Possible AppleTV app for FotoMagico shows

I use FotoMagico to create digital signage for my elementary school. The resulting movie files are contain announcements for important upcoming events, as well as photos taken throughout the school. Since I do this all on my laptop, which I take with me as I move about the building, I cannot just broadcast the final movie file via an AppleTV connected to a LG television monitor. I would love to see a dedicated AppleTV app for FotoMagico that would allow me to easily edit and broadcast this digital signage content. Third party apps like Carousel would do this, but the licensing costs are quite high. Right now, I transfer the movie files to a USB flash drive that the television can read. I am open to other suggestions and would appreciate any feedback received. I am not certain that I want my personal AppleID on a publicly accessible AppleTV device, so perhaps a FotoMagico app for AppleTV would help.

@ctsmsedu Thank you for using FotoMagico! This is a great use case.

We’re considering several options for showing FotoMagico slide shows on AppleTV.

For clarification: Would this be one AppleTV or several?

It’s been a long time since that request… but I’d like to second the request for a FotoMagico viewer app for Apple TV. I know I can use AirPlay. But then I still have to sit next to my computer, or get another remote control/present for the Mac. I might be missing something about the iPad as a presenting device (through AirPlay). But the small button at the bottom of the iPad’s screen just isn’t big enough for me. I’d have to concentrate on the screen in order to interactively present a show. With Apple TV and its remote control this would be much more natural.

Now that Apple has done a lot to bring all its different OSes into alignment, I would’ve thought it would be relatively easy to port the iPad app over to Apple TV.

It’s true that the player itself is a small task. The player engine we have already works on Mac and iPad, and there’s nothing in it that wouldn’t work on AppleTV.

However, the big challenge is how to get the slideshow to the AppleTV, since you can’t just plug in a USB stick or email it. iCloud is an option, but that would only work if you were logged into the same account on the AppleTV as on the Mac, so that would prevent people from sharing the slideshow with strangers or using it for digital signage, and would have little advantage over using AirPlay, since it would basically just be your device you could use it on.

If we create a service to host the slideshows, that is a whole new bag of snakes with all the liability that DMCA, DSA and whatnot create.

That extra effort is a huge investment. We’ll be watching tvOS and the AppleTV closely to see if there’s a less investment-intensive solution.

Thanks for the clarification, Oliver. It is obviously more complicated than I had supposed.

Fair enough. I was wondering about iCloud, too. In particular as it proved not very reliable in my little testing…

So I guess I should go back to the “please fix the iPad version” thread :wink: . Maps are broken. And the UX when using AirPlay is painful. You can’t move to the next slide by touching the right hand side. You have to use the all too small button at the bottom. Do you have an official way to submit bug reports?

This forum is the right place to voice bug reports and feature requests.

A new version of FotoMagico for iPad is being submitted to the app store as we speak.

Although the UX for AirPlay isn’t changing as far as I know. I’ll add that as a bug report.

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Oh, and while I’m thinking out loud… why not a very simple player only iPhone version? I always have it with me, it’s lighter in the hands than an iPad…

I can confirm that with today’s release of the iPad version the split route problem is resolved.

That’s good to hear. More is in the works.

Now that iPhones are much more powerful it is worth considering a “Pocket Player”. In that case, the issue of how to get the slideshow on the device would also not be different than what we now have for iPad.