This page covers the stills playlist: a set of pictures that advance automatically. The photo wall before the service, the sponsor boards at the interval, the holiday pictures during the coffee.
Adding one
The arrow beside Still in the toolbar → Stills playlist…, then pick the pictures.
You then get a list of what you selected with a Time beside each one, and a field for the time to give them:
- Set a time for a single picture by typing it on that line.
- Set the same time for everything with Apply to all — which is what you want nine times out of ten.
How it plays
The playlist runs by itself: each picture is shown for its time, then the next one appears. One line in the rundown, one GO, and the whole set runs.
Where a media playlist advances on your GO, a stills playlist advances on the clock. That is the difference between the two, and it follows from what they are for: clips are items in a show, photos are wallpaper.
Choosing a time
| Content | A reasonable time |
|---|---|
| Photos people are looking at | 6–10 seconds |
| Sponsor boards with text to read | 8–12 seconds |
| A background nobody studies | 15 seconds or more |
Shorter than about four seconds starts to feel restless on a large screen, and anything a viewer is expected to read needs the time to read it twice.
Practical notes
Order is the order you picked them in. Select them in File Explorer in the order you want, or sort by file name and name them accordingly.
Mixed proportions are shown fitted, so portrait photos get bars rather than a crop. For a wall of holiday pictures that is usually right; if it is not, crop them to the canvas beforehand.
Add a music bed under it and the block looks intentional rather than silent — see music beds.