Enhancing thumbnails and previews for slides

11/4/2006

With the DVD enhancements wrapped up (for now), I've taken a diversion into one of those lingering get-to-it-eventually items on the to-do list. For too long since SSP 5.5 was released, slide show thumbnails and previews were not rendered using the new graphics routines introduced in SSP 5.5. This meant that things like soft shadows, (still shots of) motion backgrounds, and other effects, were not included in these renderings. This particularly affected those who used the slide show builder. This week, that deficiency has finally been addressed -- the new graphics routines are now used for all renderings. This enhancement won't appear in the October Edition, but look for it in the next.

One side affect to this, however, is that rendering these thumbnails and previews now uses video memory which means that the chances of running out of video memory will be increased. In the past we have recommended a 128 MB video card, but we may need to reconsider this now. However, if this looks liek it will be a problem, we'll likely include an option to not use high-end graphics features for rendering thumbnails.

Incidently, this was one of the steps necessary to take before proceeding with more interesting enhancements for slide shows, such as image transparency, alpha blending, animated images, and videos.

(BE080)

 
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