Watcher Defined Music Files

[sanewcomb]

Watcher Defined Music Files

I create a lot of slideshows of outdoor trips to share with friends who were on the trip. I do my best to put appropriate music to the slides, but my friends have a wide range of music tastes. The idea here is the slideshow creator would pick transition time points (ability to define fade characteristics would be nice too) while making the show and the watcher or end user would be able to substitute their MP3 files for the ones included in the EXE. I would think this could be accomplished in several different ways, but it seems the easiest would be using a standard naming convention (1.mp3, 2.mp3, etc) and have the program look in the directory it is executed from to see if they are there.

This function is specific to sharing slideshows with friends and would not be useful for slideshows created for artistic A/V purposes. If people were worried about others changing their work, an option could be added to disable the feature. However, it might be useful for those wishing to stay clear of copyright issues for professional shoots like weddings. Create the show with the customer's desired songs, then provide the show without them with instructions to include their own music files.

Steve Newcomb

Tucson, AZ USA

[jfa]

Steve it is possible to make a show with no sound/music and let your friends play their music on their PC in the background while they watch the AV. Perhaps you could provide them with the PTE file and let them add their own music if they wanted the music embedded in the EXE file. As it's only for your friends this could work.

This function may be possible to incorporate into PTE but I think it would be very difficult to have a viewer add music via an edit of the EXE file.

[sanewcomb]

All the viewer would do is rename the MP3 files they wanted to hear (to 1.mp3, 2.mp3, etc) and place them in the same directory of the slideshow EXE file.

The EXE file would have MP3s in it (the ones the creator put in), but would look to see if replacements existed and use those if so.

The fading ability (while creating the slideshow) is actually a pretty important part of this request, though it isn't necessary for it to be user defined (It could be a set value, similar to how Winamp cross fades music when that option is selected). This would eliminate abrupt transitions that would take away from the viewing experience. It would be necessary for the creator to define the times in which the music files are changed, something P2E does not currently do but a feature that has been requested many times in the past. If it were to simply play the music files in their entire length, one after another, this is actually already available to the watcher as you have stated. Also, they could turn off the computer speakers and play whatever music they want on a portable MP3 player.

Giving them the pte file isn't an option because I would also have to include all of the files, captions, etc for them to create an EXE file (often in the 100s of megabytes), as well as they would have to own P2E. I could just ask them for their music files and make custom EXE files for them, but this would add considerable effort and time. I think this feature, though not necessary, would be useful for people who share slideshows this way because it would make it easy for the watcher to select a soundtrack they like, but still be relevant to the slideshow timing. I often set different moods for different parts of a slideshow by the music. They would have to follow this with similar mood selections, but I think that is not difficult to understand. I find music adds a lot of emotion to a slideshow, particularly one in which someone has lived through, and people have many different tastes and favorites.

Steve Newcomb

Tucson, AZ USA