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Photo To Film 3.3 Giveaway
$14.99
EXPIRED

Giveaway of the day — Photo To Film 3.3

Easily make small movies out of your pictures and compress them.
$14.99 EXPIRED
User rating: 106 25 comments

Photo To Film 3.3 was available as a giveaway on February 4, 2016!

Today Giveaway of the Day
$36.00
free today
Download music from 1000+ sites anytime and anywhere!

PhotoToFilm is a perfect companion for everyone who uses a digital camera. With PhotoToFilm you can easily make small movies out of your pictures and compress them (ie: using DivX) in order to distribute your production to your friends and family. PhotoToFilm allows you to add professional looking effects with a few clicks and makes video authoring a game.

Key Features:

  • User friendly interface;
  • Transitions (such as cross fading) between your photos;
  • Dynamic images support;
  • Sound track (MP3) support;
  • Popular photo formats support (JPEG, Bitmaps);
  • OSD: On Video dynamic text insertion;
  • Creates movies using codecs present on your computer (such as DivX);
  • Ability to burn DVDs (requires CopyToDVD).

System Requirements:

Windows NT/ 98/ Me/ 2000/ XP/ 2003/ Vista/ Server 2008/ 7/ 8/ 8.1

Publisher:

KC Softwares

Homepage:

http://www.kcsoftwares.com/?p2m

File Size:

6.1 MB

Price:

$14.99

Comments on Photo To Film 3.3

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#12

KC Software is NOT the best quality. That is proved by the comments of users who have downloaded, installed and used this particular software. When checking GOTD giveaways, I do check who is the Software Developer.
Another Software Developer that makes software products that is NOT the best quality was AlgoLogic.
Although it seems that have now changed name and become something else.

Reply   |   Comment by ric  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#11

Installed on Windows 10/64. I made up a test project with 24 pictures. On my test video, it kept stopping at various points during playback (I was using VLC) for no apparent reason. Thinking it was install related, I closed and re-opened the program.The same thing happened. I also tried playing back the video in Windows Media Player, same again, but not in the same places.Finally, I rebooted the computer to eliminate background issues that might be present, but that made no difference either. Both VLC and Media Player would randomly stop here and there. The only exception was the FIRST time I played the video. So I made an entirely NEW video after the reboot, and it would not even play all the way through. Had it not been for the beautiful video by Ootje, I would not have gone this far, but as it is, just too many problems for unreliable results.

As much as I wanted to like this program (being it's from KC) I did not notice anything really special in its abilities to set it apart from the free alternatives. Also, a small thing - it lacks the ability to maximize to full screen app. Although most won't mind, people like me who have less-than-great eyesight really appreciate the option bigger images and text.

Reply   |   Comment by Mark Magill  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+16)
#10

PhotoToFilm = basically a slide show app -- several have been on GOTD from many of the same companies that produce video converters, rippers etc.

The easiest way to do a slideshow is to upload your pictures to one of the online storage sites that lets you & anyone you invite view them as a slide show. There are also Android apps that may make it easier if/when for example you use Google's cloud. One potential advantage of using online storage for your images is when facial recognition or automated tagging is available, you might be able to more easily put together a collection for a slideshow featuring kids or grandkids.

While there's no reason you couldn't capture video of an online slideshow playing in your browser, most nonlinear video editing apps [NLEs] give you loads of control over how long each picture displays, plus you can add FX, transitions, audio, & often narration too -- some will even lower the volume of background music when it detects any volume, i.e. someone saying something, on the narration track. Many [most?] slideshow apps are a subset of a video editing app, including PhotoToFilm.

One negative part about creating slideshows is the tedium involved in adjusting each image, the length of time to show each image, & the transition between each image & the next. Slideshow apps & some video editing apps have features to ease that burden, from importing a folder full of images at a time to randomizing transitions.

One hard part about creating a slideshow video file is deciding on the format, because not everyone can play every video format available -- that's why Flash became popular, as a universal video player in web browsers. Today when more people have cell phones than PCs, the AVC/H.264 format is probably a good choice -- most all can play AVC video, but without adding a separate player app, many cannot handle mpg2, & even with a player may not handle Xvid, which many video apps misleadingly call DivX. For slideshow & video editing apps that use codecs you've installed to Windows, like PhotoToFilm, the VFW version of x-264 [available at videohelp.com] may work well, &/or you can always output your video file to a lossless format, e.g. UT Video, then re-encode it using something like the video converters that have been on GOTD this week.

