What do you get when you combine your digital photos with your cd burner? Photo slideshow movies!
Since many households have DVD players, why not use them to share your photos? Imagine creating a digital photo album of your newborn or your vacation for all your friends of family. Ordering prints at the photo shop will cost you at least $0.25 per photo - the cost for sharing your photos the old fashioned way quickly adds up! In contrast, giving your friends a CDR with a couple hundred photo's will cost less than $1 a disc! Well,
you need to have a PC with a CD or DVD burner, some software, and some time - but the end product is unique and worth it!
Introduction
DVD player sales have taken off. The penetration of DVD players into the average household has occurred even faster than even it's promoters had expected. This article certainly isn't going to propose theories as to why this has occurred. Rather, it will point out a nice side effect of this development. That is, that DVD players provide an easy and cheap way to distribute your digital photos to your friends, family, or anyone you want. This is possible because virtually all DVD players can
read and play VCDs and SVCDs, further, almost all players will will have no difficulties with a regular CDR produced from your home computer. Some smart software companies have put these two facts together, and created software that let's the end user (that's you!) create "movies" to share photos with your friends and family. Best of all, it's easy and cheap! Before going any further, we should emphasize that the programs mentioned in this article do not create "Kodak PhotoCDs" - a proprietary format that is largely confined to various niches now - instead these programs create movies that effectively consist of a (very) high end slideshow of your photos.
- There are at least a couple programs that will create "movies" from your photos.
- Both sites offer a demo for download, both are also available for purchase by download. Ulead also offers a boxed version as well.
An overview of IphotoDVD by Kerensoft
We'll have a look at Kerensoft's product. It's Canadian (not that
I'm biased...), cheap, and simple. It's hard to summarize the
product better than their own words, so here is Kerensoft's
description:
IphotoDVD is a powerful but easy to use utility that allows you to archive your favorite digital photos into DVD/VCD compatible MPEG files with background music and up to 127 transition effects. These files can be viewed on your computer or burned to a CD-R or DVD-R for viewing on your DVD/VCD player. IphotoDVD is a must have tool for you to share your favorite digital photos with your friends and family especially when they have no computer.
Installation of IphotoDVD is simple and straightforward. The program is quite easy to use - there really isn't a whole lot to say. It does what it's supposed to do, in a nice easy way. A single screen shot will do most of the talking:
General Creation Process
- It's really simple. You browse and add images to your slide
show.
- You arrange the order of the photos by double clicking them and
dragging them into the desired order (centre panel).
- You choose the transition effect for the photo (left panel) -
things like sliding in, zooming in, etc.
- You can set the length of time of the transition (how long or slow the transition takes place) and how long the image is displayed (bottom of rightmost panel).
- Add a soundtrack if you wish (it takes .mp3s).
- Preview your masterpiece.
- Then convert to save your movie in a file (.mpeg) for your CD burning software to create an SVCD or VCD or DVD.
- Switch to your favorite CD burning program that can make VCD's (Nero is a classic choice). Burn, and you are done.
Conclusion and Recommendation
That's it, I hope you've enjoyed this article. Overall, this is a neat product which is pretty idiot proof for the recipient of your CD or DVD. All your friends need to do is pop the CD into their DVD player to start the show. Give IphotoDVD
a shot - photo CDs make a great gift for your friends and family.
Please visit our forums and post your experiences with photo to CD/DVD programs or anything else!
Leonard
Copyright © by My Photo Printer.net. All Right Reserved.
Published on: 2003-10-05 (7160 reads)
