Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

kveras · 2011-06-05 20:50:42

Hi.

We are trying to replace windows and apple on all computers in our church. Now, I know we will most likely hang on to some of our macs for video editing purposes, but we have identified several computers that runs Windows that can easily use Linux.

We have come across one nut that we have yet to solve, and I would hope that someone would have some input on how to do this.

In the lobby, we have a windows computer hooked up to a tv. On the screen we are showing Slideshows with information on upcoming events, videos from meetings, twitter and also a list of all the Buses leaving from the nearby bus stop. The latter one is hooked to "Västtrafiks" (our local bus company) API, and update in real time.

All this is very easily done in WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Since there is no support in mono for this yet, we are looking to replace the application all together. However, we can't seem to find a suitable replacement. We have all been looking for a while, and we are starting to think that we may have to write our own program in Java.

Now, this would be a huge time sink, so I hope that some of you might have some insight about a software that could fulfill our needs.

The basic requirements are Image slideshow, background Music, Video slideshow, twitter feed, and perhaps rss feed integration. Now, the ability to show Västtrafiks time table would be neat, but I think we can hack that ourselves if we find a suitable open source solution for the rest.

I am going to try to get a video on what it looks like today, to get a better understanding about what it is.

Inxsible · 2011-06-05 22:22:41

any image viewer would be able to do image slideshow. I am not sure about video slideshow though.

I am afraid, you might have to use multiple apps to get what you want.

Tux the penguin · 2011-06-06 01:04:51

couldn't you just use something like openshot to make the image/video slideshows into one file then play it with something like vlc? Or am I misunderstanding you?

damacas · 2011-06-06 01:35:31

I don't have a clue about Windows Presentation Foundation, but apparently some of the output is "playable" in Silverlight....for which I believe the linux alternative is Moonlight. So hopefully the content would be viewable through Moonlight.

In terms of creating the content, no idea.

skottish · 2011-06-06 02:32:55

Before this thread drifts, the primary goal is here:

kveras wrote:

In the lobby, we have a windows computer hooked up to a tv. On the screen we are showing Slideshows with information on upcoming events, videos from meetings, twitter and also a list of all the Buses leaving from the nearby bus stop. The latter one is hooked to "Västtrafiks" (our local bus company) API, and update in real time.

I have some questions: How is the formatting on this? I mean, is the slideshow, video(s), feeds and such all on screen at one time like an American cable newscast?

Last edited by skottish (2011-06-06 02:34:32)

kveras · 2011-06-06 09:25:46

skottish wrote:

Before this thread drifts, the primary goal is here:
kveras wrote:
In the lobby, we have a windows computer hooked up to a tv. On the screen we are showing Slideshows with information on upcoming events, videos from meetings, twitter and also a list of all the Buses leaving from the nearby bus stop. The latter one is hooked to "Västtrafiks" (our local bus company) API, and update in real time.
I have some questions: How is the formatting on this? I mean, is the slideshow, video(s), feeds and such all on screen at one time like an American cable newscast?

Yes, if I understand you correct.

A bit more information. Today we use a Dropbox folder to add media, like videos and images etc. After every loop that the software has made it stops to check if the folder has any new files. If it has, it automatically includes it in the feed, as well as deletes any media that has been removed from the folder. So everything is managed by uploading to the folder from anywhere, the box itself is headless and is only running this single output.

Today we only show the output on one single screen. But it may be interesting to do this over several screens in the future.

We could use openshot and manually edit the feed etc, but that takes away the ease of use. The idea is that anyone with something to say should be able to upload it without any tech skills. Right now, we are thinking about porting the functionality to Java, however I think that this would be at least 50 work hours to get it functional.

d33n · 2011-06-06 10:39:02

Why not make it webbased?
all the things you want to do is possible in HTML(5) + a scripting language.
Also it will be usefull in the future when you want to show it on more screens, you only need a webbrowser

kveras · 2011-06-06 11:34:24

It's a valid point.

Here are some screenshots from the application (windowed) to give an idea of what it looks like.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85 … ewer1.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/84 … ewer2.png/

Pank · 2011-06-06 12:16:11

You might be able to use Impressive. It handles pdfs and images out of the box. As far as I remember it can also be set to recheck the folder. (At least in can recheck slides...). Thus, you could just dump images or pdfs into a folder and have Impressive run.

It also supports video and sound but you have to specify that in a separate file, it seems.

Impressive is written in Python so it should not be too hard to change it to what you want. E.g. I don't think it would be to hard to add video support without the need of an external file.

You could also wrap it all up in LaTeX Beamer. It could auto-compile every so often of just watch the folder for changes (using e.g. latexmk). A script could convert RSS info to a beamer slides which was included. You'd have to figure out a clever way to include new slides, i.e. dumping new_slide.txt into you folder and have it magically converted to

These new non-linear slideshows are quite teh awesome! Especially RSA animate. That would probably require you to work with something like Inkscape (if you want to do it with Free software). Another pure-web solution is S5. I don't know how easily it could be automated though.

Cheers,
Rasmus

arkay · 2011-06-07 04:52:53

I'm not too sure how easy it would be but something you could look in to is playlists for XBMC.

XBMC is a video/photo/music playback software that is very well supported under Linux. I'm thinking that it might be possible to have a very simple perl or shell script running in the background that detects changes in the media and re-creates a playlist file that is then handed to XBMC for playback.

Alternately XBMC also features the ability to run user written python scripts so someone with the right skills could mimic the functionality directly from within XBMC.

XBMC can then provide the video and audio playback and already has the perfect still photo slideshow capabilities.

It would be worth asking on the XBMC forums to see if it could be done, you never know, an adequate plugin (script) may already exist.

Cheers,

Arkay.

N30N · 2011-06-19 14:06:48

Recently I saw the LGM talk about Pinpoint which supports images and videos. Might be worth checking out.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-05 20:50:42

Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#2 2011-06-05 22:22:41

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#3 2011-06-06 01:04:51

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#4 2011-06-06 01:35:31

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#5 2011-06-06 02:32:55

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#6 2011-06-06 09:25:46

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#7 2011-06-06 10:39:02

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#8 2011-06-06 11:34:24

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#9 2011-06-06 12:16:11

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#10 2011-06-07 04:52:53

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

#11 2011-06-19 14:06:48

Re: Is there any good Linux software to show slideshows, videos and more?

Board footer