Lastly, some slide shows feature a sequence of images that look like someone took a video, & then grabbed something like every 30th or 60th frame... & there's a good chance that's just what they did. You can do it manually, &/or it's not that big of a deal to skip every x number of frames [e.g. with VirtualDub]. Many cameras, including those in cell phones, can nowadays record video at high enough resolution to make that very workable, & it's easier than trying to get the perfect shot e.g. during a snowball fight when you're shooting stills.

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+11)

mike
On DVDs...

The BIG problem with the older, standard resolution TVs regarding slideshows & stills is the video formats used, & that's what DVDs are designed for. The standard 720 x 480 or 576 frame is stretched -- if you view it in DVD player software like PowerDVD the player window will itself stretch -- it will not show 720 by 480 or 576 -- to keep things at the correct aspect ratio or perspective. That means that any still image has to actually be distorted, it's frame stretched or compressed, before it's encoded to video. There's not really a standard, recommended way to do that -- the suggested size of the images you import varies depending on the software.

So, the correct way of doing it is to read what still image frame size your software recommends, then alter your pictures to match beforehand, re-sizing &/or cropping as needed. You don't have to do it that way, but it's the only way to keep people from looking too fat or thin, or to have anything circular not look like an oval. That said, there are loads & loads of people to whom that does not matter -- several years ago before HDTV was common entire movies were shown on TV in an incorrect aspect ratio because whatever conversion was used, e.g. from EU PAL to US NTSC, was set up improperly.

Now, if you can find your way around that end of things, & don't mind their low resolution, DVDs are otherwise in many respects ideal for slideshows. It's easy to have an image stay on screen for a set amount of time, or for as long as the audio track runs, & with or without showing a Next button, be able to forward to the next image with the remote. You can have a long, large collection of images, then divide it up into sections, & play each section individually or all in sequence, or even have different versions with different sequence orders.

If you have text [it's more difficult but you can also have graphics] you can turn its display on/off. You can have multiple audio tracks, one with narration for example, or switch to one with just background music. You can do stuff like add an Easter Egg, which in this case shows something like a slideshow sequence that isn't available otherwise.

A downside to all that is that it's all dependent on the DVD authoring software you use, & while a decent app may be fairly low in cost, there are not many that are free. Creating a slideshow DVD with something like the free DVD Styler is quite possible, but also comes with more of a learning curve. It hasn't been updated in a year, but there's also DVD Slideshow GUI.

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+11)
#9

How nice Photo Story 3 Windows XP still works in Win10.
With 1024 as highest resolution:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10366431/_GOTD/PhotoToFilm33_20160204/Fotoverhaal1.wmv

Reply   |   Comment by Ootje  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+13)

Ootje Very impressive -- not only your images, but the music that accompanies your video. Thanks ;-)

Reply   |   Comment by Suze  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+7)

Ootje Ah, Ootje. Well done! Your slideshow brings back happy memories and yes -- seriously -- I'm amazed to find it working so well in Windows 10. TBH, I gave up on PS3 awhile ago because it *is* necessary to use considerable sleight-of-hand to get it to work in16:9 rather than its native 4:3 and nowadays, the hassle of all that is too much. And it is afflicted with various performance problems (stuttering, notably) with longer productions. But of its time, it was sheer genius -- and it's nice to be reminded of that!

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+9)
#8

I installed the program in WinXP and in Win10.
I have loaded a few photo's; one of them:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10366431/_GOTD/Foto%27s/Panorama/panor4.jpg
and the result:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10366431/_GOTD/PhotoToFilm33_20160204/GOTD-20160204.avi
Also I have downloaded a few of photo's and made a video, moving and music [AVI, 13MB]:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10366431/_GOTD/PhotoToFilm33_20160204/GOTD-20160204-Heide-Bewegend.avi

After that I started the program of yesterday and with the same set of photo's and music[15MB]:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10366431/_GOTD/PhotoToFilm33_20160204/GOTD-20160204-Apowersoft.mp4

