Community Newsletter: Q&A: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip
- 3/30/07 11:40 AM
Hi Chuck C.
by prncs0312000 - 3/16/07 9:36 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Yes, you may add all of these images to your Power Point and make a lot of slide shows with them. I find that Power Point is the most easiest to use than the Nero. I have both, but mostly use the Power Point Program.
I am a Web Design / Multi Media Student and have found the Power Point most useful in all of my work at college and at play.
Slideshow
by seaghdha - 3/16/07 9:39 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Chuck,
In my experience, Powerpoint has always been the best program to use for creating quality slideshows, complete with all the effects you want. However, Powerpoint does not have any type of interface for burning shows to a disc, and the show can only be played on a computer that has Powerpoint or Powerpoint Viewer. There likely are programs you can find for creating DVDs that will allow you to import a Powerpoint presentation, which in my opinion would be ideal. But if you are looking to do everything in one program, I would recommend looking at ProShow Gold, which I actually found from Downloads.com. It has a free trila that I believe gives you near full access for 30 days. it costs $69.95 to purchase, but it is definitely worth it. Hope I helped.
Shea
IDVD is the program to make professional level DVDs
by pagaynor - 3/16/07 9:49 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I work both on Windows and Mac and have been looking to make professional level DVDs with my many digital images. Using a Mac and the iLife suite, iPhoto and iDVD, it's easy to have music and your choice of transitions, plus the Ken Burns effect, with stunning templates with iDVD. Plus you can archive all your photos with DVD-ROM.
It is my major use for my Mac right now. I tried Swish pix and it does an ok job, but not near the quality of iDVD.
Slide show software
by jbardell - 3/16/07 9:55 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Chuck,
try Proshow Gold from Photodex at about $US70. Great product that I use for putting together the types of shows you're talking about. They have an 30 day? evaluation period in which you can trial the product (note that it puts watermark on shows produced with the evaluation version). Their web site has samples of what other users have done plus tutorials.
Use Windows XP - Windows Movie Maker
by yogi52 - 3/16/07 10:00 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Chuck
If you have Windows XP, you can use Windows Movie Maker to display your beautiful pics. Movie Maker has lots, and lots of fade ins, and fade outs, as well as opening and closing credit headers. You can also import your own favorite music. The result is very gratifying. With your Nero program you can burn your project to DVD or Video CD (my favorite)
Answer submissions for Chuck C.
by knight2448 - 3/16/07 10:11 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Well I would have to say POWERPOINT is probably the best program to do this although there are alternative software titles to use. ROXIO MEDIA CREATOR 9 allows you to do this. If you are running WINDOWS VISTA Home Premium or Ultimate there is a built in program called Windows DVD Maker. I have tried that program and it works great.
I hope this helps you.
power point is grand
by ladysparklecat - 3/16/07 10:14 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You can do exactly what you described with power point . The best part is that you can play with the program and make all kinds of discoveries just see how far your imagination can take you.
Slide Shows of lots of Photos
by colo39 - 3/16/07 10:14 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Power Point will only make CDs of photos so when you have hundreds of photos the program to use is Pro Show Gold. This will make a DVD Slide Show and has lots of options to name add comments add a musical Mp3 background. Here is the Tucows download site. http://www.tucows.com/preview/293514 try before you buy. This is a very good program, and worth your money if you want to make a Slide Show of your travels.
Re: Making a DVD video of your vacation photos.
by min.darren - 3/16/07 11:02 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've recently started using a GREAT program from Photodex ( http://www.photodex.com ) I downloaded a trial copy of their ProShow Gold and loved what I was able to create. The website has a place where other users can post what they have created if you'd like to see samples of what other users have done.
One of the things that makes this a great program is that you can manage your entire project within the program including creating DVD menus and burning the project to DVD. Before choosing this program I tried trial versions of several other programs and didn't find any of them able to create as professional a product as this one.
Consider this as well, computers have problems sometimes yet this program also will recover your project and open up where you left off in the event of a problem. You'll be thankful when you've added your 100th photo, tweaked, transitioned, and captioned... and somehow forgot to save before something happens. In my case I was running photoshop as well as a few other large programs and ran out of memory! I made that mistake once, but lost nothing.
Tech support was very helpful as well. Real people on the phone with little to no wait time.
You get free product upgrades for up to 1 year after purchase. With the most recent upgrade, I noticed that the program took advantage of my systems dual processors, so rendering the final DVD at High Quality was fast as well.
There are tools for tweaking your soundtrack, and while they are simple to use and easy to understand, I've seen other programs offer a few more handy tools. However it handles importing music from CD's well or using audio files from your hard drive.
The program was even aware that some of my files were on an external drive and offered to copy the file to my hard drive so that it wouldn't be "lost" if the drive was disconnected.
All in all, it's simple enough to use for the novice, but advanced enough to let your imagination be the limit to your creativity.
