Create a Rockin’ Automated Slideshow

on Dec 28th 2012 with 57 comments
Tutorial Details

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

So you’re in the thick of the holidays and you have like 2000 photos on your camera. You’re dreading the fact that you have to now to edit them, especially since every photo is a prized capture that the world HAS to see. This is where the Turbo Slideshow comes in. With the aid of a couple of scripts, you can have all 2000 synced to music in a matter of minutes… and speaking of a matter of minutes… that is all it will take to see all the photos! It’s a win win situation for everyone.

Republished Tutorial

Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in January 2010.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size: 143 MB

 
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I run AESCRIPTS.com which provides useful scripts for Adobe After Effects. You can follow me on Twitter @aescripts  

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  • Lyndon Alvarez

    man its 5 in the morning… i need to get some rest. too much computer… By the way, whats up Alvarez :)

  • Terminator

    Great nice tuts

  • bilguitei

    what’s the special here?
    everyone can do that right?

    • Morten

      Correct, but not many can script it.

    • Terminator

      i can agree with ur comment,

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd
      Author

      You can definitely do this by hand but it will take you a very long time :-) The whole idea here is to be able to do something that is entertaining with a minimal amount of effort.

      • Ben

        Choose the right tool.. Even Windows movie maker can do it. Then why you should go after Adobe After Effects just to get this thing done – never mind the way he did it – no one will inquire about the handwork if outcome is usual.

  • http://www.joelcutajar.com Joel Cutajar

    gr8 tut mate! :D btw whats the music of the preview? thanks :D

  • Giovanni

    Some of us never go on vacation but… thanks for sharing your scripts with us Lloyd. And your site is very inspiring.
    Hope to see another one of your enlightening tuts (packed with pro tips and lots of JavaScript — HINT ;) ) soon!!!

  • Billy

    Thank you very much Lloyd. Great tutorial. As I have said many times in the past, your scripts are amazing! You are greatly missed around here. Hope all is well! Thanks for taking the time to give us this!

  • Richard Williams

    Loved all the script work! Thanks, Lloyd!!

  • ~Twobs

    Worst tut in the last year

  • Graeme

    I appreciate the effort put into scripting, but the result was not only something that could be achieved with less effort manually, it’s not even the type of speed you’d want for a slideshow. The photos pop in and out at such a high speed, one cannot appreciate each slide.

    Perhaps all that script work could work wonders with a different type of project, but it’s not suited well for a slideshow.

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd
      Author

      This is what I thought at first myself. This was originally intended as a stop-gap measure until I had the time to do a proper slideshow but after showing this “turbo” slideshow to many, many friends, the consensus was that this was actually a much better way to view photos. Especially for a vacation that they did not attend. People tend to over-estimate how much other people are interested in your photos, this way people get the gist of the trip without the boredom of having to watch so many photos. To each their own, of course, but this is what I found which is why I decided to share this with you all. And regardless of what you do, doing it by hand takes a lot more work and effort.

      • http://bryanclark.wordpress.com Bryan Clark

        I totally agree. I LOVE the pace of this.

        I haven’t created a slideshow in ten years for that very reason: nobody wants to see them. This actually makes me want to create one again.

        Thanks!

      • M-_g

        Totally agree with this technique for slide shows,
        I’m very fed up with long slides shows, this technique is very interesting for a lot of effects.

        thanks a lot for the tut

    • Billy

      I don’t think you’d want to put EVERY picture you have in this type of slide show, but this would be a fantastic way to mix things up. If you have tons of pictures and want to show off as many as possible, this would be a great way to cram a lot of pictures into a short time span. There are definitely uses for this type of presentation in just about any slide show.

  • Pau

    When did u come to Barcelona, hehe

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd
      Author

      I have a very good friend that lives there so I go often, the photos were from my trip last year.

  • Jeremy

    I keep getting an error on the expression:

    After Effects warning: Illegal use of reserved word Expression disabled.

