Presentation CD/DVD

[swisherphotography]

What company's are good for cd/dvd presentations? I want to put my pictures to music and present them to the client. But I know that you can not sell them to the client and use "copyrighted/licensed" music.

Can you please tell me what Presentation company is good to use and where I can find the music?

Stephanie
Swisher Photography
stelphlong@charter.net

[andygrif]

Now at last something I can talk with good deal of certainty on! Music licensing is a bit of a nightmare, however there are places you can get 'buy-out' or license free music from.

It will depend a good deal on where in the world you are as to the availability and pricing, however there are a lot of good resources on the net, and some you can buy tracks from.

Here in the UK there is a licensing body called MCPS, and there are a bunch of companies that produce MCPS blanket production music. This means they are 'pre-cleared' for use in commercial productions, like CD-ROMS and DVDs. The producer pays them a fixed fee, one off, for using it and this will vary according to the type of use (eg your shott run dvd is going to be cheaper than using that bit of music for a network TV show!)

Next up there are buy-out tracks and libraries available. These vary in cost, starting at the very cheap end for things like home videos ending up in the thousands of Pounds/Dollars.

I'm not going to recommend any particular ones, I would only use MCPS libraries anyway, as they're better value....but here's a couple that are in my bookmarks....

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/clips.html
http://www.chrisworthproductions.com/
http://www.q-music.co.uk/music_search.php

When it comes to presentation software, there are lots of option, depending on how complex it needs to be.

If you're just looking for a simple slideshow then PE3 has some nice bits built in, or even Nero BurningROM.

If you want to get clever then you could learn Macromedia Flash or a video editing package like Adobe Premiere or Premiere Elements.

Hope this all helps!

[Turbowolf]

or for those with Mac's ... iPhoto allows the creation of DVD's slideshows.

Did just that this last quarter at college. The DVD also held video footage that I edited / voice-overed, using iMovie. After all the files were ready, I inserted a DVD, pressed burn, and voila ... a nice DVD slideshow placed into a hardcase. Using Word or one of several Adobe products allowed for the creation of a insert and a cover.

Total editing time: 4 hours
Cost: DVD, about a buck. Inserts, two pieces of cardstock
End result: 16 college credits