In the 70s and 80s it was all about sending your friends and relatives to sleep with slideshows of your photos. In 2004 the concept is the same but now you can do it using dvd players.
After my visit to America I set about making a dvd with photos and music using the software program “Memories on TV” (now called Photo2DVD). It was a long and labourious process as I agonised over what music would suit what photo. It took me over 5 months of working on it in spare moments and it was worth the effort when I harassed friends and family in to watching it. Even now I enjoying viewing it to relive the trip.
Unfortunately for me it opened up their eyes as to what you can do with your digital photos, so I have been asked to create some more for various people. It is a time consuming process and although I enjoy it it does take up a lot of time. I have made the switch to apple since I created the original california dvd so I had to struggle with iMovie for a while as I learnt how to do it all again. I wasn’t impressed with the way iMovie renders the photos immediately which means you have to wait 40 mins just to see one setting change. 5 days later and you have a two minute movie. Unhappy with it’s implementation of the Ken Burns effect and transitions I found “Photo to Movie” which was adequate for my needs but still a little annoying in that you couldn’t just tick a box that said fit to audio like “Memories on TV” did. It was a hell of a lot better than iMovie though so it is my mac software of choice for now.
Now that the Melbourne trip is over and Mum has some digital pics with her new camera she is wanting to do a similar thing. A couple of people at work also want to do this so I went in search of some free software that did it. I was thoroughly impressed when I discovered Microsoft does a fully featured free photo movie movie program called Photo Story. It’s up to version 3 and does the Ken Burns effects, music, editing and rotating, red eye reduction and an extremely intutive way to decide which format to save it in. I recommend this to anyone who has an interest in making movies from their photos and am stunned that this is free. So easy even your grandma could use it.
Download it now and torment your relatives with your dreary out of focus pictures!
What Microsoft have made a free, better, and easier to use product than those you’ve been able to find for a mac! Must be an alternative universe! Dame those physicists and their string theory.
I was waiting for the requisite mac bashing post. 🙂
I don’t do mac bashing. Just the users who blindly follow the religion.