UPDATES! Unofficial calendar ofr 2017-2018 available now!

[chrisbishop]

Hello all!

Very special update today, with the posting of Spectrum Headquarters Unofficial Calendar!

Normally, our calendar is posted during the Christmas Challenge, on December 31st. But this year, and this year only, we have a special 16-month edition, because this is the anniversary year of our favourite man in red!

SPECTRUM IS GOLD!
A 50th anniversary 'Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons' special edition 16-month calendar for 2017-2018 ", by Caroline Smith, Chris Bishop and Isabelle Saucier, with collaboration from Köhler.

Like for all the previous edition, the calendar is free to download, in four different formats:

- PDF.
- Printable Word with full colour.
- Printer-friendly Word, for less ink; this file has a portrait version, and a landscape version.
- Powerpoint presentation. With soundtrack. Let the presentation run to enjoy it fully!

You can also view the full calendar online, page after wonderful page.

Enjoy!

[hazel]

Fantastic! Wonderful pictures, witty captions - and the Powerpoint presentation is one of the best I've ever seen!

[Skybase Girl]

The powerpoint presentation is fantastic. Wonderful use of Barry Gray's music (lots of versions of my beloved Zero-X theme... ).
Very well done to all concerned. I'm sure the little Man in Red would think we've done him proud.

[chrisbishop]

Just to have a bit of fun, I made a test with a more recent version of Powerpoint, which could save a Powerpoint slideshow into a video.

The result isn't perfect (there is some lag between sound and pictures starting about in the middle), but it's still nice to see that can be done!

You can see the result on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4WzwXy7Wuk&t=3s

I might not leave it very long, so be my guess and check it out before I remove it.

Maybe next year I can try to do better.

[Lt. Pine]

Thanks for sharing this, Chris. I have Open Office and I could not get it to open the PowerPoint version of the calendar. The music is well done!

[Carrie]

Hey Chris, that's pretty darn excellent. The quality of the pictures have transferred in decently sharp detail to the video. I guess this is what you were aiming for originally before we ran out of time?

I see what you mean about the music not lasting till the credits, but I don't think that's a major disaster. Well done for a great first attempt!
It's yet another way to share our love for the Scarlet universe.

[chrisbishop]

Hi Carrie!

Thanks for the comment! The problem isn't exactly at the end, as the Powerpoint slideshow stops about at the same place. It's in the transition that I noticed the lag between images and sound - when you go from one slide to the other?

I'm guessing this is because of my choice of animation for the transition. So if I renew the experience next year, I will have to be careful with that. It was hell to work out when I did the slideshow int he first place, so maybe with a simpler transition, that'll turn out easier.

If you are wondering, the video was created with an existing feature of Powerpoint 2013. I don't know if Powerpoint 2010 has that. It's quite easy to do, too. Once the Powerpoint presentation is completed, you simply save it as a MP4 video. Powerpoint does the rest.

As I don't personally use Powerpoint 2013 (The test was done on a borrowed computer), I guess I'll have to find one before next year if I want to do it again!

[Isabelle]

From what I saw on PowerPoint 2016 in work is that you can select the quality of the picture and you can select the time between the slides (or use the transition timing of the presentation), so if the conversion to video was done using time between the slides, it might have contributed to the lag since the soundtrack is one file for the whole presentation.