excellent quality; choose GR34 for snazzy cars, GR23 for futuristic scenes, and GR24 for astronomical subjects). Fish disks don't have a lot of pictures. There are a few lurking quietly in the deeper waters of the collection, but it takes a good troll to find them. Some of the ones I've netted include those distributed with the slideshow programs on Fish 151 and 274, and some good cartoon pictures on Fish 394. Fractals make great slideshows. If you read the previous Crafty_Arts (in MD34), you will have noticed that I dote on fractals. If you like these pictures, wonderful slideshows of your own fascinating fractals can easily be created (see the "Beginners Guide to Creating Beautiful Fractals" on MegaDisc 35 for hints). There are tons of ready-made fractal images in the MegaDisc PD library. Try GR 7 Mandel Magic 1, GR 56 Mandelbrot Slideshow, GR 140 MathVision stuff, GR 177 Harting Fractals or MISC 173 Fractal Jigsaw. Several other MegaDisc GR disks contain fractal pictures in PowerPacked format; these might make suitable slideshow pictures if they are first unpacked (or if the slideshow program handles PowerPacked files). In this category, see GR 108 CPM MandelDisk and GR 136 A-C. Alphabet Soup and Kids.Disk - for the littlest members of the family, GR 166 has a slideshow of alphabet pictures, and MISC 171 has a slideshow of cartoon characters. Picture Resizing Note that most, if not all, of the TBAG graphics and many of the other graphics around have been created on an NTSC screen. As a result, they are only 200 or 400 pixels high (depending on the resolution) and have a rather squashed appearance when they are displayed on a PAL screen. To change them back to their original full-screen proportions, you need to resize them to 256 or 512 pixels high. Other pictures started life on an IBM or Mac, in screen resolutions which do not match anything on the Amiga. The proportions of these pictures will have to be tweaked until they look `right', with only your judgement to guide you (circles can be helpful here, if there are any in the picture). Storing the Pictures IFF images tend to take up a lot of disk space. Even in the lowest resolution (lo-res non-interlaced), many pictures take 20-30K, so 30 pictures will be about the most that can be stored on an 880K floppy. Using hi-res interlaced, far fewer pictures will fit. And HAM pictures often run to over 100K each, never mind the 24-bit stuff which is even greedier on storage. To produce an effective artshow, you need a lot of pictures. For a show that continues to interest and delight, I think at least 100 pictures would be needed, and preferably many more. So these shows are really best run from a hard drive or CD. CD-ROM, with a capacity approaching 600MB per CD, is the ideal storage medium for slideshow pictures (but, of course, you can't create the CDs yourself). CD SLIDESHOWS Connoisseur Arts The Connoisseur Fine Art Collection, to give the CD its full title, makes an excellent slideshow, with over 400 works of art (predominantly paintings) from Classical Greek up to the Impressionists of the late 19th Century. Each picture is accompanied by a few paragraphs of notes on the artists, period etc. There are some wonderful paintings on this CD. I've found that leaving this art slideshow running on an unused TV, displaying pictures one after another, makes a wonderful learning aid; as I wander into the room, or look up from something else I'm doing, there is another marvellous picture, one that perhaps I'd not noticed before. Since much art appreciation is an acquired skill, running the Connoisseur Art slideshow should be an excellent aid in developing interest in art. Something I've noticed is that almost all reproductions of paintings look a great deal more interesting when displayed on a TV or cinema screen than they do when printed on a page. Something of the vivid quality obvious when you see paintings in real life seems to leap out of the screen, unlike the generally dull impression of printed reproductions. The light seems to glow out from the pictures, particularly those (such as the Impressionist paintings) where the artist's primary goal is to capture the effects of light. Fractal Universe This CD contains 400 pre-generated fractal images, which can be viewed in four ways: 20, 40 or 60 pictures chosen at random, or a continuous show of the full gallery. While any picture is being displayed, you can press the CDTV's button A to get brief details of that image. Fractal Universe also contains several fractal-generating programs. You can save images you create as IFFs, and you can load these IFFs into Paint packages for artistic modification. But you can't reload any fractal into the Fractal Universe program used to create it, for further modification. So Fractal Universe could hardly be considered a serious fractal tool. It is mainly a slideshow and tutorial, and it performs these functions well. The instructions provided with the CD are not really adequate. The IFF save routines are detailed only on the cardboard liftout packaged with the CD, which would be easily lost. These routines use the rather unfriendly AMOS requesters etc, too, which is another small negative. Still, the CD is well worth purchasing if you are into fractals. CONCLUSION Well, that's about it for slideshows. I enjoyed setting up the slideshows on the jigsaw disks (apart from heartburn caused by the program bugs), and I love watching the continuous display of Connoisseur Art and Fractal Universe. You, too, may find slideshows an interesting area of Crafty Arts to dabble in. © Leigh Murray Queanbeyan NSW September 1993  36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36 -+- 36