Want a slide show in Windows Media Center that is a little different? Magic Slideshow is a Media Center slideshow app that display pictures from the year the track was released, so you great sound track to your pictures. Although I don’t have a lot of pictures that will match with 1973’s Dark Side Of the Moon you may have a more modern music collect than me.
Magic Slideshow for Media Center offers an alternative to the standard slideshow that you get whilst playing music in Media Center. Rather than taking it’s selection from all of your photos, it will display photos taken in the year that the song was released. You can still control whether to show images randomly, there are options to control the photo display period etc, and it needs to be told where to look for pictures (if you don’t have them in your Pictures folder). It works by caching a file list of images found in the folders you provide, but it does this in the background (whilst the application is running) so it isn’t intrusive. It updates this cache on a regular basis (option to control the refresh rate is available) – and you can force a refresh in the application. If you aren’t playing any music when you load the application, it will ask if you want to go to the Music Library (but you can turn this off in the Options). Once you’ve set your options, put on some music, sit back and enjoy a different view of your Media Center Picture library…
I was just thinking, how this application figures out the year the photo was taken. Would it check the folder names, file dates?
There were no digital cameras in 1973 (AFAIK), so all those older photos would be probably scanned. So you cannot just rely on a file date. If it relies entirely on EXIF data that means that all photos should be properly tagged. It would require some additional work from the end user.
Oh, it sucks being a software engineer, you can not just enjoy a solution, you always have to analyze it and find caveats. 🙂
Hi – I can answer your question, as I wrote the plugin that Ian has kindly hosted for me…
It does indeed use the EXIF tag data on the photo if it exists, and if not will assume the file creation date. It’s not foolproof (if you edit a photo this year without a tag that was taken last year, it will see 2009 not 2008) but I thought it was the best balance…
Someone should make a app similar to this but make it play the YouTube music video by using the metedata in the file. Then give me credit for the idea.
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sounds interesting Ian , i have always yearned for something more involving when listening to music
Thanks for the nod
Mike
I was just thinking, how this application figures out the year the photo was taken. Would it check the folder names, file dates?
There were no digital cameras in 1973 (AFAIK), so all those older photos would be probably scanned. So you cannot just rely on a file date. If it relies entirely on EXIF data that means that all photos should be properly tagged. It would require some additional work from the end user.
Oh, it sucks being a software engineer, you can not just enjoy a solution, you always have to analyze it and find caveats. 🙂
Regards,
@rusgrafx
Hi – I can answer your question, as I wrote the plugin that Ian has kindly hosted for me…
It does indeed use the EXIF tag data on the photo if it exists, and if not will assume the file creation date. It’s not foolproof (if you edit a photo this year without a tag that was taken last year, it will see 2009 not 2008) but I thought it was the best balance…
Someone should make a app similar to this but make it play the YouTube music video by using the metedata in the file. Then give me credit for the idea.