Roxio PhotoShow News

Contextual Help, Preview from current photo, Windows 7 support

New features on PhotoShow.com make it easier then ever to create PhotoShows!

1. A new fold-out panel in the PhotoShow editor shows you Tips for each tab to help you get started making great shows.

 

2. When you click on Preview Mode when making a show, it will now play from the currently selected photo instead of from the beginning, making it easier to view your changes as you go!

3. All your photo enhancements will now appear in each tab! For example, when you are in the Captions tab, any stickers, borders, and bubbles you added will still be visible on the photo. This makes it easier to see your final result without using preview mode (and prevents you from adding a bubble over a caption, etc).

4. Photo thumbnails now appear faster when going to make or edit a show.

If you haven't already updated to build 787 of PhotoShow 6, you can get this on your account page. PhotoShow 6 is fully compatible with Windows 7!

Other changes and fixes include:

• You can set a photo duration for up to 20 seconds (instead of 10)
• RSS feed icon now appears for channel pages in the browser, indicating a valid RSS feed link is available from that page
• The share email message field now properly limits text entry to 256 characters (and displays the number you have left).
• Internet Explorer 6 does not support all features on PhotoShow, and now informs you of that at the top of the page.
• PhotoShows embedded in other web sites no longer display the "Loading" graphic in the show cover photo.
• Music content will be loaded even when you go to the music picker before the show is finished loading.

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Beautiful channel themes, resizable editor, Halloween style, and Emoticons

Over the last couple weeks we released some excellent new features on PhotoShow.com and in PhotoShow 6. To get the latest version of PhotoShow 6 select "Check for Updates" from the Help menu in the application.

You'll love the new channel themes for your PhotoShow galleries, featuring over a dozen beautiful themes you can apply to your collections of PhotoShows with a single click. (Former Comcast and PhotoShow.net users will appreciate the return of this popular feature).

Here's an example of the Air theme applied to a channel page: http://www.photoshow.com/members/PhotoShow-Fanatic/all

Just go to your My PhotoShows page or any channel you've created, click on a theme to preview it, then click "Done" to apply the theme. If you want to use the same theme for all your channels, check the box for "Apply to all my channels" before you click "Done." Or, set a different theme for each channel!

This feature is available for PREMIUM subscribers only. (Themes will not appear if you are using Internet Explorer 6. Upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 or 8, or Firefox, Safari, etc).

 

There's a new Spooky Halloween style with fun music for sharing those Halloween night pics.

 

We've also added new Emoticon stickers (Premium users only) for fun expressions on any photo.

 

And finally, when making a PhotoShow on PhotoShow.com, you'll notice that the editor now automatically expands to fill your browser window, for a much richer and enjoyable authoring experience. To change the size of the editor, just adjust the size of your browser window (grab the lower right hand corner of the window).

 

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Adding music to PhotoShows

Here's a quick tutorial on using the music features in the "Music & Photos" tab. These features are available on PhotoShow.com and in PhotoShow 6, which can be downloaded on your account page.

(click on any picture to enlarge)

Clicking on the music notes will open the Music picker.

Your music selection is applied to your PhotoShow at the photo you designated. Now you can change where the song starts and ends if you like.

 

 

70 New Music tracks and Upload MPEG-2 video

Today we released an update to PhotoShow.com! New features include:

• Over 70 new music tracks to choose from, and new Alternative, Soundtrack, and Spiritual categories.
• A new "Suggested for this Style" category for quickly switching between songs that work for your selected style.
• Instrumental tracks are now marked with a special icon to help you find songs without vocals. (Sometimes song lyrics can be distracting when they don't match the photos in your show.)
• Support for MPEG-2 video clips when creating a show on PhotoShow.com.

This release also fixes a problem with the syntax (a missing tag) of the flash code for pasting into Blogger. 

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

PhotoShow 6 update: Multiple songs per show

The latest version of PhotoShow 6 is now available for Premium members on your account page.

This version includes all the features and styles recently released on PhotoShow.com:

• Add up to 50 songs per show!
• New Summer Fun and Back to School Styles
• Playback slider control in authoring and preview
• All the other changes and fixes from the online show maker (see prior blog posts)

If you are using a prior version of PhotoShow 6 your software will auto-update sometime over the next week, but feel free to download and install the application from your account page at any time.

Enjoy!

The PhotoShow Team

Summer Fun and Back To School styles

We've just added two new great styles on PhotoShow.com: Summer Fun and Back to School. It's not too late to make some great shows from your summer vacations or share your kid's big day back at school!

 

We also released a completely new PhotoShow DVD service! Though you won't see much difference when making a DVD, the back-end systems we use to create these DVDs has been completely modernized.

You'll notice that the purchasing experience is much easier (fewer steps), you'll get a shipping confirmation email with tracking number (if available), and the DVDs now use Sonic Solutions' (Roxio's parent company) DVD mastering technology for the highest compliance and compatibility with DVD players.

Thanks for sharing.

The PhotoShow Team

Import email addresses and lots more

Yesterday we released a new version of PhotoShow.com.

Now that all your recipients' email addresses are saved on your PhotoShow account, wouldn't it be great to import your contacts from your address book? Now you can. Just click the "Import Contacts" button when  you go to share a show and import your email addresses from Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and more.

