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    Requested Various options for slideshow

    After, once more, spending all of a weekend with trial versions of other (commercial) software I conclude that IrfanView is still my favorite - but that doesn't mean I don't get frustrated by what I perceive to be it's shortcomings; especially as some of those seem so very easy to redress.
    In accordance with the wise warnings of the moderators of this forum, to NOT try making IrfanView into more of a 'Swiss army knife' than it already is, I will concentrate on enhancements of existing functions which are, or so it seems to me, simple to implement while greatly enhancing the usefuleness of the program. (To me, at least:-) I feel a bit shy, though, as my most urgent whishes seem to me so very simple that the only reason for them not being implemented already must be that noone else needs them... Is that so? Comments are greatly appreciated.

    I use the program to make a nice presentation of a selection of the stills AND movies of one particular event or holiday. In addition, some plug-ins (like lossless crop and rotation) are much appreciated. I'll start with what I think would be both very useful and very easy to implement:

    1) When saving a 'slide-show' in a text-file, I sorely miss the option 'save without path'. My pictures tend to get moved; when saved with path I can't re-use all the work I've done to make a selection of the best pictures, in a nice order. (Which, at the moment, is not easy to do, but that's another matter.) At the moment, I just open the slideshow-file (thankfully a simple txt-file) and remove the pathes. This works quite well (provided, of course, the pictures and the slideshow-file are in the same folder), but being somewhat of a perfectionist, I make lots of alterations later and thus get wary of repeating this procedure over and over. Especially as the implementation of an option 'save without path' seems to me child's play to implement (but what do I know).
    Others may not like their slideshows limited to one folder, or may prefer all slideshows in one folder, so 'saving without path' should i.m.o. be just an option. An only slightly more complicated alternative would be to allow filling in a 'base-path' for a folder-tree and saving only the path relative to this base. All slideshow-files could then be placed in this base-folder and the whole lot could easily be moved to a different drive, folder or network location and would allow pics and slideshow to be shared with others. (see also onder 4)

    2) The cooperation between the main program and the slideshow-panel is awkward. Illogically, the slideshow-panel presents the folder 'last used' instead of the 'current' folder used by the main program. Also, it does NOT follow the way the pics are sorted by the main program; instead you have to again sort them. I keep finding this irritating and confusing and the source of many a mistake. (The arrangement of 'Slideshow' under the heading 'File', instead of the more logical place under 'View' doesn't help either:-)

    3) For sending a "presentation" to friends, there is the option of making an executable file. In my experience, this often doesn't work and also it's often not appreciated by the receiver who wants 'the originals' to play with. So I end up advising people to install Irfanview on their computer (which they do gladly) and sending my folder of pictures and movies, containing my file 'show.txt' which, as described above, contains filenames stripped of their path.
    But then I have to instruct them how to 'load' this presentation - and this complication proves too much for most, mainly for the reasons mentioned above onder 2). If that can be remedied (folder for slide-show defaults to 'current folder' of the main program), then why not go one step further and load a standardly named file like 'show.txt' from the current folder whenever available, thus making it possible to start a slideshow by just navigating to a folder, clicking on a picture and typing 'CtRl+S' (or whatever) to start the show.
    Oh well, i can think of several other ways to achieve a better ease of use for slideshows.

    4) Also somewhat annoying: when I save a slideshow, the default folder shown seems to come from... well, I wouldn't know from where, but it's never the folder I want to save the file in. Surely, people follow , or would like to follow:-), some kind of rule in this respect. Either you put all your slideshows in one folder, or you put it in the same folder as the pictures; either way, the .

    5) Another great enhancement, for me, would be if IrfanView would recognize .thm files.
    One of the great features of IrfanView, in my view, is the ease with which one can edit, and use, metadata (EXIF and IPTC). However, this only works for stills - and it's precisely the option to combine stills and movies which, for me, forms another great feature of this program.
    Now, thm-files are produced by some camera's (e.g. Canon) with every movie, precisely for a program like this. A thm-file is in fact a jpg-file, but with a special purpose: it contains a thumbnail picture of the movie of the same name and all the meta-data of the movie (as many movie-formats have much less meta-data then a .jpg file). This makes it very easy for a program which can already handle jpg-files and their metadata to treat movies, seemingly, the same way. I think producing thm-files was generous offer from camera makers to software makers and I wonder why almost no software maker has picked up on it. (Correction: I do have an idea why: most software makers want you to use their custom-format to save your data, so you'll be forever bound to their program...)

    Somewhat odd is that thumbnail view does 'recognize' thm-files in that it ignores them. That's one step better then the slideshow, which includes them when you click 'Add all'. At the very least, the slideshow program could be made to ignore thm-files, but it seems like wasting a golden opportunity not to use these files the way they were meant.
    Easily they could be used to sort movies into their rightful order on exif date/time.
    In a further perspective, it would allow for meta-data like title, caption, author and all other exif and iptc data to be added to movies and to be displayed when the movie is running, just as for pictures.
    By the way, Adobe's XMP-files offer part of this functionality, but support of these would take a bit more effort, as xmp-files have their own (propriety but publicised) format. As far as I can see, the xmp-format offers no advantages over public-standard .thm files, on the contrary; nevertheless, some kind of support, or 'recognition' would be advantageous, if only that Irfanview would ignore them.

    I'll stop here. I have lots of other suggestions, but I thought I'd just mention those which, it seems to me, are very easy to implement and would enhance the useability of the program enormously.

    #2
    A lot of requests there mabel.
    A few comments.
    1) Yes, it probably would be quite easy to have an option to save slideshow lists without paths but you would need to convince Irfan Skiljen that there are other users who want it. It is pretty easy to edit the text file, as you do, using "Replace All" in a text editor like Notepad or you can write a batch file or script to do it for you.
    2) If you want to show a Slideshow with the files in the order you have them sorted in the main program viewer, then just launch the slideshow from the viewer using Ctrl+W shortcut.
    3) Irfanview is a very small program, smaller than many image files. So why not send a copy of Irfanview on the CD or USB stick that you put your presentation images on. You can put all your images in the same folder as the i_view32.exe program file and then you can use a slideshow list with no path names. Irfanview always looks for files without paths in the same folder as it is running in. If you have several presentations then put them in different subfolders in the Irfanview folder. Entries in your slideshow list can then be in the form Presentation 1\slide 1, Presentation 2\slide 4, Presentation 4\slide 3, etc.

    General. Remember that you can just drag files from Windows Explorer into the Slideshow files window of the dialog. Handy when you have them on a CD or stick. Find your images in Explorer, highlight the ones you want and drag them to the Slideshow files window. All the paths are filled in for you ( and the files are all in the same order that you sorted them in Explorer).

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