Photo DVD slideshow software

[Cr8tor]

I recently did some pics for a friend of mine and would like to put them together in a photo dvd slideshow complete with music and menus.

Ive been looking around at various software packages from Ulead, Nero and a couple of others and thought id get some input from everone here at POTN.

I would like to put it together on a DVD but CD would be acceptable. Freeware is great but im also willing to pay for a decent software package.
What would you recommend and why?

PS: I hope to post some photos soon for review. I want to get them processed and to my friend asap though and have been very busy with a full work schedule.

[BrandonSi]

I've heard good stuff about the Ulead program. They've got a free trial, check it out for yourself and see if you like it.

[tim]

Proshow Gold is great, easy to use, and outputs to DVD, VCD, PC presentation, and web presentation.

[roebuck]

I use Pictures to Exe (P2E) when I want a slide show to run on a PC then if I want to create a simple DVD I just export the avi that P2E can make and import it into Ulead Movie Factory. I then can change the presentation screen appearance and get it to create the DVD. This route I find preferable as P2E is easy to set up titles etc and you can synchronise the music easier than with Ulead. If you want to have multiple chapters / slide shows then I would just use Ulead but from memory it has a more restrictive limit on the number of slides where as P2E doesn't.

The only downside is Ulead takes some time to process and burn the DVD, recently I created a 30 minute DVD of a holiday slideshow using nearly 400 slides and it was taking 2 - 3 hours to process and burn.

Does someone know of quicker software?

Cheers
Michael

[tim]

Sounds complex Michael, you might like to check out Proshow Gold too - there's a trial version free that's fully functional, it just inserts a banner on the shows until you register.

[Danny Boy]

I first tried Proshow Gold, downloading the free trial. It had everything I was looking for including a really cool user interface. The downside is when I burned a DVD, my Sony DVD player wouldn't recognize the DVD. I contacted customer support and they indicated that Proshow Gold had problems with some computers, including my Dell Dimesion. Well, that ended that even though I really liked the product up until the very end.

What I ended up with is Sony Vegas. It is not the full version but the Movie Studio + DVD version. I am really happy with it as it has lots of bells and whistles and is easy to use. Best Buy currently has it for about a hundred dollars. I use is for my daughter's soccer team as I put a bunch of pictures together, added music, scrolling credits, etc. You can make movies with it too.

My 2 cents.

Dan

[Feihung08]

I use Nero 6 (http://ww2.nero.com/enu/index.html)(free trial there too) for all my cd and dvd creations. It works VERY well, and is very easy to use. You might be familiar with it if you use DVD Shrink to make back-up dvd's.

[Nightcrawler]

I've used the Ulead program before. Sooooooo easy to use and great results. Maybe not the most powerful but I only paid $15 for it and it did what I needed it to do.