Creating and Editing a slideshow

Before you start constructing a slide show it is wise to make sure that you have set the screen parameters first. That way Magic Lantern will know what default values to use for the pan and zoom settings.

Setting the screen parameters

First you must determine the resolution of the display unit you are going to use to show your slideshow on. You probably know the resolution of your computers monitor but it may not be so easy to find out the actual input resolution of your TV as TV manufacturers are wont to exaggerate their claims by using such words as 'effective' or 'compatible with' etc. etc. To make matters worse, the aspect ratio of the picture as seen on the screen may not be the same as the aspect ratio of the input resolution. For example, a typical modern 'widescreen' TV may be capable of handling a video input signal of resolution 1024 x 768 (ie an aspect ration of 4:3) but expand it in the X direction to fill a widescreen screen of aspect ratio 16:9. If you want to show your pictures without distortion on a TV like this, the computer must compress the pictures in the X direction before sending them to the TV by a factor of 1.33. Magic Lantern allows you to specify what value of compression factor is best for your TV.

Assuming that you know the resolution and compression factor you need, go to 'Screen parameters' and either choose from one of the common option listed or enter your own custom values into the dialog box provided. Your settings will be displayed in the middle of the main window and the preview windows will adjust to match the aspect ratio of your TV. What you see in these windows will be the same as you see on your TV but you should be aware that when you are showing your slideshow, the picture you see on your monitor may not be the same.

Creating a list of slides

There are several ways of creating a list of slides:

Goto 'File > Load new slideshow' etc.
Goto 'File > Append slideshow' etc.
Goto 'Slides > Add folder of slides'
Goto 'Slides > Add individual slides'
Drag a folder of images onto the slide bar
Drag individual images onto the slide bar

Slides are always added to the end of the list. This is for technical rerasons as much as anything else. If you want to add a slide somewhere else, you must add it to the end first and then drag it to the place you want it yo go (see below).

It is important to realise from the start that when images are loaded in this way, only the reference to the image is stored, not the actual image itself. This means that if the image is renamed or moved, Magic Lantern will not be able to find the image when it is needed.

Editing the list

If you want to move a slide from one place to another, you can do this by dragging and dropping it using the RIGHT hand mouse button.

If you click on a slide using the LEFT hand mouse button, the slide will be highlighted with a red border and will appear in the preview windows.

if you click on a slide with the LEFT hand mouse button while holding down the SHIFT key, the slide border will turn grey and the slide will be disabled (ie it will not appear in the slide show). Clicking on it a second time will enable it again. You can disable any number of slides.

To remove one or more slides you must disable them first, then use the menu option 'Slides > Remove disabled slides'

Menu options for removing all the slides and for enabling all the slides are also provided.

Note that when a slideshow is saved, the references to disabled slides are still preserved, as is its enabled state.

Adding blank (caption) slides

To add a blank (caption) slide, select the slide where you want the blank slide to appear and goto 'Slides > Add blank slide ...'. A dialogue box will appear into which you can type a caption; then click on OK. The blank slide is normally placed in front of the selected slide but an exception is made if the selected slide is the last one in which case the blank slide is placed at the end. Alternatively, to add a terminal slide atomatically, goto 'Slides > Add terminal slide ...' This slide has the caption "The End".

Setting the duration

During the slideshow, each slide goes through 5 phases:

crossfade in for 2 seconds
pause for interval 1
pan and/or zoom for interval 2
pause for interval 3
crossfade out for 2 seconds

You can set the duration of intervals 1,2 & 3 to any value from 0 to 100 seconds using the numeric up/down boxes.

A checkbox is also provided which causes the slide to go into paused mode when panning has finished. This can be useful if you want to talk about the slides as they appear.

If you wish set or unset the pause flags for all the slides, goto 'Slides > Set all pause flags to ... > Off/On'.

Setting the Pan and Zoom parameters

When each slide is shown, it can optionally pan and/or zoom. All you do is select the slide, then with the mouse hovering over the start picture, use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out to the desired magnification; then using the LEFT hand mouse button, drag the picture so that the image is how you want the slide to look at the start. Then repeat for the finish picture.

Click on the 'Test' button to see how the effect will look.

Magic Lantern will automatically choose a suitable duration for you but you can change this if you want to. If you do not want to pan or zoom then uncheck the 'Pan and zoom' checkbox. Note that if the start and finish images are nearly the same, the program will automatically uncheck the 'Pan and zoom' box.

