Ken Burns Slideshow

Create instant & real-time full-screen slideshow with the Ken Burns effect for a set of images.

Motivation

This idea came to me while watching a slideshow on iPad. How nice would it be if we can create instant slideshows on a Windows machine with only a single executable and a folder of images.

Screenshot

Language & Requirement

• WPF application written in VB.net
• .Net framework 4.5 or above.
• Config.xml file at application root.

Features

• Create instant full-screen slideshow with an imitation of the Ken Burns effect for a set of folders that contains images. Images will be looped.
• Support displaying date for the images. Date value is parsed from the file name with format yyyy-MM-dd. If you want a date to be displayed, please rename the image files to the format for this to work. A valid example: 2015-12-02.jpg
• Support audio files to be played in loop at background. Please specify a folder path containing audio files in config.xml.
• Options to load large images at lower resolution to improve performance.

Updates

• 2016-01-06
• Now mouse cursor will be hidden while slideshow is playing.
• 2015-12-08
• Changed bitmap scaling option to high quality.
• 2015-12-07
• Fixed images not being displayed fully.
• Added customizable option to fadeout for each image. Disabling fadeout might slightly improve performance.
• Added runtime options dialog what supports changing several settings in config.xml at runtime. The dialog is called by pressing F12.
• Other minor fixes.
• 2015-12-06
• Added customizable option to show lower resolution for large images to improve performance.
• Added customizable option to lock movement direction to "down only" for images with height larger than screen height * 1.5. This setting suits better for portraits that usually have faces at the upper part of the image.
• Added customizable option to only show the upper / lower part (depending on movement direction) for images with height larger than screen height * 1.5. This is to avoid image moving too fast thus less elegant.
• Added customizable option to only show the left / right part (depending on movement direction) for images with width larger than screen width * 1.5. This is to avoid image moving too fast thus less elegant.
• Improved error handling when dealing with corruptions. Instead of showing error prompt and exit, program will now replace the problematic image with a black screen as a placeholder in case dates are being displayed.

Note

• The config.xml file serves as a configuration that is loaded at program start. Paths and other settings can be changed to local / relative path according to the location of the folders on your system.
• Press F12 at runtime for options.
• Please enclose the folder path with <![CDATA[ ]]> when the path contains markup chars in XML like &.
• Example: <![CDATA[F:\Folder with & in name\images]]>
• Animation is not as smooth when Windows Aero is turned off on Windows 7.