And also with the first set, no music, no transitions etc[1,7MB]:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10366431/_GOTD/PhotoToFilm33_20160204/GOTD-20160204-Apowersoft-2.mp4

Reply   |   Comment by Ootje  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+5)
#7

I have used a paid program for 10 years for making movies from still pictures but it did not work on my newest computer. I looked at several freeware programs and chose Windows Movie Maker 12. That program has all the usual options and it was the only program I tried that automatically displayed my pictures in the correct orientation regardless of which camera orientation was used to take the pictures. My old paid program did not do that and it was a nuisance to go through a lot of vacation pictures and correct the orientation of those that needed it. Movie Maker 12 does not have the capability to burn DVDs but I use the freeware dvdflick program to do that.

Reply   |   Comment by Dave  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#6

I am sorry, but I cannot install this program. After downloading and unzipping the file and starting the setup I get the message "failed to launch the program"

Reply   |   Comment by Manfred Neumann  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)

Manfred Neumann
Very often this message is the result of not being able to connect to the GOTD-server.
Give it a try without a firewall. And beware, connecting to the internet without a firewall is a risky business.

Reply   |   Comment by Ootje  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)
#5

Very interesting program for those fans of photo-films. However, although it is somewhat off topic, in my opinion the "Photo-film" is like the "historic-novel" that is neither novel nor history. There are hundreds or thousands of photo-films in YouTube that are just garbage.

Reply   |   Comment by Luis  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-12)
#4

No Full HD resolution, and even HD = parody and completely useless program today

Reply   |   Comment by Oly  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)
#3

Hi, if you wish to be better informed about this Software - Photo ToFilm, here is the previous version of it given away on July 9, 2015: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/phototofilm-3-2/ Look into Comments and find Karl's, thankfully still there, but as usual form your own opinion. As to KC Softwares and their long and steady contribution to GOTD - first Photo ToFilm Giveaway appeared here on January 29, 2007: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/phototofilm/ and few in between since then. The list of other Products of this Publisher making their way to GOTD doesn't end there. Finally in my opinion it would be helpful if Photo ToFilm came with some screenshots/samples to show effects a.s.o., but in a meantime hope this helps.

Reply   |   Comment by fran  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+23)
#2

Beware, the setup attempts to install other software and did install an unwanted icon on my desktop.

In essence the program is a slideshow viewer that converts images to video, it claims to allow background audio and subtitles, experienced problems with the latter.

Had quite a few difficulties with the program, probably because it's in beta stage and needs a considerable amount more work.

Am in the process of developing a slideshow viewer in which each image can have its own audio and viewable text file below, the image viewing time is dependent on the length of the audio. My problem is it does not convert to video hence it is only usable in Windows.

From the design of this program I was hoping it would do the same but convert to video and therefore be viewable on any platform.

Sadly it is much more limited than this and is not pleasant to use, I want to spend a bit more time testing it but think that in the end I will be uninstalling it.

Reply   |   Comment by XP-Man  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+53)

XP-Man Seriously, good luck with the slideshow development project. An entire firework display between each and every image?) that time and again I find myself harking back to Microsoft Photostory 3 from 14 years ago yet still *the* definitive software in this genre. It's obsolescent now, created before home DVD players and 16:9 widescreen monitors and TVs but ah, its engineering. So brilliant that Microsoft hadn't a clue how good it actually was and let it die away. Hard to believe, something as good as that came from the same company that nowadays offers Windows 10.

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+27)

XP-Man
@XP-Man,
what you refer to as installation of an icon is presumably a link to some other software by this company. Mark it, press the Del Button and gone forever.
What's more, a viewer (player) is technically speaking a completely different sort of software to a slideshow creator, though of course, by it's very nature, a creator includes a player.
BTW: DivX is a video codec, however as outdated as can be.
But before you venture too far with your own project, I'd recommend a quick visit to a very reputable company
in Austin, TX, viz. http://www.photodex.com/proshow/gold (their bread&butter software).
Of course, they may be looking for bright new developers?
Seriously speaking, the demands for classy bits of slideshow plus software have been met.
BTW, it is ladies day today here in the land of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival#Germany.2C_Switzerland.2C_and_Austria
Gentlemen cannot refuse to have their best adornment, aka necktie, snipped of.
Take my words with a pinch...
Love
Sigrid

Reply   |   Comment by Sigrid.DE  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)

MikeR
Thanks for your comment much appreciated.

