Manslide a KDE4 based Slideshow GUI

In my last entry about creating a high quality DVD slideshow under Linux, I used the command line tool dvd-slideshow. As you would, Alexandre Prokoudine (again ) commented a 1 liner which read “what about Manslide?” So I had to give it a go. Manslide is a QT4 application which offers GUI for slideshow generation in different video formats. The application is ambitious with support for a lot of fancy effects in slide transitions as well as how it each image is displayed: zooming, moving around, on a moving flag or coming out of fog.

Since the process of setting up and running Manslide had quite a few bumps, this entry will be more about my impression of a work in progress than a “proper” review.

Getting it to work

Manslide is not available in the Ubuntu repositories but you can get a pre-compiled version from kde-apps. org (which is also Manslide’s hompage) – no need to install anything, just type ./Manslide from the uncompressed folder. Now there have been records of difficulties using Manslide and indeed, I run into trouble generating video files from my slideshows. The only way around was to recompile Manslide (with qmake, make) and to use the DV file format (any other format would fail).

Manslides uses OpenGL for previsualisation and this is great – as in fast. However OpenGL support in Linux can be a very different experience depending on your graphic card and driver. In my case (Radeon 9550, OSS driver), it is OK as long as I disable compiz (with metacity –replace) and leave the final rendering to be done in a top window that I don’t touch. Browsing the internet while rendering happens gives me a very funny Warhol-like output…

Add to it the fact that the user-interface is a bit clunky (apparently, a new version is under development) and you can understand why it took me so long to post this entry and why this is not a complete review…

What Manslides offer

As stated, Manslide offers a lot of possibilities – and since Manslide uses the new QT 4 the look is cute (indeed!). This is what the application looks like:

The left pane’s content depends on the active tab in the top menu. It allows you to save / create / open a project (“project”); manage your image and their transitions (“pictures” shown in the screenshot); modify how your image is displayed (“parameters”) and export your video file.

The bottom toolbar is used to see which images are part of the current slideshow and navigate between them.

The main part of the window is used to preview the slideshow and work on images – moving them, zooming, rotating and flagging the start / end position of their display. You can also preview the whole slideshow or just the current slide.

Conclusion

As stated, Manslide has some (very) rough edges – it gave me a hard time to just export a video file. But Manslide also has ambition and offers a high level of possibilities. A wealth of effects that are easy to use, and even if the interface is not quite there yet, these effects are a lot easier to control than from the command line.

And indeed, when trying Manslide, I had a lot of fun trying weirdo effects. A blurred star zooming in 5 seconds to unveil the next image that happens to be textured to a moving flag. Cool. But then what? It is true that if your goal is to have different transitions and image effects on each of your pictures, Manslide is the tool for you. But as for me, I only need crossfade transition effects for all the pictures of my slideshow.

And for that, you can’t beat the command line.

And to keep the tradition alive, another image from my recent Gruyere holidays.