My son is turning one soon and I want to put a slideshow together with music for his b-day party. I was just wondering if someone could recommend some software that is easy to use and allows me use my own music. Thank you.
I've had good luck with Microsoft's Photostory 3 software. It's free, and you can upgrade to buy software that will let you burn it onto a DVD (viewable on normal DVD players).
i cant believe everyone missed the obvious: WINDOWS XP Movie Maker, VERY VERY easy to use and you can use video and music, I'm not going to tell you it has alot of high end features but if you want to see some of what it can do here is a video I made of a trip to the ocean (yeah,its painful to watch someones vacation, i know)
With Movie Maker, can you pan/zoom within a photo like Photostory 3? I see only static pics with Movie Maker...and when I last used Movie Maker, it created a massive file that was not terribly email friendly.
Photostory purports to generate a smallish, email friendly file...haven't used it though...
With Movie Maker, can you pan/zoom within a photo like Photostory 3? I see only static pics with Movie Maker...and when I last used Movie Maker, it created a massive file that was not terribly email friendly.
Photostory purports to generate a smallish, email friendly file...haven't used it though...
Can anyone comment on these differences?
you cannot that is why i say its not high end but there are many transitions and it very easy and its FREE :)
Download a demo copy. Give me a call (pm me for my number) and I'll walk you through how to do it.
When you go to produce it, it will have the demo mark on it, but we live close enough we can work out opening it on a paid-for copy. (I actually own 2 copies, plus Producer.)
It is awesome to have the slides work exactly the way you want with the beat of the movie.
cpanaioti is it easy to use and would you be willing to share an example?
I found Premiere Elements really easy to use. I tried a number of different programs but found the interface for Premiere Elements easiest to use.
You can download a free trial from Adobe.
A friend of mine used Photoshop Elements for a slideshow she prepared for the photo club.
As far as getting the images to line up with beats of the music, that's where you do the work. There's nothing magic that happens. You just listen to the music and transition the images at a natural transition in the music.
Adobe lightroom? Oh man!!! I already purchased the ProShow gold that was recommended by a few local people. I've been very interested in lightroom but I didn't realize it had a slideshow feature. Damn.
Do Lightroom and Elements (Premier and Photoshop) let you pan/zoom within a photo like Photostory 3, or do they just display the static photographs with music in the background?
With Movie Maker, can you pan/zoom within a photo like Photostory 3? I see only static pics with Movie Maker...and when I last used Movie Maker, it created a massive file that was not terribly email friendly.
Photostory purports to generate a smallish, email friendly file...haven't used it though...
Can anyone comment on these differences?
MovieMaker2 =
Title/Credit/Misc Slides between shots
Many Different Fly-in/Fly-out text effects on top of photos
Sound track with fades and easily editable
Narration Track
Slide Transitions and Slide Effects
No Panning
PhotoStory 3 =
Very cool panning
Limited Text on Photo effects
Music (no fading or editing)
Narration Track
Many of the same Transition and effects of MM2
Light photo fixing and effects
Photostory3 works best with 4:3 (8x10) landscape crops when doing a lot of shots. Portrait Shots you will have to do the manual panning.
Panning is editable for each individual shot...some thing cool to do is one large shot many times and pan all over the place with it. Sounds weird but cool effect.
I think Burning to DVD with Photostory3 only works with Window Vista Home Premium and Ultimate as DVD Maker is included in those packages.
About Windows (vista) DVDMaker if you have Vista and Haven't tried it, do so... Very flipping cool Menuing Effects on that one... Simple but some of the Menus like Wall of Photos is really, really cool. Especially when played back on a 61" TV.