My program is just an EXE file that you drop into any folder and it plays the images there in the order of a DOS sort. Any MP3 and/or text file of the same name will play the audio and/or present the text file in a box below. Appeals to the engineer in me, basically an engineer who enjoys the help computers can give. No fireworks just a few transitions. :-)

It can be stepped through or play as a slideshow; unfortunately it is written in an old version of Delphi as I can't afford to purchase a new version, this does make it difficult to change the screen size. Of course my real problem is my family only use Macs and Linux and it will not work there, a bit of a problem.

Regarding Photostory 3, a superb piece of software a bit more limited in its ability to show text than mine.
Having said that if you wish to make a slideshow it is by far the best program available in both its ease-of-use and versatility.

Reply   |   Comment by XP-Man  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+11)

Sigrid.DE
Thanks for the info, however my program does present a slideshow of the images in a folder.

Had a look at the download you suggested all 44 MB of it, mine has the advantage of being half a megabyte. :-)

Reply   |   Comment by XP-Man  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+10)

XP-Man My comment somehow became strangulated, not sure how. Anyway. Someone, somewhere, is going to be onto a winner if they can pick up where Redmond left off and get Photostory to (a) run widescreen (16:9) with ease -- rather than the tedious batch image re-sizing that's necessary to a special, mathematically incorrect non-16:9 format first but which PS will then correct and (b) easy DVD output other than having to integrate with Movie Maker. Strikes me, sir, you could be just the engineer so many have been waiting for! Good luck with everything. And if we can have first sight here via GOTD. . .??!!

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)

MikeR
Again thanks for the comment; my program is not too sophisticated it presents the image so it all fits in its window without modifying the image itself.
My intention was that the program could be dropped in to any folder containing images with or without text and audio and they could be viewed as a slideshow or stepped through. The advantage being the images will not be degraded in any way and it is simple enough for a grandparent or similar to use.
As an engineer it is useful as it is possible to convey a great deal of information with the combination of image, audio and text.

Reply   |   Comment by XP-Man  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+3)

XP-Man "...simple enough for a grandparent or similar to use." !!!! Pthththth, too. >8-P Didn't get around to reading this thread until now or I'd have been more vocal! Too bad my Windows keyboard doesn't have emojis or there'd be a long string of them! I should probably go look for some, huh? And you call yourself XP-Man, hanging on to one of the best Windows OS's ever released, so you're not so young yourself... My memory may have some gaps or mixed-up order for details or a few incorrect dates for this, off-track bit of his/herstory but here goes:

Some or even many of us now of grandparent age have been using computers since the first generation of things like Commodore (my C-64 had a 4-digit serial number. Wish I still had it, it would probably sell for enough to get a low-end new car!) and Zenith and Tandy. We learned to program in BASIC. There were no nice graphic interfaces!

We went from no internal storage, just what came with the computer ROM, with 5-1/2" truly floppy floppies (and IBM and other PCs had no hard drives, just 2 floppies). Then DOS spread - and DOS was an ordeal for a lot of us, it kept changing. Finally they came out with 20-50 meg (yes Mb!!) hard drives with almost no RAM (measured in Kb initially) by today's standards (but funny how you could actually do word processing and other business stuff, and some graphics and some games with all that nothing!). We were all told not to shut off our computers without properly shutting down first or they could be seriously damaged!

Apple pushed some boundaries and morphed into the Mac and Windows was overlaid on DOS, and graphic interfaces became available, as the Kb size of RAM expanded into Mbs. Monitors were small, heavy, fat/deep CRTs with low resolution. Orange/amber, black or green screens, mostly, for a long time, until graphic interfaces appeared. But a lot more of us now of grandparent age got into computers around this time.

And then we were thrilled when floppies became small hard flat squares and hard drives broke 100 Mb, with several megs of RAM. It was quite a while longer until CDs finally arrived and before hard drives broke the Gigabyte barrier! And we still had to be able to work with DOS on PCs, to make Windows do what it was supposed to, although by this time, most workplaces had instituted tech support desks.

