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I have just returned from a long trip with a bunch of people and we have combined to generate a ton of photo, video, and audio files (it was somewhat an educational trip).

To share the fruits of our labour, I am thinking, at a minimum, to sort the files by at least day and location into separate folders on USB sticks (DVDs will not work as we are talking a lot of files). And I am thinking about something a bit more fancy. So given a folder hierarchy of media files, I am looking for a generator-type software that can:

1. Create a "menu/browse" style pages that link to the various folders
2. Can launch the files from the folder from within the pages, without needing to go back to File Browser
3. The output, preferably, is Windows and Mac (and perhaps Android) compatible, meaning it needs to be work under a web browser (HTML5?)?

Nice to have:

1. Can generate thumbnails of pictures within individual "subfolder page"
2. Allow clicking to launch either the "screw view" version or a "higher res" version, similar modern picture sharing sites (some people on our trip may want prints, so thinking "high res" = 5MP at minimum, perhaps higher for the group/selected photos)
3. Free or low cost
4. The generator software runs on Windows, if MacOS I will have to give the task to someone else.
5. May allow custom/manual edits to inject more media (e.g. audio clip about a place that we have visited, so while browsing pictures, they can also launch the audio clip for more info) links

Anybody who has undertaken similar projects before? What other requirements that you find important? Any suggestions or must-stay-away? I have found a few "USB/DVD menu generator" software and will be trying them out in the meantime. Of course a gerbil endorsement is worth much higher in my view, since we have a lot of photographers here I figure I should have some good suggestions.

Note: Cloud is out of the question due to the sheer size of at least all the pictures, and that some of the people in the tour are not exactly well connected. Not to mention the free cloud stuff are mostly geared towards photo/video sharing. If we can pull off the multimedia stunt linking pictures with audio+videos then the whole "product" will be beyond those Cloud sharing sites.

Thanks in advance.

Ninja edit: am I looking the wrong thing? Perhaps I should be looking for "scrapbooking software"?

I know you specifically ruled it out, but I would be tempted to go with a cloud setup like OneDrive. They're pretty universal, they automatically transcode known video types into streamable versions for everyone, they do thumbnails and have the option of highres images, you can download selected media or entire shared folders, etc. For a menu or links you could have a folder hierarchy, or just create a set of sharing links in a readonly file. Maybe you could have a static webpage also hosted on the same service. The main problem is the upload: 100GB of uploads took me about a month on DSL.

If you're dead set on individual hardware like flash drives, you'd probably be best off with some sort of website template coupled with an AutoRun config to launch the home page. Someone else may be able to point you to what's good.

Duct Tape Dude wrote:

I know you specifically ruled it out, but I would be tempted to go with a cloud setup like OneDrive. They're pretty universal, they automatically transcode known video types into streamable versions for everyone, they do thumbnails and have the option of highres images, you can download selected media or entire shared folders, etc. For a menu or links you could have a folder hierarchy, or just create a set of sharing links in a readonly file. Maybe you could have a static webpage also hosted on the same service. The main problem is the upload: 100GB of uploads took me about a month on DSL.

I use OneDrive and a few others as my day-to-day cloud storage. So I am familiar with how they work. They are too files-oriented. OneDrive, in particular, forces download of html files instead of trying to render the page. I suppose that is by design since OneDrive is not a web hosting service. The last thing I want to do is to create a whole website (with all the pains and costs of hosting it). Not to mention I am down to 30-something gigs after that 100GB promotional offer expires.

Duct Tape Dude wrote:

If you're dead set on individual hardware like flash drives, you'd probably be best off with some sort of website template coupled with an AutoRun config to launch the home page. Someone else may be able to point you to what's good.

Know any good template set that can achieve that? While generator software is good, I am also aware of the fact that to get some of the customizations that I want I may have to go a bit manual. Of course the less work I have to do the better. I do not really want to get into designing my own CSS and all that stuff, but may go that path if necessary.

Anyone?