To reset the picture to a default value, 'Show whole picture' will select the maximum size which shows all the picture; 'Fill the screen' will select the minimum size which fills the whole screeen.

When new slides are loaded, Magic Lantern will calculate a suitable set of Pan and Zoom parameters. For normal pictures this will be 'Show whole picture', no pan or zoom and a duration of 5 seconds. Images with an aspect ratio (width/height) greater than 3 will be shown as 'Fill the screen' with pan from left to right and a suitable longer duration.

If you do not want the picture to pan or zoom you must either ensure that the start and finish positions are identical (you can do this easily by clicking on the '=' button between the two preview images) or simply uncheck the 'pan and zoom' checkbox.

If you wish to reset the pan and zoom parameters of all the slides to their default values, goto 'Slides > Reset slides'.

Editing the caption

Each slide has a filename and a caption associated with it. Both of these are written on the thumbnail of the slide with the caption at the top and the filename at the bottom. When a slide is loaded, the filename is used to construct a default caption.

To edit the caption, select the slide; then click the 'Caption' button. A dialogue box will open into which you can input one or more lines of text. You can also set the point size.

Note that captions are not normally displayed on pictures as they detract from the show. They can, however, be brought up on the screen by pressing the TAB key while the slide is being displayed. Blank (caption) slides do, however, always display their caption.

Renaming slides

It often happens that when showing a slide show, you find you have misspelt a caption or a member of your audience tells you something about the picture that you didn't know and you need to rename the slide. To do this, press F9 while showing the slide. This will bring up a small dialog box into which you can enter a new name. Renaming a slide will also cause the caption to update as well.

You can also rename a slide while editing the slideshow. First select the slide, then click the 'Rename' button.

Note that when you rename a slide, this actually renames the image file on the disc. You should be aware that any other slide shows (or indeed programs) that reference that file will need to be changed accordingly. For technical reasons, it is not that easly to rename a file which is in current use. To provide this facility, the images have to be loaded in a special way. This can sometimes cause problems with the smooth running of a slide show. If you do not need this facility, you can turn it off by going to File > Enable/Disable rename facility.

Sorting the slides

One problem with the way the Windows operating system works is that when you drag a folder or a selection of slides into Magic Lantern, the files are presented to the program in the order in which they are listed in the folders index. This is not necessarily the same as the order in which they appear on the screen - it can, in fact be any order which the OS chooses.

Now slides have a very definite order which it is probable that you want to preserve, namely the order in which you took the pictures. This is usually reflected in the filename which is allocated to the picture when the picture was taken. On the other hand, it is probable that you will want to give your pictures more meaningful names, to weed out duds and generally tidy things up - all of which tends to mess up the order in which the files are stored in the folder. It is good practice, therefore, if you want to preserve the order in which your pictures were taken to number them when you rename them eg a file called 'P300465.jpg' might be renamed to '(36) Windemere.jpg'. Numbering your slides in this way also has the advantage that you can give two or more slides the same name but with a different number eg '(37) Windemere.jpg'. Windows XP handles these names very sensibly because if you use the 'Arrange icons by > name' facility, you will find that the the files are displayed correctly in numerical order (1) (2) .. (10) (11).. instead of the usual alphanumeric order (1) (10) (11) ... (2) (20) (21) ... As noted above, however, Windows does not necessarily send the files to Magic Lantern in that order though!

All of this means that all your good work ordering your slides goes out of the window when you try to create a slide show. It is for this reason the Magic Lantern provides an intelligent sorting routine which sorts your slides into proper numerical order. Select the point at which you want the sorting to begin and go to 'Slides > Sort by number'. The sort routine will finish at the next caption slide. The reason for this is so that you can import files from different folders each set having their own numerical sequence. You can sort each set independently of the others by separating them off with blank slides.

Saving and loading slideshows

Facilities for saving and loading slideshows will be found in the 'File' menu

Slideshows are saved in a human-readable text format with a file extension of '.mgl'. There are occasions when you might wish to edit this file using a text editor such as Notepad. For example, if you move a folder of pictures or if you want a slideshow to run on another computer you should be able to make the necessary changes to all the filenames using a 'find and replace' routine.

If you set the properties of an .mgl file appropriately, clicking on an .mgl file will open Magic Lantern and load the file in one go.