FastStone Image Viewer 6.5 supports video import
FastStone Image Viewer 6.5 is the latest version of the media viewer for Microsoft's Windows operating system. The new version of the application supports the importing of video files, improved the slideshow functionality and the internal video player.
If you ask one hundred Windows users about the media viewer they use to view images, you will probably get more than twenty different answers.
Some may use the Photos application that Microsoft integrated in newer versions of Windows; others may run third-party programs like XnView, Fast Picture Viewer, IrfanView, or FastStone Image Viewer.
I reviewed FastStone Image Viewer in 2009 for the first time on this site and followed development ever since. The developer released version 6.0 in 2016. Video player support was added in FastStone Image Viewer 6.3 in 2017, and the new version is the first release of the media viewer in 2018.
FastStone Image Viewer 6.5
FastStone Image Viewer 6.5 is available as a portable version and an installer. I suggest you download and use the portable version; it has a size of 8 Megabytes and can be run after download and extraction of the downloaded archive.
The program displays folders of the main partition of the system and available images in those folders in the interface on start.
You can use the folder browser in the sidebar to open different folders on the same or other drives, or click on any folder in the main pane to look at thumbnails of available images it contains.
The main feature addition in FastStone Image Viewer 6.5 is support for video imports. You could use the program previously to import images and photos from external media such as digital cameras or smartphones that you connected to the device the image viewer was running on.
Select File > Import Photos and Videos to start a new import process.
The new version adds options to include captured or downloaded videos in the process as well; you may use the internal video player to play these files right away. The changelog lists enhancements to the video player as another improvement in the new version but does not provide further information.
The third and final improvement increases the maximum time interval of slideshows from five minutes to one hour. You can create slideshows in FastStone Picture Viewer with a click on Create at the top and the selection of Slide Show Builder from the menu that opens when you do.
From there it is just a matter of adding files or folders with images to the slideshow, and setting various parameters such as transition effects, whether images should be resized, and the time per slides.
You cannot set the total playtime of slideshows as it is determined by the number of images and the time each image is displayed when the slideshow runs.
Closing Words
FastStone Image Viewer 6.5 is another high-quality release that improves the media viewer further. If you use or like the new video import function or slideshow improvements, you may want to give this a try even if you use a different media viewer.
Now You: Which image viewer do you use on your devices?
With 6.5 I can make stills and MOV video work together in a slide show. However when I go to save this in Slide Show Builder it will not create the Exe. file.
I’ve been using FastStone for several years now (and contributed to them) it’s a great program! But,(there’s always a but) I don’t seem to be able to combine still & movie(video) into a slideshow? Is there a video of doing that?
Or do I need to be using ‘Movie Maker’ or something?
Cheers
I’m testing Faststone Image Viewer and I’m struggling with video files:
1. MOV videos only play sound.
2. If I try and import files from an iPhone it doesn’t show any image on the MOV files, so I don’t know which files I want to import.
Any advice?
Thanks.
I still use Fastone as my main image viewer, but sticking with version 6.2. I don’t want a bloated image viewer that tries to act as a video player (I have MPC for that.)
For me, Imagine will always be the best lightweight image viewer:
http://www.nyam.pe.kr/dev/imagine/
It has a customizable keyboard shortcut for practically everything, which is important if you value your time and sanity.
The last version of FastStone Image Viewer that I tried was FastStone Image Viewer 4.9, and I remember that it was a rather slow application for what it did; compared to ACDSee 5.0.1, FastStone Image Viewer 4.9 was quite obviously slower.
Hopefully FastStone Image Viewer 6.5 now performs bettre.
As an image viewer Faststone is the best – for me at least. It loads immediately and is gone with a simple Esc.
Been a supporter for years. Pity they don’t make it for Linux as well.
Nikon view NX-D, Faststone image viewer and sometimes Windows photo viewer. Faststone is fast, only slow to load TIF files. But that might be a Windows 7 problem. Otherwise very usable software. Setting a desktop background is very easy.The clone tool is also quite good. It has however no real color management. For Nikon users View NX-D gives the best Nikon colors rendering.
I moved from faststone irfanview and honeyview to xnviewmp
after installing it and running it for the first time go to \AppData\Roaming\XnViewMP
open xnview.ini and seach for prevSize and set it to 0 0 like this
prevSize=@Size(0 0)
set it to 1 tab from the settings and hide the tab bar completely from view menu
hide the toolbar too from view menu
this way you get a simple fast viewer like honeyview with all the functionalities of faststone and other programs
Unfortunately XnViewMP is too much buggy. I tried it during two years and I definitively removed it. Like all viewers portable indeed, I just use DOpus finally.
it’s fast but unlike xnviewmp it struggles to zoom my big files up to 800%
xnviewmp zoom up to 1600% instantly
5930k + gtx 1070 + 16gb ram