DVD slideshows, menus, etc….

As a follow up to the discussion at the March meeting about iPhoto slideshows, DVD slideshows, and getting several slideshows to play one after the other on a DVD –  

Many times I export a slideshow from iPhoto since iPhoto has nice templates and you can set the slideshow to the music you want and the timing you want.

You can import those exported slideshows into iMovie, set chapter markers, and share that to iDVD.  Then when you watch the DVD you can select the section you want from the menu or let the whole thing play and watch it all without having to revisit the menu.  Plus you have the cool interface from iPhoto.

The pictures are set on fixed times but you can pause if you want to look at one longer.  There are quite a lot of steps but worth it if you end up with the product you want.

Cloud Computing

After the discussion at the last meeting some may find this article on “The Cloud” interesting.

It is directed at schools but informative for anyone.

http://link.scholastic.com/u.d?DYGl36lp7iSrFD8z8HUYZ=12351

Wi-Fire

The Wi-Fire long-range WIFI adapter did extend the reach of my signal but did not boost it as much as I expected.  Possibly my expectations were unrealistic.

Some comments -

• The physical design could be better.  With the wireless access point in front of you the USB cable hangs over your display and/or keyboard if you have it clipped on the laptop.
• Small rotation in the direction the receiver is pointed impacts the strength of the signal.
• Installed on a PowerBook G4 running OS 10.4.11 there are frequent kernel panics if you poke around in the menus.
• Installed on a NetBook running Windows 7 seems to work well although with the NetBook the signal was not as good as on the PowerBook. 
• Installation on the Windows machine did not ask for a restart but the Wi-Fire did not work until the computer was restarted.
• The software has a nice interface, easy to access and understand with quite a bit of information for the casual user.
• The interface in Windows has more information than the Mac version or maybe just organized better so more easily discovered.  And since the Mac goes into kernel panic when looking through the settings there may be more there that I am not getting to.
• The problems on the Mac could be the computer and not the software since this is an older machine and has had some reliability issues.

Bottom line – I can sit in my house and access our church network at the other end of the block which I was unable to do without the Wi-Fire.

iMovie Cutaway Effect

If you want to try the cutaway effect Dennis showed us at the meeting but didn’t quite get all the steps, MacMost has a short video tutorial that will walk you through it.