After researching all the various appropriate programs that I could find, I decided that none were entirely suitable - some came very close and all had advantages. However, it became clear that only way to get one exactly as we needed was to write my own.
This I've done and the result is Film Free Projection (FFP).
FFP is available for download from www.filmfreeprojection.co.uk.
A summary of its features are:
Note that FFP requires .NET version 2 from Microsoft. You may already have this on your computer as it is often needed by the latest programs. If you do not have it then it will be downloaded automatically from the Microsoft website when you install FFP, it takes around 10-20 minutes on a broadband connection.
The current release version is 3.1 which was released in May 2011.
Below I explain how we use FFP for running a digital competition (using version 3.1).
As ever, it's much easier if the images arrive before the day of competition - it takes some time to physically load images from assorted memory sticks and CDs and its less frantic the operator to do this before the night of the competition - also it makes it awkward to print out a score sheet from the program if images arrive late.
Although FFP is used for scoring the competition, we still note scores by hand as a back-up - I plan for power cuts! - So I hand the score sheet to the scorer. FFP makes use of the EXIF information stored as part of JPEGs and we should have the author's name and the photograph title (there's a fragment of a sample sheet shown below).
Having plugged the laptop into the projector and turned everything on, I make sure the second screen is enabled - by right clicking the desktop and selecting Properties and selecting the Setting tab.
In this example, the second screen is greyed out, to attach it I right click it and select Attached and then OK:
With the second monitor attached, the projector image should jump into life - the background image/colour of the desktop should be projected.
Next, I run FFP.
I click the Test Slide button on FFP. A test grid is projected which we can use to check the size of the projected image and that the keystone is correctly set for the projector. Once all is well with the projector, I click the Test Slide button again to turn off the image.
Now I select Load Sequence from the File menu. All being well, FFP will have remembered where the sequence was saved and I can simply double click the appropriate file name.
Once the sequence is loaded, we're ready to start the competition, I click the Projector button. The first image of the sequence will be projected - in this case the Mill title slide.
It's common for judge to ask for a run through of all the images; to do that I set the automatic slidechange interval to 5 (seconds) and click the automatic slidechange tick box:
Each slide is displayed for five seconds; once the entire set of slides has been shown it will automatically return to the first slide and turn off the automatic slide change.
Now the competition can start; I simply click the next slide in the sequence (or use the up/down keys as appropriate). If the judge asks for an image to be held back for later scoring then I press the space bar - the held back image will vanish from the sequence.
When the judge is ready for the held back images, I click the Held Back Only tick box (shown above) - as we've cleverly put the "held back" title slide near the top of the sequence, this is the first held back image and we get the "Held Back" title projected.
Moving through the held back images is very like the "normal" part of the competition; again using the up/down keys or clicking the slide we want to see next.
That's all there is to it!
Some competitions have a single slide or panel winner and the judge asks for slides to be removed from the sequence; to do that during the competition, I select the slide - it's usually selected as it's being projected and press the delete key to remove it.
FFP will also run Knockout and Mix and Match competitions; there's more about that on the RGMM website (www.rgmm.co.uk).