@ 9. ric

photostage slideshow producer -

has been given away here before.

so if it is again you won't have to pay.

it's actually quite good, would recommend.

as for this one, * Boxoft Photo SlideShow Builder, eh I don't know, I don't think it's that good.

have had a lot of experience trying different slideshow makers (for my son's 21st) and knowing what's possible doesn't compare favourably with this one (didn't have to pay for any of them).

* there sure are a lot of transition effects

* not much control over transition timing (some programs can make the transition slowler or faster, such as with photostage slideshow producer, windows live movie maker)

* very frustrating that I couldn't control within the program how large the images appear in the slideshow, or that it stretches them sometimes no matter which settings I choose

* interesting concept with the Build to video option that captures it live while playing - not interesting enough though, just captures a not very big deal slideshow :-P

sorry don't have time to include the other slideshow makers I found quite good.

if you want to do your own research of course giovanni's recommendations are a good start :-)

The "About" screen appears every time I open the application. In order to continue, I have to click "ok" which is annoying. There does not seem to be an option anywhere to keep it from appearing so I would like to suggest this as a future improvement.

It does have one interesting feature and that is the ability to scan an image to your slideshow.

It says it supports .wmv format input but when I attempted to add a .wmv file, I received the following error message: "A-PDF Image to FlipBook does not support convert file '...wmv' to FlipBook, such as .avi, .wmv, mpg video file formats!"

Also, it lacks the ability to add captions or any text and is more like a basic starter version than anything else. I imagine this is A-PDF's/Boxoft's first venture into the slideshow arena and that they will add more features and show improvement over time.

Read Ashraf's review. "Average" and free in GOTD looks reasonable. Anyway, it is up to each individual choice.

Have read elsewhere that these two are the cat's meow, when it comes to Slideshow software (but must pay).

Proshow Gold

Photostage Slideshow

Since as Ashraf posts in his review, Boxoft Photo SlideShow Builder records the playing slideshow to record video, maybe keep in mind the accuracy of your display... AMD/ATI graphics for example use the Catalyst Control Center which may be set to limit or alter colors &/or color calibration -- I *think* in some cases that may alter what would be recorded, so if your slideshow(s) seem a little off, maybe that's someplace to look.

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#3: "... when will we see a free one that actually utilises the true ability of a DVD to store images in their native form with a decent menu system and not simply encode to images to a 720×576 movie of rolling pictures."

The main free app for creating DVDs is DVD Author, a *nix app that's ported to Windows & has a number of GUIs available -- every app capable of creating DVDs that's been featured on GOTD uses it. That said, unfortunately the DVD spec says everything must be mpg2 video. There are "tricks" that can display & hold a frame [though it's not commonly used], &/or it's possible to have the same visual effect playing a short loop indefinitely, but either way it's always mpg2 video.

For DVD slideshows or DVDs in general, or anytime you want to view a slideshow on a std TV, watch out for the interlacing that std. TVs use -- it can make still images shimmer or dance or flicker. Watch out for the limited TV colorspace too -- whether or not your std. TV can display the full 0-255 range, your DVD player may not allow it, &/or your DVD authoring software may automatically crush your images' colors. Watch out for aspect ratio distortions... on a std. TV the video frame is stretched, & a surprising number of video apps mangle the aspect ratio of still images you import. [Hint: if the mpg2 video file itself (not a DVD VOB file) looks right in Windows Media Player, it'll be off on a std TV.] Finally, there are colors &/or color saturation levels that will not look right or good on a TV -- wrong colors can even effect the audio on a std. TV -- and video software may or may not try to alter problem colors for you.

Get the colors or aspect wrong on DVD video, &/or any video at DVD frame sizes, & it may look bad played back to a HDTV too.

"Simply speaking there’s a lot of wasted space by these slide-show apps as they do not simply display an ‘i-frame’ and then freeze for a number of seconds, but waste disc space with the 24 extra frames they must display each second (depending on the native fps of the player) so each image in a 5 second-per-image slide show is taking up well the space of over a potential 100 images of the same quality."

When the slideshow is a video file, yes, but it's also possible to use other formats besides video that display an image, display whatever transition, then a 2nd image -- the downside is the player usually has to be included with the slideshow, & you usually won't have as many transitions to select from [compared to a video app]. OTOH you'd have to pack an awful lot of images into your slideshow before you reach the ~2 hour video limit of a single layer DVD, or ~4 hours for a dual layer. [No offense, but make me watch pictures of your kids for 2 hours & I will want to hurt you ;) ]

"Bottom line, you’re better off dumping the images into folders and playing them with the functions of your DVD player which in my experience can generally display the images at a much better resolution than the native 720p of a DVD."

With apologies if it seems nit-picking, DVDs are 480i or 576i [NTSC/PAL] -- 720p is HD at 1280 x 720 progressive or non-interlaced, though you may be more used to 1920 x 1080 [e.g. 1080p] when talking about HDTV. As far as burning images to disc & using your player to display them + optionally transitions, I agree that it can be the best route, but again there are gotchas... Some DVD &/or media players can make it hard if not impossible to use folders to sort your files, but more importantly they may restrict &/or alter the colors more than if you used some other method of display -- they may for example strictly enforce the more limited color space, whereas with a DVD or DivX file they may display whatever's encoded to video. In that respect a Blu-Ray player, even connected to a std. TV, *might* be better.

What might be a better choice for some folks would be to keep your images on your hard drive or on-line & use a network connected TV, player, dongle etc. The player might be coded in something like Flash or HTML 5 etc. provided by the web site where you store your images, or it might be an Android app running on the player, or it might be a player running in Windows or on your cell/tablet with the output streamed over your network & so on.