I was doing contract desktop publishing, writing and editing on PCs and Macs for big organizations like NASA and IBM, and lots of small ones, from the early/mid-1980s onward. I was writing user guides and training materials for programs running on Unix systems as well as PCs, and doing user training for businesses, in the late 1980s onward.

We folks of grandparent age were pioneers of things online in bbs form (you don't think forums are a recent development do you? They started as listserves and went from there), and then graphically with Netscape for the techies and academics, or AOL for the masses, full of burps and brownouts, in the early 1990s, while you hotshots were watching Mr. Rogers and Mr. GreenJeans on TV! I co-facilitated one of the first online university seminars, for Union Institute Graduate School, in 1993, text-based on a university server. They had moved to a graphics based online classroom system by the time I graduated in 1995, and I was training professors, there and in other schools, in how to teach online, and writing and teaching courses for multiple online programs through the second half of the 1990s and onward through the 2000s (along with being a counselor and then psychologist). By then, it was possible to do a lot of consulting work in networked systems development and user needs in long-range tech planning for companies like American Express. And I had a couple of websites for teaching and for my offline specialty plant nursery business, too.

Just thought I'd remind you or let you get a better sense of what us leading-edge boomer old-farts did to make things so nice and common and easy for everybody. ;-) We may not see the screen so well any more, and we may not find the internet nearly as fun as it used to be (and it is much much meaner and way stupider than it used to be!), but that doesn't mean we all need simple things for our computers or tablets or phones!

Reply   |   Comment by Mindymac  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)
#1

Slightly baffling giveaway seeing as the free (donationware) and paid-for versions are the exact same other than the support offer.

KC Softwares has been around for many years as one of those nice-guy developers whose range of softs have at worse been competent and at best, well worth using. PhotoToFilm, which I first encountered at least 5 years ago, is a middling product, one which doesn't pretend to compete with more comprehensive offers from major publishers (notably Ashampoo, whose HD slideshow is now, at long last, one of the best around) and which some are going to find disappointing in terms of its modest abilities and dated GUI.

The fact that you've always needed to run other software to actually burn PhotoToFilm's output hasn't changed; the developer's preferred choice here is VSO's "Copy To", an additional $25 cost which, sadly, doesn't help PhotoToFilm's chances at all.

Still, if you're taking baby steps in the world of home DVD slideshow production and would prefer to play around with stuff that's fairly rudimentary, PhotoToFilm is worth checking out. As it's free today via GOTD including technical support and free all the time from KC Softwares itself without support, you're never going to be out of pocket on the deal.

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+28)

MikeR
"Ashampoo, whose HD slideshow is now, at long last, one of the best around"

Nothing against the Ashampoo app, but you *might* be interested in checking out Corel's VideoStudio Pro app, which you can sometimes pick up for ~$20-$30. They also have a trial available.

Today most people use the cameras built into their cell phones -- that's what killed off the lower end camera market. Because cell phones don't have lots of storage, because navigating files on a cell can be a PITA, & because it's not easy for most folks to connect their cell to their PC to transfer photos, most have them uploaded automatically to online storage. And once they're on Google's servers, folks using Android cells can do all sorts of things with them. That makes slideshow apps a bit of a niche product.

Corel's VideoStudio Pro app [you probably would recognize the company, Ulead, behind it], frankly isn't the best video editor out there, but I think it includes more of the sorts of features you might want to use with or for a slideshow.

Depending on your wants/needs, DVD Styler works, & has a portable version, but if/when you're not concerned with menus the free version of muxman is still pretty bulletproof when it comes to putting an already encoded mpg2 file into a DVD layout. That said, particularly for more advanced DVD slideshow work, I'd highly recommend Sony's DVD Architect line of apps. Together with P/Shop or Paintshop Pro [for menu backgrounds & highlight work], you really can put together a DVD that's fully comparable to something from a major studio that you'd buy in stores.

Reply   |   Comment by mike  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+9)

mike As ever, thanks for the heads-up; I'll go have a look at the soft you've kindly mentioned. As an aside, GOTD has become a very much the richer for your regular input: informative, comprehensive and knowledgable. It's *greatly* appreciated and not just by myself.

Reply   |   Comment by MikeR  –  8 years ago  –  Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+12)
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