    Error occurred at line 6.
    Comp: ‘Main’
    Layer: 3 (‘Photos’)
    Property: ‘Time Remap’

    Here is the expression copied from my time remap layer

    markerLayer = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”);
    myNearestKey = markerLayer.marker.nearestKey(time);
    markerCounter = 0;
    if (time >= myNearestKey.time);
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index;
    else
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index -1;
    framesToTime(markerCounter );

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd
      Author

      You should not put a ; after the if statement. It might make more sense if you use curly brackets. When there is only one line the brackets are optional so i left them out in the tutorial but here is the expression with brackets:

      markerLayer = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”);
      myNearestKey = markerLayer.marker.nearestKey(time);
      markerCounter = 0;
      if (time >= myNearestKey.time) {
      markerCounter = myNearestKey.index;
      } else {
      markerCounter = myNearestKey.index -1;
      }
      framesToTime(markerCounter );

  • Rick

    Lloyd,

    There is definitely value in this script. Thank you for sharing your talent with the rest of us.

    Thank you!

  • LD

    Well done Lloyd – yet again.

    Due to the nature of my Boring Day Job™, I’ve had to sit through literally hundreds of other people’s slide shows. Almost nobody wants to gaze at every photo for a long 5 seconds as it drifts lazily across the screen. It gets old so fast. I dig this style. Much less painful. Thanks!

  • AK

    This looks similar to the jay z and Alicia keys video

    • http://aescripts.com Lloyd
      Author

      Ha! It does indeed. Believe it or not I had not seen this, thanks for pointing it out. Here’s the link in case anyone is interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8

  • Rones

    Very useful tutorial and script… thank you for sharing…

  • Sebastian

    Thanks a lot for this Lloyd. What puzzles me is that some of the comments are so negative. Apart from the fact that I dislike negative comments in communities like AE tuts+ because we’re all here to help each other, I also think that your work is of very high quality. So thanks for a great tut and please keep coming back.

  • http://www.twitter.com/austinsaylor Saylor

    I’m also getting an error on my expression. I used the expression that you posted in the comment above….

    markerLayer = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”);
    myNearestKey = markerLayer.marker.nearestKey(time);
    markerCounter = 0;
    if (time >= myNearestKey.time)
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index;
    else
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index -1;
    framesToTime(markerCounter );

    ***********

    After Effects warning: Syntax error
    Expression disabled.

    Error occurred at line 1.
    Comp: ‘main’
    Layer: 3(‘photos’)
    Property: ‘Time Remap’

    Got any advice? This is starting to really bug me.

    • http://www.twitter.com/austinsaylor Saylor

      Great tutorial, PS. haha. Can’t wait to get it rollin with it.

    • Jeremy

      I’m getting the same error now as well. I appreciate you looking in to this.

    • sebastian

      @Saylor and Jeremy,

      to correct your problem delete:
      thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”)
      from the first line. Then (keeping the cursor at that position) take the pickwip tool and point to the Audio Amplitude layer. Your first line is now completed and it all should work fine.

      • sebastian

        Oops. Believe it’s called “the pick whip”.

    • sherwin jupiter

      after you paste the expression, your inverted comer ” ” get mess up. so paste the code and replace/retyped all inverted comer in the code. and you should be fine.

  • Rangetogethe

    maybe ad like

    markerLayer = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”);
    myNearestKey = markerLayer.marker.nearestKey(time);
    markerCounter = 0;
    if (time >= myNearestKey.time)
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index;
    else
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index -1;
    framesToTime(markerCounter * 40) + time/2;

    or something like that :P
    so you get like this slowmo effect and jumps forward in time on every beat :P

    well just details great tut i learned alot.

  • http://www.smudgethis.com Smudgethis

    I had same problem with copying and pasting the script. Sorted it out by deleting first ‘thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”)’ and then pickwhipping the audio amplitude layer again within my own comp.

    Think this is a bug in AE where it doesn’t recognise the reference unless you link it directly within your own project.

    • Jeremy

      Thanks!

    • Lyndon Alvarez

      yeah dude, thx! saved me a lot of headaches :)

  • http://www.twitter.com/austinsaylor Saylor

    what could I be doing wrong?! none of these expression are working.

  • http://www.twitter.com/austinsaylor Saylor

    @Smudgethis Thanks. that was it.

