Dynamic slideshows with Apple TV and Flickr

Posted by Matt Thommes on May 19, 2008 | Post type: Gain

For my upcoming wedding, I plan on including a TV at the reception hall to display photos of the bride and groom. I envision the photos appearing in a self-cycling fashion with basic transitions between each.

I don't want to create this slideshow manually. The photos I wish to use are already uploaded to Flickr, and tagged appropriately. I'd also like my slideshow to include new photos as they get uploaded.

With Apple TV, and a little help from a third-party Flickr tool, we are able to accomplish this with minimal overhead.

Basic concept

To create the slideshow, we'll use Apple TV's built-in screensaver. The screensaver begins when the Apple TV is idle for a certain amount of time, or on-demand, by clicking Preview underneath the screensaver options.

Photo of Apple TV

Since the Apple TV won't be touched at the wedding reception, it's safe to say that the slideshow will continue to play uninterrupted for as long as we'd like.

All that's left, then, is to choose what photos we'd like to use in the slideshow. I have a set on Flickr titled "Us," which contains photos of my bride-to-be in situations with myself.

I can easily tell Apple TV to use only photos from that set.

Screenshot of Apple TV

Basic needs met

For most people, this will meet all of your needs. Armed with an Apple TV, an internet connection, and Flickr photos, you can easily display your photos in gorgeous transition on a large-screen TV, for all to see.

However, I'd like to take this a step further. Rather than cycling through only a pre-defined amount of photos, I'd like the slideshow to include any new photos added to the set, in real-time.

This would truly make it a dynamic slideshow.

Using the set generator tool

First, we'll need to assume that whomever is taking the photos has a wireless device that can upload photos to Flickr via email.

Next, we have to work around two short-comings:

  1. With Flickr, you can't designate which set you'd like email-uploaded photos to reside in.
  2. With Apple TV, screensaver photos must reside in a Flickr set, and can't be obtained from a tag alone.

Knowing this, we have to somehow tell Flickr which set our email-uploaded photos should reside in. To do this, we'll use a third-party set generator tool, which allows us to dynamically create sets, based on some criteria:

  • Tags
  • Most Interesting
  • Least Interesting
  • Most Recent
  • Earliest First
  • Random

We're only concerned with tags here. Thankfully, Flickr does allow email-uploaded photos to include tags, which will give us the control to designate how and where our uploaded photos are used.

Next, we'll use the set generator tool to regenerate our Flickr set based on certain tags.

For example, the photos in my "Us" Flickr set are already tagged with "us." I'd also like to incorporate wedding day photos into the slideshow, as I take them. Perhaps I tag my wedding day photos with "wedding-day."

Then, we tell the set generator tool to recreate the entire set using all photos tagged with "us" and "wedding-day."

Screenshot of Flickr set generator tool

Any uploaded photos containing these tags will be included in our "Us" set, which gets displayed on Apple TV.

Re-sync the set

This is great for one-time set creation. However, what happens when we upload new photos containing our chosen tags? Those photos won't appear in the set, and therefore won't appear on our Apple TV screensaver.

What we need is some way to "refresh" or "sync" the set, each time we upload new photos containing our chosen tags.

Not a problem. Just click "Update on Flickr" to re-sync the set.

Screenshot of set generator tool

You'd obviously have to do this from your wireless device via a web browser. I've tested with the iPhone, and it's no problem.

Refresh Apple TV

Finally, the last thing you have to do is refresh the Apple TV screensaver. Unfortunately, while the screensaver is running, it won't check for new photos. All you have to do is press any button on the remote to "wake it up" from it's idle state. Then, hit Preview again to load the screensaver, or just wait until it becomes idle again, in which case the screensaver will start automatically.

Your freshly uploaded photos will instantly appear.

This final step is more burdensome than it seems because it requires you to be near the Apple TV. If I'm not at the reception hall yet, I'd still like early-arriving guests to see live, updated photos.

Summary

Despite the final step, this is still a great way to quickly create a dynamic slideshow with minimal overhead. It's not necessarily a cost-effective approach, but if you already have the devices, you might as well put them to good use.

About the author(s)

Matt Thommes is an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from a suburb of Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.

Comments

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# madmac at 5/22/2008 5:20 pm cst

Congrats on your wedding :)

To the post, I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I read it salivating all the while to get to the good bit where the slide show updates without interruption as new photos are uploaded. No dice!

So we're playing a slide show on an Apple TV that can't be updated without stopping and starting the reel? The browser plug-in at Piclens.com, or even Flickr's built-in slide show viewer can accomplish the same thing on any sort of big screen hooked up to any laptop or desktop. I haven't tested whether either will update in real-time (without stopping and starting the reel) as photos are uploaded, because it doesn't need to do that to be equivalent to the above, more involved solution.

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