

Ask HN: Best Slidehow Making Tool? - ddemchuk

My girlfriend is graduating from college in June and her family wants me to put together a slideshow of images and music that's about 7-10 minutes long to play at a party for her. I want to be able to have a nice backdrop/theme of some sort with some basic transitions and maybe some titles every few pictures, nothing crazy fancy though.<p>I also want to convert and burn the final slideshow to DVD to make sure things work as easily as possible the day we show it.<p>I was playing around with Animoto.com and it seems pretty cool but I was wondering if anyone had other solutions out there for this type of project?<p>Thanks
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mcav
Before I got into programming, I made several graduation/wedding/memorial
videos for people. It was an incredible mess. I had to scan each photo into a
[slow, old] flatbed scanner, manually rotate them, and save them. Then, I
would tediously add each photo to a slide in Corel's presentation software
(the WordPerfect company). But it wouldn't enter the photos fullscreen, so I
had to drag each individual photo to fill the entire slide's area.

Then I had to try to sync the music with it. I had to sit there with a CD
player, run it direct-line to VCR, and manually move the volume/tracks on the
CD to match with the video that was playing onto the VCR. Augh. Thank god for
iMovie and the like nowadays.

Not sure how to address your question now though... iMovie/iPhoto might do it
but I don't know if you're on a mac.

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ddemchuk
I'm on Windows unfortunately. I would imagine there's got to be good online
solutions but all I've found so far is animoto.com like I said...

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kirse
It's actually ridiculously easy to use...
[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D6B...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D6BA5972-328E-4DF7-8F9D-068FC0F80CFC&displaylang=en)

You may not need to download it, but this is the latest version for Vista.

Just slap in each photo, drag a transition between each, import an audio track
and it takes like 10 seconds to make a DVD with it.

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quizbiz
Just use powerpoint and hook speakers to your ipod. Our ears will naturally
match the flow of the music with transitions.

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wenbert
My friends have tried using iPhoto once for a bar party. We just hooked it up
with projector and speakers. iPhoto is good since the transitions are cool
enough and you can play music during the slideshow.

If you do not have a Mac then borrow one from your friends ;-)

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jsterce
Microsoft PhotoStory + Windows Movie Maker might do the trick for you. If you
need more power and can't find an online solution, ProShow Gold is great. Kind
of pricey though.

