My goal: create a slide show of photos of a recent vacation,with music, that could be displayed on a family room TV set hooked to an Xbox. This simple project took me far too long to accomplish. Iencountered software with poor editing options, annoying upload limitations,format issues, missing features, and poor performance. I am willing to admitthat some of the poor performance may have been mine, but at least some of itwas from my technology.
The bottom line: I was finally able to get my 38 minute slideshow to play on my TV using an Xbox 360 and a Surface Pro. I installed theslide show on the Surface Pro, and used the ?Play To? command to beam it to the360. It played continuously as I wanted. I had to connect the Pro to AC power andmanually set it to never turn off or dim the screen. I?d really expect thosechanges to be made automatically when using Play To.
I took lots of pictures on the recent vacation and the firstversions of the slide show were even longer than 38 minutes. The size of theslide show prevented me from uploading it to SkyDrive. I could have made theslide show shorter, but family members wanted it longer.
My first editing efforts were with Adobe Premiere Elements.After importing the pictures into Elements, I found the program to be difficultto use, particularly to move blocks of photos at a time from one place toanother in the slide show. I also tried creating a version of the slide showwith the Cyber Link Media Suite that came with my Dell PC. This was also verylimiting. In the end I used the very simple Microsoft Movie Maker, which makesit easy to move blocks of photos at a time and allows me to use music from myCD collection as a soundtrack. Movie Maker does not allow me to burn the finished productto a DVD that I could simply play in my Xbox One. The Cyber Link Media Suitedoes allow DVD burning, which is probably the reason it is included on the PCbecause Windows 8 doesn?t provide that feature. Yet I couldn?t import my MovieMaker project to the Cyber Link program for burning to DVD, and as I said,Cyber Link?s slide show creation software was frustrating to use.
If I can?t just burn the slide show to a DVD, how do I getto the TV? I know the Xbox One won?t play files from thumb drives connected tothe USB ports (yet). I also know the Xbox One doesn?t even display your Videofolder in its SkyDrive app. They will tell you this is a known issue. It willplay videos stored in the Pictures folder, but not videos the size of mine. Ican?t even upload my slide show to SkyDrive.
I hooked my Xbox 360 back up to the TV. It would usuallystream personal videos from my PC to the TV via our wireless network. I gavethis a try and while it worked, it didn?t work well. There were a lot offreezes and stutters and it just wasn?t going to acceptable. I had an 8GB thumbdrive handy so I tried to copy the slide show to it. I would then just play theslide show on the 360 from the thumb drive. As I tried to copy the slide show,I received a message that the empty 8GB thumb drive didn?t have enough spacefor the 5GB file. I reformatted the thumb drive using NTFS and now the slideshow fit just fine.
Of course, I had just created a new problem. The 360 willonly recognize external memory formatted in FAT 32. I?d forgotten about that. Isuppose I could go out and buy a larger thumb drive but frankly at this point,I didn?t want to. I decided to try to play the slide show from my Surface Proby connecting it via HDMI to my TV. This worked, but for some reason there wasno audio. Hearing my selection of songs that accompany the pictures wasn?tessential but by this time I wanted my creation to be seen as it had finallyemerged. I assume there was probably an audio setting on the Surface Pro Ineeded to change, but it was about this time that I stumbled across theforgotten ?Play To? feature. Because the 360 was hooked up and still on, when Iright clicked on my slide show, the Play To option appeared. I gave it a tryand the slide show played with audio. I selected the Repeat feature and itimmediately restarted after it completed. Happy day!
As I said earlier, some of the problems I encountered in mylong journey were undoubtedly my own doing: the large size of my slide show andmy own inexperience with this type of production. I can do lots of things on myPC just fine, but I think I?ve only created about 3 slide shows ever. Otherparts of my problem are the result of being an early adopter and buying theXbox One before many of its features are even working.
If anyone has gotten all the way through this account andcan offer suggestions about how I could have done this without all the drama,I?m eager to learn. Thank you in advance.
The bottom line: I was finally able to get my 38 minute slideshow to play on my TV using an Xbox 360 and a Surface Pro. I installed theslide show on the Surface Pro, and used the ?Play To? command to beam it to the360. It played continuously as I wanted. I had to connect the Pro to AC power andmanually set it to never turn off or dim the screen. I?d really expect thosechanges to be made automatically when using Play To.
I took lots of pictures on the recent vacation and the firstversions of the slide show were even longer than 38 minutes. The size of theslide show prevented me from uploading it to SkyDrive. I could have made theslide show shorter, but family members wanted it longer.
My first editing efforts were with Adobe Premiere Elements.After importing the pictures into Elements, I found the program to be difficultto use, particularly to move blocks of photos at a time from one place toanother in the slide show. I also tried creating a version of the slide showwith the Cyber Link Media Suite that came with my Dell PC. This was also verylimiting. In the end I used the very simple Microsoft Movie Maker, which makesit easy to move blocks of photos at a time and allows me to use music from myCD collection as a soundtrack. Movie Maker does not allow me to burn the finished productto a DVD that I could simply play in my Xbox One. The Cyber Link Media Suitedoes allow DVD burning, which is probably the reason it is included on the PCbecause Windows 8 doesn?t provide that feature. Yet I couldn?t import my MovieMaker project to the Cyber Link program for burning to DVD, and as I said,Cyber Link?s slide show creation software was frustrating to use.
If I can?t just burn the slide show to a DVD, how do I getto the TV? I know the Xbox One won?t play files from thumb drives connected tothe USB ports (yet). I also know the Xbox One doesn?t even display your Videofolder in its SkyDrive app. They will tell you this is a known issue. It willplay videos stored in the Pictures folder, but not videos the size of mine. Ican?t even upload my slide show to SkyDrive.
I hooked my Xbox 360 back up to the TV. It would usuallystream personal videos from my PC to the TV via our wireless network. I gavethis a try and while it worked, it didn?t work well. There were a lot offreezes and stutters and it just wasn?t going to acceptable. I had an 8GB thumbdrive handy so I tried to copy the slide show to it. I would then just play theslide show on the 360 from the thumb drive. As I tried to copy the slide show,I received a message that the empty 8GB thumb drive didn?t have enough spacefor the 5GB file. I reformatted the thumb drive using NTFS and now the slideshow fit just fine.
Of course, I had just created a new problem. The 360 willonly recognize external memory formatted in FAT 32. I?d forgotten about that. Isuppose I could go out and buy a larger thumb drive but frankly at this point,I didn?t want to. I decided to try to play the slide show from my Surface Proby connecting it via HDMI to my TV. This worked, but for some reason there wasno audio. Hearing my selection of songs that accompany the pictures wasn?tessential but by this time I wanted my creation to be seen as it had finallyemerged. I assume there was probably an audio setting on the Surface Pro Ineeded to change, but it was about this time that I stumbled across theforgotten ?Play To? feature. Because the 360 was hooked up and still on, when Iright clicked on my slide show, the Play To option appeared. I gave it a tryand the slide show played with audio. I selected the Repeat feature and itimmediately restarted after it completed. Happy day!
As I said earlier, some of the problems I encountered in mylong journey were undoubtedly my own doing: the large size of my slide show andmy own inexperience with this type of production. I can do lots of things on myPC just fine, but I think I?ve only created about 3 slide shows ever. Otherparts of my problem are the result of being an early adopter and buying theXbox One before many of its features are even working.
If anyone has gotten all the way through this account andcan offer suggestions about how I could have done this without all the drama,I?m eager to learn. Thank you in advance.
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