What digital photo frame slideshow features should I look for?
Digital photo frame slideshows are one of the most important and often overlooked features. After all, the whole purpose of these frames is to display your picture and favorite memories while offering you as much control and versatility as possible. There are several features to keep an eye out for that will improve the frame’s ease of use, versatility, and overall user experience.
A super-useful feature is the ability to remotely start and control your digital photo frame’s slideshows. Some frames like the Pix-Star offer this feature and let you manage it through the web interface. The remote-control feature lets you start slideshows on any connected frame, from anywhere in the world.
Along with starting slideshows, you should also be able to control the style, speed, and order of slideshows. This includes the ability to select a wide variety of transition effects and speeds ranging from fast (around 5-seconds) to very slow (around 10-30 minutes). An option to display one image only is also helpful if you want to use the frame to display artwork or family portraits.
Slideshow display order is another key feature for great digital photo frame slideshows. You should have quite a lot of control over which photos you want to display, and how often you’d like to see them. With top digital frames like the Pix-Star, you can choose to display new photos added from the past “x” number of days. On top of this, you can select to show them exclusively, or more frequently (mixed with older photos).
The ability to play web albums is another handy digital photo frame slideshow feature. This lets you use online photo albums linked from social media sites and photo sharing platforms, together with other albums, to create slideshows. This is only possible if the digital photo frame supports web albums and saves them to the frame’s internal storage.
Use the above features as a starting point to thin out the number of possible choices. With these features, you get a great balance between usability and versatility, giving you plenty of control and ensuring you can always start the right slideshow at the right moment.
How to start slideshows on the Pix-Star digital photo frame?
Pix-Star digital photo frames are known for their robust feature set, versatility, and ease of use. Their digital photo frame slideshow features and usability are a big part of the frame’s appeal. You get premium performance and functionality that’s great for large families and elderly users.
The first way to start a slideshow is natively on the Pix-Star frame via the media gallery. Here you can select all the albums you want to include in the slideshow.
Alternatively, you can create new folders within the media gallery where you place all the albums and photos you want to display. This is great for creating slideshow folders that you’re going to use for a while. Pix-Star’s frames make it easy to add the pictures and albums to folders, and bulk actions are easily performed.
The next method for starting a slideshow is through the web interface. Log in to your user account at pix-star.com. Scroll down the left-side panel until you see a “Switch slide show” option. Once you’ve clicked on it, you’ll be taken to a new screen where you can change the current slideshow that’s playing on your frame (or another connected frame). While you’re here, you can also configure your frame and adjust settings like hue and saturation to improve the digital photo frame’s slideshow experience.
How can I add photos from Facebook to my digital photo frame’s slideshow?
There are two main ways to do this. The first isn’t a commonly offered feature and is limited to only a handful of the top digital frame – a web album feature. This lets you link your frame to your Facebook account (and up a dozen other platforms with frames like the Pix-Star); whereby you select photo albums or individual photos you want to sync to your frame.
Once the photos have been synced to your frame, they should be saved to their internal storage. Again, the specifics of this feature vary wildly between frame models and brands (this process works for Pix-Star’s frames). Once the web albums from your Facebook account have been saved to your frame’s internal storage, you can select them via the frame’s media gallery.
You can then display this album only, or include the web album folder into a larger slideshow. You need to check what your frame is capable of a whether or not they support web albums (and their offline storage).
The second method requires you to manually download all the photos you want from your Facebook account. This is best done on a computer as it’s easier to create folders and adjust the file names. Load these photos onto a USB/SD card and insert them into your frame. Depending on your frame, you may need to copy them across to the frame’s local storage. From there, starting the slideshow should follow the same steps as is standard.
Can I start a digital photo frame slideshow from a USB or memory card?
The answer to this question depends on the frame you’re using. Some frames allow you to display the content of the USB/SD card without needing to copy them to the frame’s internal storage first. The issue is that you’re usually quite limited in terms of choosing the slideshow’s playback order. On the plus side, you’re not limited by the frame’s internal storage size – though anything 8GB and over is big enough as it is.
Can I include videos in a digital photo frame slideshow?
The first check you need to make is whether or not your frame supports video playback. Additionally, there are often limitations placed on video length, format, file size, and resolution. If your frame supports video playback, and the video clips you intend to send meet all the requirements, your next step is to test.
Make a folder with a couple of photos (no more than 10) and a couple of videos (possibly of different lengths, sizes, and even formats). Start a slideshow that only includes the content of this folder. Observe which videos – if any – played, and note if the full clip was played.
You should also browse through the frame’s settings to see if any allowances are made for including videos in slideshows – and if their accompanying audio is also played. A handful of the top digital photo frames let your slideshows include videos. Pix-Star frames are a good example and include both video and audio playback during slideshows, along with standard photo playback.