You can now delete one of your shows from the channel page by clicking the "Delete" link on the show thumbnail.

We've also added the "playback slider" to the PhotoShow maker and preview mode.

A handy pop-up to show supported video file types on the upload files screen.

Performance improvements:

• Now, when you upload video clips in your show, the thumbnails for the videos are displayed VERY quickly in the PhotoShow maker! 
• Improved buffering of MP3 files for uninterrupted playback and ability to seek to a different point in the show while the MP3 is still streaming.

User experience improvements:

• You can now seek to different points in a video clip using the playback slider.
• You can now playback your MP3 files in the music picker.
• When opening the music picker it will display the currently selected song.
• When dragging the start or end time for a song it will auto-scroll the screen if you are trying to get to photos that are outside of the current viewing area.
• If one of your photos or videos has an error on upload or is not supported, the error message will stay on the screen until you click "Next" so that you won't miss it.
• Added a "hot spot" at the start of the show in the playback slider to make it easier to restart the show.
• A "loading..." animation is now displayed in the preview screen and full screen playback to indicate that the show is loading (instead of a black screen).

Fixes:

• Fixed a problem where the Title tab would not preview the intro title correctly (would play other parts of the show instead of just the intro).
• Fixed a problem where the show wouldn't play when you went to browse photos after watching the show then returning to watch it a second time.
• Fixed a problem where shows that started with a video clip would have redundant audio playback.

Thanks for Sharing...

The PhotoShow Team

Add multiple music tracks to your show

As of today, Premium members can now add up to 50 MP3 files or Music Library tracks to PhotoShows! We've combined the music and arrange tab into a single tab called "Music & Photos" so you can see your music and photo arrangement at-a-glance!

Here you can:

• Add and remove music tracks
• Upload MP3 files
• Change where songs start and end
• Set your cover photo
• Delete or rotate photos
• Re-arrange photos

1. To add a new song to your show, click on the music notes on the corner of any photo thumbnail where you want the music to start. In the music selector you can choose a library track or upload your own MP3 file. Any MP3 files you upload will be listed under "My Music" in the categories list.
2. To change a song to another song, just click on the song name. It will bring up the music selector, where you can choose a difference song to replace the current one.
3. To delete a song, just click on the X next to the song name.
4. To set your cover photo, click on a photo thumbnail (the border will turn orange), the click the "Set Cover Photo" button.
5. To delete or rotate a photo, click on the X or rotate button on the corners of the photo thumbnail.
6. To re-arrange photos, just click and drag a photo thumbnails to the desired location. As you move photos around, songs will automatically change duration to keep the songs "attached" to the photos they were assigned to.
   
   
7. To change where your songs start or end, grab one of the blue handles and move it to a new location. (Tip: you can drag the transition point between songs by dragging the little gray cover over two adjacent handles.)
8. To preview your show at any time, click the "Preview" button.

This new feature is also compatible with PhotoShow 5 shows which contained multiple library tracks.

We hope you love this new feature and what it does for your PhotoShows! We will be updating PhotoShow 6 with these changes within the next week. Look for the auto-update soon.

We also released many other changes and improvements to PhotoShow.com:

• If you have made any changes to your music, changing styles will keep your existing music tracks.
• Music will be properly set ON by default when embedding into other web sites.
• If you used Per Photo mode on a show, it will display that mode when you go back to edit the show so you don't accidentally switch to automatic.
• Switching to full screen now continues from your current position.
• Faster performance for preview and switching tabs, when working with MP3 files during authoring.
• Improved stability when clicking Pause at different times in shows with video.
• Clicking on the "timeline" in the playback controls now locates to the proper point in the MP3 file even if the file has not finished downloading.
• New Video Tutorials link from the footer at the bottom of the page.
• ...and more...

Keep on sharing!

The PhotoShow Team

Address book, Picassa import, and playback controls

Today we released some great new features on PhotoShow.com.

Address Book

Now, everytime you share a show, the email addresses you send to will automatically get added to your address book. The next time you share, all you have to do is "check" the people you want to share with and click SEND.

Import from Picasa Web Albums

If you use the Picasa photo manager from Google and have uploaded photos to your Web Albums  page, now you can import those directly into PhotoShow using the new import feature.

(A screen shot from the Import Photos Page is show below).

Show duration and Timeline control

At long last you can see the duration of your PhotoShow in the control bar. Very helpful if you are posting a show to PhotoShow TV. You can also jump to any point in the show using the new Timeline control, as well as see the video buffer status so you know where you can jump, or how fast the show is being downloaded for playback. 

For the technically inclined, we've added a pre-load estimator in our new playback engine so that its much smarter about how much it needs to buffer before it starts the show, allowing it to start the show as soon as possible without risking pauses during playback.

We really hope you enjoy these new features. As always, send us any feedback using the feedback link at the bottom of any page.

Thanks for sharing!
The PhotoShow Team

Internet Explorer 8 and Safari 4

Both of these browsers have been tested and are fully compatible with PhotoShow.com.

One minor issue in Safari 4: The preview screen may go black when you remove a sticker during creation of a PhotoShow. Simply click on another tab and return to the Stickers tab, or, refresh the web page to restore the preview area. This will be addressed very soon in an update to PhotoShow.com.