A new Tom Shippey lecture is always a treat. There’s a new one on the Oxford podcasts website, “Tolkien’s turning point: Tolkien and the history of tongues”.
Regrettably it’s only offered as video, and the Oxford University server gives me stuttering playback when streaming. There is however a nearly 1Gb video file for public download. The talk itself starts at 2:15 minutes in.
I’m pleased to see that Ashampoo are now giving away their fine Slideshow Studio, in a perpetually free ‘2017’ version. You do have to request a licence key by email, then turn off auto-updates, but other than that the install is fairly painless. Be warned that they will spam the email address you signed up with, relentlessly.
I did some research back in 2016 and came to the conclusion that Slideshow Studio is the best option for doing easy ‘Ken Burns’ style transitions between still photographs, slowly panning and zooming in on them. It was used to make my promo video for my H.G. Wells in the Potteries book…
I find that the free 2017 version is fully featured in terms of editing and available transitions, and is only limited in terms of its video output. It can only output to standard .WMV (Windows Media Video) and the new open source .WEBM format.
(Note that the full $15 Slideshow Studio HD 4 does have the full range out video output).
However, the free XMedia Recode for Windows can convert those two formats to .AVI etc, if required, so the paid version of Slideshow doesn’t seem to be that vital. Unless perhaps you intend to post many such videos to YouTube, Facebook etc,, or need to output for showing on a massive screen.
I now have a Patreon, if anyone would care to become my patron there, and help out with the production of new content for this long-running blog. Even giving $1 a month would be very welcome.
The Spyders of Burslem 