In one of the first articles of Linuxaria i’ve posted a complete how to in how to make a DVD slideshow with Linux and the main program to do this was Imagination, a software that i really like for his simplicity of use.
Imagination is a lightweight and simple DVD slide show maker for Linux and FreeBSD written in C language and built with the GTK+2 toolkit. Imagination has been designed from the ground up to be fast, light and easy-to-use. It requires the ffmpeg encoder to produce the movie file and libsox to handle the audio and nothing else, there are no other dependencies.
With its simple interface you can create slideshows with many transition effects (69!) to move from one image to another and can have animated subtitles. The new release, the 3 brings many new features including HD video, and fixes for the creation of video and ffmpeg.
Other features are:
- random function to automatically set a random transition on all the selected slides
- cut/copy/paste ability on the slides
- Ken Burns ability
- text on the slides with some text animations
- ability to add an empty slide with a gradient editor
- export of the slideshow as OGV Theora/Vorbis, widescreen FLV video and 3GP for mobile phones.
Installation
I noticed version 3.0 on my Gentoo on today update, so if you have a Gentoo (or Sabayon) you should have no problem in installing it.
On ubuntu 11.04 it’s present the release 2.1, so to install the shining new 3.0 you have to use a PPA, I’ve found 2 PPA for this :
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/imagination/3.0-1
http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/packages/show/308386 (Get deb)
Conclusions
Imagination is a real gem. You can create slideshows from a picture gallery, and add many professional options. Just start it up, then click the top-left button to create a new slide show. A new dialog box pops up, asking you for a name (and location to save) your new slideshow, along with the format and a couple other options. You have the choice to save your slideshow as either a VOB (Video Object), for direct burning to DVD, or as a Flash Video, for uploading to video sharing websites ( such as YouTube), and in release 3.0 you can also set the resolution as HD. You have also the options to save this Video for NTSC or Pal (and also for 4:3 or 16:9)
Once you’ve created your slideshow, you’ll be able to add your pictures, you can select them, with drag and drop and reorder them. There is also a preview where you can see the effects and the timing before doing the export.
A detailed guide on how to use it on this article
It is a program that I recommend highly.
Video of release 2.1
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Thanks for using my little demo as an example. A new example imagination 3.1 is in the making. I notify here when it is finish and send you the link.