diascope Files

Diascope is a slideshow generator for the Linux command line written
and copyright by Martin Stoll (stoll.martin@gmx.net). Diascope is
released under the GNU Public License v2. See LICENSE for the details.

Diascope can be obtained from http://diascope.sourceforge.net. The
documentation is currently only available in HTML format at that web
site. A summary of the options and keywords is printed by calling
diascope without arguments.

How it works
------------

* Create a slideshow 

  Diascope takes a text file with the description of your slideshow:
  images, durations, transitions, audio etc. After processing the
  description diascope creates a shell script containing the necessary
  commands to generate a slideshow, and then executes the script. You
  can watch the progress indicators and wait for your
  slideshow. Depending on the speed of your machine, however, you may
  want to get a cup of coffee, or run diascope over night.

* Reuse your bits in recycling mode 

  Diascope renders all frames and sounds to the hard disk and keeps
  track of its files. If you modify the slideshow description file
  diascope will only reprocess the changes and save you hours of
  waiting time. The downside is, of course, that you need free
  hard disk space: approximately 1.7 GB for one minute of PAL video.


Why it doesn't work
-------------------

* Shortcomings by design 

  Diascope spots errors in the description file and either warns you
  or exits with an error message. However, it does currently not check
  whether you have all required software installed to actually run the
  created shell script.  In recycling mode diascope compares your
  current description file to the one used for the previous run.
  It attempts to map as many of your previous actions and transitions
  to the new slideshow as possible.

Requirements and Credits
------------------------

Diascope requires the following great open source projects to be
installed

* sox for audio conversion, fades and concatenation 
* ImageMagick for all image manipulations 
* ffmpeg for the audio/video encoding 
* gawk for what's left to interpretation 
* GNU/Linux, although diascope may run on comparable systems, too. 

Handy tools for use along with diascope 

* ppmfilter from the smilutils and pnmsplit from netpbm for fast luma
  rendering
* The Gimp's crop dialogue to determine crop specifications 

Credits 

* The example movies on this site are displayed using the flv player
  by Jeroen Wijering.
* Thanks to Charles Yates for patching ppmfilter to address diascope's 
  needs