# How to export a slideshow (slide show) that will play as a continuous loop?



## nIkedoni1a (Aug 16, 2018)

I would like to export a silent slideshow of stills and video clips that I can run in my office as a continuous loop.  I would prefer to put it on a flash drive or dvd rather to run it from lightroom.  Is anyone aware if any of the output formats are amenable to that  or software that will repeat the slide show continuously.  I suppose I could purchase a dvd player with a "repeat" setting.  Has anyone been successful in setting something like this up?  Please share.  thanks


----------



## Conrad Chavez (Aug 16, 2018)

One caution about DVD is that it is not high definition. DVD is the old standard definition, limited to 720 x 480 pixels. If you’re going to run the slide show on an HD or 4K monitor, DVD will not look good. Blu-ray is 1920 x 1080 pixels, but I'm not sure how stills playback works from those discs; it might have to be a Blu-ray data disc.

Possibly the easiest option: Many HD and 4K TVs and Blu-ray players have USB ports and/or an SD card slot, and a built-in slide show feature. If your equipment has these features, have Lightroom export the images to a flash drive or card, stick it in the TV, and use the TV's own slide show feature to loop the images.

If you want to run the slide show on a computer monitor from a Mac or PC, and you don't need transitions, you could try the free VLC media player. While it's usually used to play videos, you can use it to play JPEG stills in sequence by dragging the images from a folder or flash drive into its Playlist window, and it can loop. Of course you want to set it to full screen.

If you need something with more slide show features like transitions, there are also many lightweight slide show utilities for Mac and Windows, but I'm not familiar with many of them.


----------



## clee01l (Aug 16, 2018)

To add to what Conrad  has said ,  you need an app that will interpret the file and show it as a slideshow. A DVD player has built-in software that can play certain file formats. Likewise some smart TVs have built in software that can play slideshows. First you need to determine the capabilities of the software used in the device operating system and whether or not that software can do a slideshow loop.   Then if one of the three outputs from the light room slideshow module are acceptable by the software that you’re going to be playing your slideshow with, you are in business. If your slideshow app does not support one of the three light room formats, then you will need to convert your light room output format to a format acceptable by your slideshow software.


----------



## Conrad Chavez (Aug 16, 2018)

I tried it with my 2K HDTV, a low-end model from a few years ago. It can loop a slide show from a USB flash drive, and even with some basic transitions. But it looked great. All I had to do was export JPEG files resized to fit within 1920 x 1080 pixels. In Lightroom, I saved the image specs for the TV as an Export Settings preset for one-click future use. The Lightroom slide show module is not involved in this, it's just a simple export of stills to a USB flash drive.

But the test also showed that you should read your TV manual to make sure it's set up right. My TV only sees image files with the .JPG or .JPEG filename extension, and the flash drive must be formatted as FAT32 (many already come that way). But it does support folders, which could be useful. If you have a  TV in your office that’s a newer or better model, its slide show features are probably better than on my TV.


----------



## Birdbrain186 (Aug 20, 2018)

I'm not sure whether this would be relevant to your enquiry but I have used an the programme PicturesToExe to put together Audio Visual presentations. I have found it quite intuitive to use and although principally intended for AV it could just as well be used for silent presentation of slides / video clips.

I have to say I'm not aware of any looping function built in but as you suggest it might be feasible to use in combination with a DVD player having repeat function.

One advantage of this programme is that once you have made the presentation can also be saved as an executable (.exe) file.
(in addition to being able to save as  HD Video / avi / mp4 etc)

Saving as an .exe file then allows the presentation to be run by someone else (say from a flash drive or DVD on a PC) without them being required  to have any additional software installed.

Hope this is of some use / interest.

Mike

PicturesToExe  refers


----------



## clee01l (Aug 20, 2018)

Birdbrain186 said:


> PicturesToExe


Is a Windows only App.  The OP uses a Mac and AFAIK, there is no Mac Equivalent


----------



## frozenframe (Aug 20, 2018)

Not free but works with Mac, and has been considered to be one of the better programs for creating slideshows, PhotoDex's ProShow Gold They even have a free plug-in for Lightroom


----------



## Birdbrain186 (Aug 21, 2018)

Further to Cletus' posting I hadn't picked up that the poster of this thread uses a Mac not a PC, however having checked the PicturesTo Exe website, this confirms that _"PicturesToExe allows the creation of impressive photo and video slideshows for PC, Mac, DVD and YouTube."  _so evidently is not solely a PC application.


Mike


----------



## Hal P Anderson (Aug 21, 2018)

Mike,
The software is clearly Windows-only. The line you quote is talking about the places that will _run_ the resulting slide show.


----------

