Amiga Slide Presentation

[yorgle]

Hi all.  Next month, I'm going to be presenting some topics at Barcamp here in Rochester, NY.  http://barcamproc.org .  Anyway, rather than using Keynote/Powerpoint/whatever to do the slides, I've decided that I'm going to go an Amiga route.

I had a few options in front of me, that I know of, and was wondering if anyone had more suggestions.  I wanted to keep it 1.3 based, so AmigaVision (which I've actually never used) would be less desired.  The idea is that I'd plug my Amiga 500 into the video input on the podium, pop in a self-booting floppy, and the presentation just goes.

Options that I can think of:

-- Slideshow (Deluxe Paint Art & Utilities Disk)
Shows images only, with transitions
Can't remember if it does mouse input (eg, hold on the current image until clicked)
No text, everything has to be IFF images

-- Slides
Photograph an amiga screen to slide film
including this here for completeness.

-- Deluxe Video 3
Can use it to generate titles as well, or bullet items with animation
IFF images or solid colors as backgrounds/ images
has an included tool to generate a slideshow project quickly, which Ill use as a starting point
This is the way I'm going to go, unless something else presents itself.

-- AmigaVision
Probably would work well, but it is >1.3, and my A500 is 1.3.
I've never used AmigaVision, although let's say I have it "available" to me.

As a backup, I'll export the screens to VHS tape or something of-the-era, and use that for presenting.

Has anyone done this, or have suggestions?

[Machico2012]

Scala is a great tool....

[Merc]

Are you sure AV is Kickstart 2 only?  I am 99% sure I used it on my A500 before upgrading to 2.04.  I remember it was badged 2.0-ready at the time, maybe that's what you're thinking of?

[cgutjahr]

I had a few options in front of me, that I know of, and was wondering if anyone had more suggestions.  I wanted to keep it 1.3 based

Scala is what you want to use. Its easy of use is impressive, and it does exactly what you need. In contrast to other options, you will probably still find example scripts and tutorials using your search engine of choice.

I think the last version that runs on 1.3 is ScalaMM 200, but the Scala distribution contains a separate player for your presentations ("ScalaMMPlayer" or something like that) - maybe the player from later Scala versions still runs on 1.3?

If that's the case, you could use whatever Amigas you have at home to generate your presentation and then just use the A500 and a floppy disk to play it.

[Steady]

@ Merc

I agree. I'm pretty sure AmigaVision works on KS1.3.

[yorgle]

I just assumed. I remember reading about it when the 3000 came out in Amiga World, and I remember screenshots of it only from 2.x.  I'll have to try that out.  (regardless of whether I use it for this or not, I should just try it out for fun)

And I need to try scala as well, I remember seeing ads for it, but I've not tried it.

Thanks all!

[amiman99]

I would go with Scala also, very nice sw for making presentations.

[yorgle]

Hey all, Just a quick update.

What I ended up doing was creating all of the slides in Deluxe Paint 3 (320x200), and drawing pixelart right on the slides.  Then I presented them through AmigaVision.  I did try out Scala, and there's a lot of potential there, but I just couldn't get into it in a way that worked with my brain.  I'll poke at it more later...  

The slides are https://www.dropbox.com/sh/09tnz80dgh9bwos/-RM3CBIcDJ here if anyone wants to look.  It's about an Arduino-based microcomputer type thing I made from scratch (ish).

Thank you all again for the suggestions. I definitely will be poking around with Scala more now that I have some time...

[Amiga_CDTV]

I just bought a complete Amiga Vision kit (3-binder manual with 4 disks). I don't know if there have been several versions of Amiga Vision, this one is dated 1990.

Requirements from the user manual:
- Hardware: "Minimum: Amiga Computer, 1 megabyte of RAM".
- Software: "Requires AmigaDOS 1.3 or higher".

There is a short clip from Computer Chronicles on Youtube (here) with Amiga Vision.

I have been playing with the idea of having a presentation with some Amiga software, too. It would be fun to learn some more about the Amiga Vision and do something with it. It looks like a very comprehensive tool. I am not too crazy about the videodisc- controller -bit, though :razz:

[yorgle]

I was presenting from an emulated 1.3 system, so that worked great.  I was using the FS-UAE emulator, which I just found a few weeks ago... it's by far the best UAE variant i've used.  

(Other details: all of the "drives" were filesystem folders, all of which have their files sitting in my Dropbox account, so I could run FS-UAE on my Windows machine at work, and then run FS-UAE on my Mac at home, and it was basically seamless -- the same files appeared in both places... very handy.)

I had wanted to save out the presentation to an ADF image, and transfer it to my A500, and present directly from that, but I ran out of time to get that working again, and it was unclear if the podium was going to have composite video input... which it does... and a VHS deck.  So in the future, I can export to VHS.

[Amiga_CDTV]

Yep, FS-UAE is great.

Thanks for the idea (having a Dropbox folder as a shared Amiga folder on multiple computers) - I had not thought it that far! Now we just need a Dropbox client for the Amiga!

If the podium's VHS has a tuner, you can even connect the Amiga thrue an RF cable and get even more realistic retro feeling to the show

Did your presentation have any transitions between the slides? Or effects?

[yorgle]

LOL. I didn't think of the RF interface for that. that's AWESOME.  I'm going to have to try that.

Oh, and one thing of note, don't use Hard disk files in the dropbox folder... Dropbox will continuously be uploading the entire multi-megabyte image for any little change on the disk... but going file system based works perfectly. (I assume you'd figure this out already, but just thought I'd mention it...)

I had transitions yes.  I just picked random ones from the list because why not.  Here's the files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nw1mqz96yi6ieml/CtQbrWx3pG  I'm not sure how AmigaVision references the image files, but everything was mounted through a drive named "Barcamp" so that might be necessary to get it working.

[AndyFC]

I did a SCALA presentation at Uni back in '97. I wrote to CU Amiga about it too and got the letter published. Here's my letter (Page 103 'Pukka Presentation').

[yorgle]

I think you forgot to include a link to your presentation...

[matt3k]

Do any of the slide show programs allow you to use 16 bit rtg screens for the presentations?

Thinking of an using one in an ecs machine with a graphics card.