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Time!
If one picture is worth a thousand words, then dozens of Mac Paint documents
must be worth a book. Add professional-looking transitions between images,
narration, and realistic sound effects, and the result literally speaks volumes.
The latest version of The Slide Show , Magician, Magnum Software's
venerable presentation graphics Utility, lets you add sound to full-screen
"slide shows" of MacPaint drawings, digitized images, or screen
dumps from most applications. You can add an impressive array of special effects,
insert text into each frame, make a self running or user-prompted presentation,
segue from one show to another, and even draw on the screen while the show
is running.
You can add sound to a presentation in three ways. Magnum's Natural Sound
Editor disk, purchased separately, includes Apple's Speech Lab, a utility
for adding narration in MacinTalk's robot like synthesized voice. Crowd noises,
a ringing telephone, a fanfare of trumpets, and other effects come with Natural
Sound Effects, a three-disk set of digitized sounds. The combination of Magnum's
Natural Sound cable, the Natural Sound Editor disk, and a portable tape recorder
lets you record a digitized voice track or a musical accompaniment.
A Sound Investment
These goodies don't come cheap. While the program itself is a reasonable $59.95,
the cable and editor put you back . $129.95 and the sound effects another
$39.95, for a total of $229.85. You'll also . need a portable tape recorder
to record . sounds directly, or a BCR adapter to use the Natural Sound cable
with a tape deck.
The Studio
Before you make your first Slide Show Magician presentation, it's wise to plan out the entire show, perhaps with storyboards. Draw a thumbnail sketch of each frame in MacPaint and jot down your plans 'for special effects, text, timing, and narration or sound effects. Then create the images themselves in MacPaint.
Once the drawings are complete, putting a show together is a straightforward process. The program provides six screens: Edit, Special Effects, Buttons, Pointers, Text, and Sound. You add frames to a show on the Edit screen. On the Special Effects scree!') (see "Wipe Out!") you add effects such as fades, wipes, or dissolves and set the speed at which the effect occurs. The window shade wipe moves from one frame to another like turning the pages of a book. The checkerboard wipe fragments a picture into squares that magically transform into the next picture. Or you can choose the arrowhead, barndoor, iris, jaws, or venetian blind wipes.
The Buttons screen gives the viewer control over a frame. You can make buttons any shape or size, or even make them invisible. With an invisible, full-screen Next button, the viewer clicks the mouse anywhere to segue into the next image. GoTo buttons branch to a different frame, allowing you to set up interactive presentations such as quizzes with multiple-choice answers.
The Pointers screen offers three pointer shapes-arrow, hand, or pencil-in two sizes. The pointers can click buttons or draw on the screen during a presentation.
At the Text screen you choose a font and style, how quickly you want the text to appear, and whether it appears all at once or one word at a time.
Garbo Talks!
The Sound screen lets you add narration or sound effects to a show. Each frame
holds up to seven sound files in any combination of MacinTalk, digitized sound,
and canned sound effects.
The most efficient way to add a sound track is to tape all of the sounds first,
create and edit the sound files with the Natural Sound Editor, and then add
the files to your show. I got the best quality reproduction by taping narration
on a stereo tape deck and then playing back the tape on a portable recorder
connected to the Mac with the Natural Sound cable.
Natural Sound Editor records-in two. modes. Hi-Res gives the best fidelity,
but the files take up twice as much room as standard files. In standard mode,
the digitized narration I created for a talking storybook took a total of
116K. A Hi-Res version would have taken 232K-more than half a disk. Standard
mode works fine for narration, but you need Hi-Res for music.
Sound files, once created, can be edited. To shorten a file, for example,
you might delete pauses. The program also lets you mix sounds or add reverberation
and echoes. If you want to edit minuscule sections of a sound file, the Raw
Bits feature work on sound segments 1/22200 second long.
The Envelope, Please
Slide Show Magician has many applications. While the program is aimed at commercial
and business users, it could also be great for home activities. The program
is copy-protected, but you can make bootable, self-running copies of finished
shows. Home applications could include extravaganza greeting cards complete
with messages in your voice quiz shows for older kids, and talking storybooks
for younger ones. Business applications could include product demos and instructional
presentations. Sound and special effects are bound to make any Mac presentation
an attention grabber. - Carol Johnson
Slide Show Magician, version 1.3B
Magnum Software 21115 Devonshire St. #337
Chatsworth, CA 91311
818/700-0510
List price: Slide Show Magician $59.95,
Natural Sound cable and Natural Sound Editor disk $129.95,
Natural Sound Effects (three disks) $39.95
To contact us send eMail. ScottMcTyre@MCFIII.COM
