Customizing the guest interface: how to change & remove captions

DSLR Remote Pro

This tutorial shows how to use the DSLR Remote Pro setup wizard to customize the text displayed on screen, taking you step by step through

•  editing individual captions in the setup wizard
• removing unwanted captions
• creating your own caption sets in any language
• customizing captions in a pre-designed theme
• creating dynamic captions using tokens

Edit individual captions with the setup wizard

To change or remove individual captions from your screens, run the DSLR Remote Pro setup wizard and at Step 2 select  Edit captions… to show the list of captions used by the program:

You can change the text of individual captions in this window, or remove them completely. Click on any caption name to view and change the text.

Example A – ask guests to record a message for the bride and groom

In this example I used the setup wizard to set up a video booth, and replaced the original text  Press the Start button to record a video.. with  Record a message for the bride and groom

1. Run the wizard and select Edit captions at Step 2

2. Select the VideoStart caption and change the text:

Overwrite the text for each caption you want to change:

When you have finshed changing the captions, exither exit the caption screen with the OK button, or use the Save… button to save the new caption set for reuse.

3. Complete the setup wizard

Finish running steps 2 and 3 of the setup wizard

The wizard has created a full set of screens for the booth, including my captions. These  are stored in the Photoboothimages folder.

4. Run the booth to check your changes have worked:

Example B – remove a caption

A clear graphical interface may not need many captions. Simply delete the text from any caption you don’t want:

 

Build and use complete caption sets

So far, I have changed a single caption. You can replace all the caption text with your own versions – allowing you to use local language(s) and wording to suit your in-house style.

DSLR Remote Pro can store multiple caption sets. Remember to use meaningful filenames so you can identify them later.

When you save your caption set you will be prompted for the directory and filename

Using caption sets in any language

DSLR Remote Pro defaults to English captions as standard. German, Italian, Polish,  Romanian and Spanish caption sets are also provided. You can use these with pre-designed themes shipped with the product such as Tradewind White. You can also include any of these caption sets in your own or third party themes.

DSLR Remote Pro stores the standard themes and caption sets in the program installation folder C:\Program Files (x86)\BreezeSys\DSLR Remote Pro\Wizard .

We suggest you copy the contents of this folder to a new folder called C:\Users\…\Documents\Breeze Systems\DSLR Remote Pro\wizard .

• Create a subfolder in your Documents folder \Breeze Systems\DSLR Remote Pro\wizard
• Copy the master set of themes and captions from C:\Program Files (x86)\Breezesys\DSLR Remote Pro\wizard to C:\Users\…\Documents\Breeze Systems\DSLR Remote Pro\wizard

You can clone a theme and add your chosen caption set to the new theme, or import a pre-written caption set into your copy of the program.

Example C – Creating a version of Tradewind White theme with German captions

• Clone the theme, then
• Copy the caption set you want to use into this theme

First take a copy of the Tradewind White folder in C:\Users\…\Documents\Breeze Systems\DSLR Remote Pro\wizard

This creates a new theme which you can see when you run the DSLR Remote Pro setup wizard. Give the new theme/folder a memorable name. I have called mine Tradewind White – German captions

You  have created a new theme called Tradewind White – German captions. Now copy the German caption set captions.xml from C:\Users\sue\Documents\Breeze Systems\DSLR Remote Pro\wizard\German into your new theme folder

Run the wizard and use your new theme

Choose the theme and finish running the wizard.

Run the booth to check your changes have worked:

Depending on your workflow, you may find it easier to load a caption set into a pre-existing theme when you run the wizard

Example D – importing a caption set into the program

Run the wizard, selecting a theme as usual. At Step 2, go to Edit captions.. and load any of the standard caption sets into the program:

After loading your caption set, finish running the wizard and run the booth to check that your changes worked.

Dynamic captions using tokens

Breeze tokens are a powerful tool to make your life simpler. If you haven’t used them before, check out the Breeze token tutorial.

You may already use tokens in print layouts, file naming and sharing text. You can also use them to customize a guest interface created by the setup wizard. Example A changed the standard caption text to “Record a message for the bride and groom”. A nice touch would be to use the bride and groom’s names instead, ie “Record a message for Helen and Andy”. Using Breeze tokens makes this easy to manage:

Example E – personalizing text with the bride and groom’s names

This example uses a Breeze token called {eventString1} to store the names of the bride and groom. I can then create screen and print captions, email and SMS/MMS text and a folder system using the same {eventString1} token.

For each event I enter the bride and groom’s names once into {eventString1}.

Rerun the wizard, click on Edit captions.. as before, and change VideoStart to Record a message for {eventString1}. Save your changes before leaving the window.

Once I have set up my caption and sharing text using the token {eventString1}, I change it’s value on the Event Information screen

 

Use the same token in your print layout, email and SMS/MMS

For the next wedding, you can just change the value of {eventString1}, rerun the wizard and your screen, print and sharing text will be changed automatically:

 You can use any of these Breeze tokens to personalize the text displayed on your screens:

• {photoboothSubDir} – name of the photo booth images folder specified in step 1 of the setup wizard
• {photoboothNumImages} – number of photos to be taken in stills photo booth mode
• {themeName} – name of the theme selected in step 2 of the setup wizard
• {eventName} – name of the event. Set and change this yourself in the event info screen
• {eventString1}, {eventString2}, {eventString3}, {eventString4}, {eventString5} – set & change these using the event info screen

Learn more about using eventName and event strings here

More about the setup wizard

Each time you run the setup wizard it builds a set of screens and instructions for the booth, which are saved in the Photoboothimages folder.

Each screen background is saved as a jpg image, which includes the caption generated from the caption set you are using.

You can replace any (or all) of these images with your own designs. The replacements should

• be the same size in pixels as the original
• have exactly the same name

If you replace the print confirmation screen shown above the new version must be called printing_confirmed. jpg and be the same size in pixels as the original.

Changing screen captions without running the setup wizard

You can change these captions without running the setup wizard by replacing the original jpg image with your own version.

You can also animate text and images using GIFs and movies on many screens. This is outside the scope of this tutorial.  More details.

Summary

This tutorial has shown how create a guest interface with custom text using DSLR Remote Pro’s powerful setup wizard.

 

© Breeze Systems 2020