The Good News: It held interest. It wasn't nearly so onerous as I thought it would be. I will probably be keeping the slideshow as it is now. I had a notepad available to write down photos Uncle Shane might have figured that I could toss, and I never once needed to use it. The images and videos looked great on the TV. It really brought things to life - Aunt Shirley testified it was like being there, and that she wished I was her teacher.
The Bad News: It's three hours long. =)
The solution, therefore, is to split it into two 90-minute chunks. I had some misgivings about this - people will agree to sit down for a slideshow out of politeness, but there's no way you're going to get more than lip service for a second sitting unless it's damn good. I'm confident now, though.
So this is an albatross off my back. Of course, I never made up slideshows for Alberta, Poland, and Ukraine, and I probably should have. Maybe someday - now that everything will fit easily on a laptop harddrive, (and the fact that I have a laptop) makes a show feasible now where it wasn't then. I also think that more people have expressed interest in Japan than Poland and Ukraine.
Will's Japan Slideshow: Coming soon to a S-Video-equipped living-room television set near you.