Soundslides Forum

Re-Publishing Old Slideshows

#1

Hey Joe,

I think you answered this somewhere before, but my quick look-around didn’t find it. Maybe by answering it here again you will save someone else looking around.

I have some of your old “publish_to_web” folders on my server. They still work of course - but not for “non-Flash” devices. I think I remember you saying you have a tool for converting these to the new format. I also have some of the HTML5 folders as well - still working - but probably best to convert those as well.

Does that mean I can use these “publish to web” folders and do that? Or do I have to have the original “SoundSlide” project folders?

#2

Exactly.

You can import a zip of that publish_to_web folder. You can zip the file up yourself, or use a zip that was exported from old versions of Soundslides 1 or Soundslides Plus 1.

Here’s some fresh documentation for importing shows from those zips.

I do have a tool here at the office that can import your shows in bulk if you’ve got more than a handful of shows sitting on your web server. I just need the URLs of those shows in order to ingest them straight into your account.

I’ve used this internal tool a few times for publications with hundreds of shows to convert. It’s not something that’s available in a self-serve capacity at this time, but it’s there if someone needs it.

For self-serve, the one-at-a-time importer is the way to go.

-joe

#3

Thanks Joe - but I can’t get it to work. I sent an email earlier with a Subject line of “SoundSlide Conversion Help”

I’ll post that here as well, so someone else may learn from it.

Hey Joe - I fully intend to to upgrade to the Plus Plan when I get everything figured out here. But I need to know I can convert my older shows over to the new format.

I just tried a couple of old Flash shows. Here is what I did.

  • Downloaded my publish_to_web folder from my server. It was in a named folder “example”

  • Compressed it on my Mac to yield example.zip

  • Used the Import Show and began the Upload - did not see any progress bar

  • Went to my page and see the show there - but no preview pic

  • Clicked on Edit and only get

"Deploying new assets to content delivery network …’

I might add that both of the shows I have tried are large. One is 80MB zipped and the other was over 100MB. Both have audio.

I have waited almost 4 hours and still no joy. Does it take longer than that?

Thanks,

Dean

#4

Hmmm.

You should have seen an upload progress bar immediately … so something definitely went wrong.

The old formats varied a lot in project structure. From Soundslides 0.97 in 2005, to Soundslides Plus 1.9.4 in 2014, there were probably 12 different internal standards. I may have missed something when writing the importer.

The file size shouldn’t have been a problem.

Let me check the error logs and poke around with the importer today and see if I’ve missed something.

joe

#5

And sorry I missed that email … it went into spam (which I usually check M-F from the office). Spam wasn’t being checked b/c we’re all working from home now.

I’ll at “check spam” to the remote daily list.

joe

#6

No apologies necessary - your support is outstanding.

I might add that when I choose the zipped folder to upload, the preview pic is displayed. However, no progress bar and the preview pic never appears on “my page” although the project appears as “Untitled”

I am sending you via email the URLs of the four shows that I need to get converted in 2 days - if at all possible. 3 are older (Flash and HTML5) and one is newer - from June of last year - but it won’t convert either.

More info will be in the email.

Thanks

#7

Joe - I sent that info via email - but not sure if you received it.