I concluded in my previous post that I needed to get over any deep rooted trauma about ‘slide shows’, both from childhood 35mm and many deaths by PowerPoint in a business context. This got me think about other technical solutions to production – Adobe Premiere Pro is after all over-engineered for slide show production and is aimed at professional movie making. Could I obtain what I need from a simpler tool without too much compromise and make a much quicker workflow?
I looked into a number of options.
- There are a number of online applications, which I quickly discounted as I want something that can manage large photo files easily without uploading/downloading.
- KeyNote – I’ve never used KeyNote but note that it has some useful output options, including as a movie format and as html that can be uploaded to websites. The latter is interesting as the output wouldn’t require hosting on Vimeo or YouTube and could be embedded directly. It also offers a record function for timing of slide movements (and voice over if needed), which seems to be adjustable manually. It’s free with Macs.
- PowerPoint – One that I’ve suffered heavy trauma through tedious ppt shows. But have used extensively, if not for photos. It is essentially the Windows equivalent to KeyNote but also works on Mac. I have access included in my MS Office student membership.
- Premiere Pro – it would be possible to use this in a simpler way without getting into all the fine tuning it offers; using it with a slide show in mind rather than movie from stills. This may not turn out to be an issue but Premiere Pro is a video tool so obviously does not export to html like KeyNote and PowerPoint.
For my next experiment in ‘film making’, I’m going to make slide shows. I’ll try both KeyNote and Premiere Pro. For KeyNote, I’ll also see whether exporting to html and embedding in a website is a advantage over pure video.