Audio Visual Shows (A/V)

These self-running A/V shows are based on a series of related pictures set to music.  Those of you that remember A/V shows produced with two or more slide projectors set to music and using slide film, will recognise the familiar fades, cuts and cross fades produced by this method

These downloadable Zip files contains such shows.  Extract the .exe file from the  Zip and click on the .exe file and enjoy.

The term Audio Visual (A/V) in this modern age is linked with items such as camcorders, video editing software, VCR Players, DVD burners and DVD players. It wasn’t so long ago (just before the digital evolution) that the letters A/V had a somewhat different meaning to amateur and serious photographers.

A/V was the art of showing a sequence of slides accompanied to suitable music onto a large screen using multiple projectors. Slides would fade in and out of each other with the occasional snap change to change the tempo of the presentation. Many interesting third images were effected during the transition of one slide to the other. Some shows would employ up to five projectors all controlled from a central black box attached to a tape recorder (remember those) and then linked to the projectors loaded with slides all in sequence . The black box would contain all the electronics to fade the projectors light off and on in time with the music. This signal would be picked up from the sound track on the tape recorder, on which a signal would be placed previously when setting up the show.

As can be imaged, transporting all the equipment to the venue also had its dangers, slides slipping out of their trays rendering the whole  sequence useless, power leads left at home or misplaced, only one lead from the mass of control leads form projectors to control box needed to be missing to make the whole exercise a non runner. Having survived all the above, and everything has been set up and ready to roll, a new set of problems could once more raise their ugly heads. A bulb blow in one of the projectors or a tape head needs cleaning in the tape recorder resulting in a misread signal, remedy, stop everything replace bulb or clean tape head and start all over again. The audience would love you for it, having to sit through a lengthy show for the second time is not the best way to gain appreciation for your hard work.

THEN … came computers and slide show software. Now we can collect images from cameras, scanners, and hard drives, edit a sound track, and place them into a sequence. Fine tune them all together, click save, and now you have a slide show that will run time after time by the click of a mouse. Anyone in the world can now view them (what an audience) by down loading them and running the file. Some presenters have even gone back to showing them onto large screen via digital projectors.