I say all this to hopefully give you some features to look for beyond transitions (the included transitions for photos and for captions are great too!). Congratulations on your vacation!
--Darren
Anything but Powerpoint
by MichaelF - 3/16/07 11:19 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Chuck
There are many tools available for turning your holiday pics into a slideshow, but Powerpoint would probably be the most difficult and cumbersome to use. This is not its main purpose, it is for presentations not for holiday photo slideshows.
What you do use will depend on 2 things, what software you already have and your skill level in using them. Most photo editing software such as Photoshop already have automated ways of turning your photos into slideshows so if you are already comfortable and have such software available then that would be the way to go.
On the other hand if you are not comfortable or do not have photo editing software then Microsoft have some free and easy to use tools of their own. The first one is to use Windows MovieMaker which already comes with Windows XP and can be found in the Entertainment start menu item from Accessories. It can be confusing initially to learn but there are many tutorial sites on the net, just do a search for moviemaker tutorials. It can be very flexible, and will work with pictures, video and sound.
Another free program is Photostory, also from Microsoft. It is built specifically for the purpose you describe and has a step by step way of creating your slideshow. If you are new to this it will probably be your easiest way to do a fancy photo slideshow and then you can graduate to moviemaker when you are ready, and then after that you may go to Adobe Premiere or some other video editing software, but lets not get ahead of ourselves 
Download Photostory:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx
Photostory Tutorial:
http://www.windowsphotostory.com/ (there are many more)
Afterwards you can then use Nero to create the DVD from the video you create.
I myself went from Moviemaker for my daughters 21st this is your life movie, to Adobe Premiere Elements for my sons. It gets addictive.
Good Luck
Michael
SWF'n slide is great
by Shabbadang - 3/16/07 11:25 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi,
I'd suggest SWF'n slide, a program that makes exactly what you want. Very easy to work with and the result is a flash filer, played in a web browser at you specification. http://www.verticalmoon.com/
Digital Photos
by ricanman - 3/16/07 11:57 PM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You can do it with PowerPoint or Nero Software as well. Nero is limited to 99 photos per project.
Answer
by vandendyk - 3/17/07 12:16 AM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The new version of PowerPoint Office 2007 offers new interesting features. I didn't understand well your question (english isn't my mother linguage) but personaly I use a combination with PowerPoint and PhotoPaint from Corel Draw. I hope it can be usefull for you.
SLIDE SHOW: PRO SHOW GOLD
by Christo - 3/17/07 12:29 AM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Chuck C asks: "My wife and I took our "trip of a lifetime" to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji--and brought home hundreds of digital photos. We want to make a top-quality slide show of these, featuring music, captions, dissolves, and fades. Can this be done by PowerPoint or should we buy special software? I have an OEM of Nero but haven't learned how to use it. Would this be useable for our purposes? Please guide us into what is needed for making DVDs of these treasured photos."
Whereas Powerpoint may be already available, it simply does not have the versatility of a dedicated video slide show program. I use Pro Show Gold and find it affordable, extremely flexible, allowing easy adjustment of timing of individual slides, arranging the total timing of the show, rearranging slides, a wide choice of change-overs, zooming and panning of individual slides, captions, adding a soundtrack, and a wide variety of output formats (including stand-alone .exe files all the way to DVD). It features a built-in CD or DVD authoring program. Individual slides can be edited (modify contrast, gamma, etc.) The only complaint I have is that on playback with an MP3 soundtrack added, the sound somtimes wobble. Also, to reduce the size of the ultimate file created, I reduce the size of individual slides to something like 800 x 600 pixels before compiling the show. This does not sacrifice any noticeable quality on a TV screen.
Regards
Chris V
Answer
by Wolfie2k5 - 3/17/07 12:33 AM In reply to: Need advice to make a quality slide show of my trip by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Chuck,
There are a number of options for this. Powerpoint will do the trick if you want to email your pics in small batches to your friends and family. Powerpoint is great for creating presentations that can be played on a PC or Mac but not quite the right tool for the job if you want to make a keepsake DVD slide show.
For this kind of job, you need something a bit more specialized. My personal favorite is ProShow from Photodex.com. This is an application that's specifically designed to create slideshows that can be burned to a CD or DVD or any other common media output. The beauty of this program is the interface. You drag and drop your photos into the photo timeline, drag and drop music files into the music channel and tell ProShow to space the time the photos are displayed so they match the length of the music track. Additionally, you can insert any of 280+ transition effects between the slides - including one that randomizes the transitions.
You can preview your slideshow when you're done and then you can save it any number of formats - VCD, DVD, or create emailable files, Flash animations or even make custom screensavers.
The only catch is the Pro version is $70. But it's worth the investment. I've used it on high school reunion DVDs and it came out pretty slick. Visit www.photodex.com for more information.
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