* * *

#4: "Of course, you can add music but there is not the possibility to add an over voice which I find as the only negative."

A possible work-around, since outside of some video editors this seems a bit rare, you *might* be able to record narration to a separate audio file using most any recording software while the slideshow was playing. Lots of audio editing software [including free stuff] will let you merge or add tracks, one on top of the other, creating a single file you could use with your slideshow. You might also be able to use the background audio with your slideshow, & record a new audio file with both background music & narration by speaking into the mic as the slideshow plays.

I have to jump in here to remind newbies that an old, favorite utility called Irfanview (IV) can do this: Make an image show with your Jpgs and gifs and whatever, burn it to a CD with the IV engine to run it in case the destination PC doesn't have a copy of IV. Add music or not to it. I used to make these CD shows for nurses shows and pharmaceutical displays in hospitals. IV is free, has been for years.

27 bucks for this?? Come on....be serious man!!

* DVD slideshow GUI (==> Softpedia Editor Pick and my Personal First Choice)
Best FREE slideshow creator ever created with 237 transitions and 100 special effects to add on your entire slideshow. With this magic FREE tool you can even add and edit music, 35 motion backgrounds, borders and subtitles.
To add an audio track (for instance a recorded narration) to a specific point of your slideshow, just export your slideshow to mpg/avi format, then open it with the freeware “DubIt”:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Other-VIDEO-Tools/DubIt.shtml

After recording your narration or adding your music sounds to specific points of your slideshow, export to wav/mp3 and then import them into you DVD slideshow GUI project.

http://download.videohelp.com/tin2tin/features.html

Then, if you want to publish your Video Slideshow on your own website in a very professional way, just use this amazing FREE APP kissing YouTube and BigG brother goodbye for good:

http://flowplayer.org

As you can see, this awesome Open Source Video Player can be easily embedded in any websites in order to enhance their content with video clips, presentations or family movies, thus enabling users to create web pages streaming Flash movies. And it's even able to switch between different video streams, so as to provide the best possible content to users with different Internet connection speed, thanks to its awesome "Bandwidth detection plug-in" which automatically monitors the maximum bandwidth and changes the bitrate accordingly.

Full Online Tutorial:
http://flash.flowplayer.org/documentation

* Microsoft Photostory 3
Awesome FREE app by Microsoft designed to create professional slideshows from your still pictures. It supports any kind of photo format, offering you a preview window and some basic editing functions. It lets you add text over your photos and even create songs on the go to add on your final slideshow.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Authoring-tools/Authoring-Related/Microsoft-Photo-Story.shtml

See also:
http://www.perfectphotoshow.com
http://www.jetphotosoft.com/web/?s=jpstudio_0
http://www.dicksonlam.com/2012/05/09/339

==> FREE & ALWAYS UPDATABLE BETTER ALTERNATIVES <== Enjoy!!!

My 2 cents for today's giveaway....

The installation was without any problems.

The UI is clear and it is easy to insert several pictures at the same time.

There are many different effects (hundreds of them) and they look fine.

You can see an example created by the software here: http://www.aj3000.org/demo/demo.html

The resulting file was nice and small.

What surprised me was that the software creates the mp4 files by capturing the screen but the resulting file is fine and clear.

Of course, you can add music but there is not the possibility to add an over voice which I find as the only negative.

On the whole I like the software. Thumbs up.

Your own simple slideshow maker without additional software but with sound in full brilliance and magnitude without bothering your registry.

For modern TV sets, e.g. 1080p:
1 Resize your pics to your TV's resolution, e.g. batch processing by free portable IrfanView (to avoid downsizing per TV with worse quality). Perhaps include some interesting enlargements (cropped by free portable JPEGCROPS =lossless).
2 Copy them to a folder on some USB medium.
3 If you wish sound: copy appropriate MP3s to a sound folder on same medium.
4 Start first MP3 on TV.
5 Start slideshow mode for pics folder or first pic respectively.
6 Lean back and enjoy, perhaps with friends or family!

That's how we view my own 3D pics in anaglyphic mode (cyan/magenta spectacles) on every TV. And believe me it's very impressive.

Yet another of the pseudo DVD slide-show pieces of software out there - when will we see a free one that actually utilises the true ability of a DVD to store images in their native form with a decent menu system and not simply encode to images to a 720x576 movie of rolling pictures. Simply speaking there's a lot of wasted space by these slide-show apps as they do not simply display an 'i-frame' and then freeze for a number of seconds, but waste disc space with the 24 extra frames they must display each second (depending on the native fps of the player) so each image in a 5 second-per-image slide show is taking up well the space of over a potential 100 images of the same quality.
Bottom line, you're better off dumping the images into folders and playing them with the functions of your DVD player which in my experience can generally display the images at a much better resolution than the native 720p of a DVD.

Free alternative:
Bolide Slideshow Creator - it has more output video formats, but can't export the slideshow as a screensaver.

Today's giveaway is good for those, who want to make a screensaver with photos

Pros
*Export slideshows as screensaver, video, or to CD
*Supports many input image formats
*Set MP3 files for background music
*Supports dozens of transitiions between images
*Customize slideshow settings, like display duration

Cons
*Doesn't natively export to video but rather records to video
*Why only MP3 files for background audio?
*Export to video is limited to AVI, WMV, and MPEG

Free Alternatives
IrfanView
Anvsoft Photo Flash Maker Free

Final Verdict
Click here for final verdict and full review