  • http://www.myswagger.com Lotenna Enwonwu

    Dope Tut

  • Carlos

    Man!… Real Cool Effect…
    Love it on the pics… Love it even more on video…
    How would i modify the expression to get the video
    to play at real time, or maybe in slo-mo?

    Thanks.

  • stupid

    stupid video

  • Tyler

    Thanks for the Tutorial, and all your hard work on AEscripts!

  • Stephan

    Hmmm…i get the error message:
    Class`global`has no property or method named `markerLayer
    Expression disabled.

    Error occured ad line 2.

    Can anyone help me??

    • sherwin jupiter

      after you paste the expression, your inverted comer ” ” get mess up. so paste the code and replace/retyped all inverted comer in the code. and you should be fine.

  • http://www.monolithcreative.com jason

    i did not watch the tut but i can tell you how to do it real fast. so…you put all photos in your timeline. go down about 15 to 20 frames (or whenever the first beat hits. you can see the waveform if you hit LL on the audio layer.). then set an out point on all photo layers. then you chose to sequence the layers for that time length. DONE.

    what’s so special about that? i’m really disappointed in all of these tutplus tuts. they’re just dumb. as soon as i can come up with something this dumb i’ll be sure to submit it and profit.

    • KMH

      Jason,

      Maybe you should watch it before being so critical. It is more than just a down beat change. Also, by just marking the first beat and using that as a template, do you not get drift because of the audio and frame rate? I usually do.

      The audio to markers script will adjust for that with out having to go in and manually correcting…time saver! You can also basically adjust the script to the beats you want it to catch, not just the down beats.

      I think this is a pretty smart tut, especially if you have any imagination and creativity to take what you learn and use it in different ways. I have done a lot of slide shows that the client didn’t just want a cookie cutter look…this tut and the scripts will help to make those clients happier and save me time.

      Lloyd, thanks for the tut and great scripts.

    • tim

      jason i totaly agree with you!

    • ParasUniversal

      Since you’re trying to make yourself look so good at AE you don’t even need to come here. Make your own site and do something. It’s a tut site for god sakes, I didn’t know you could do all that and learnt a lot. Refreshing too because you hardly see tuts on audio. Grrr… your ignorance has really pissed me off man. You didn’t even watch it and already hating on the tut. Shame on you. You sound cheap too, while Lloyd has gone through the effort of making the scripts for people. What have you done?

      My suggestions

      1 – Don’t come back here if the tuts are beneath you

      2 – Pay to see the advance tuts

      3 – or go find an advance tuts site for haters who think they’re all that

      4 – If you can’t say nothing good… just don’t say nothing especially if you’ve not even watched the vid.

  • rinkrat

    Great work. Thanks for sharing. Love the scripts. Yes, you can do this other ways, but not in the same amount of time, especially if your looking to cut right on the beat.

    Can this be altered to use multiple clips of video instead of pics?

  • Loay El-Aswad

    Very useful, Thank you.

  • http://www.pan-am.info Thomas

    Lloyd, this is amazing! Exactly what I was looking for.
    Thanks a lot…

  • http://www.forex-programming.com Forex Programming

    i did not watch the tut but i can tell you how to do it real fast. so…you put all photos in your timeline. go down about 15 to 20 frames (or whenever the first beat hits. you can see the waveform if you hit LL on the audio layer.). then set an out point on all photo layers. then you chose to sequence the layers for that time length. DONE.

  • adelew

    Thanks for the tutorial Lloyd!… after I paste my expression for the time remapping, and I go to preview, I’m getting this warning:

    After Effects warning: Time remapped layer cannot be RAM previewed.

    here’s my expression (i needed to use the pick-whip correction Sebastion suggested above in order to avoid errors)

    markerLayer = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”);
    myNearestKey = markerLayer.marker.nearestKey(time);
    markerCounter = 0;
    if (time >= myNearestKey.time)
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index;
    else
    markerCounter = myNearestKey.index -1;
    framesToTime(markerCounter );

    Any ideas how to be able to ram preview?

    thanks!

  • http://www.facebookthemes.info Click Here

    That’s great ideas…Thanks for sharing !

  • ParasUniversal

    Loved it! Hope to see more tuts with audio in them.