It's A Picture Show!
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Storing digital photographs on optical media has never been easier. Drives, supporting multiple formats when burning data, have never been cheaper while the actual media, whether CD or DVD, is at a price that is hard to resist. The missing ingredient is the software to turn the source material into presentable content. Initially this would have involved an expensive purchase with the necessary software being priced at the high end of the spectrum but recently a number of more economic offerings have become available. One such title is CD & DVD PictureShow 4, available for under £30, from Ulead Systems.
Following a rather lengthy installation procedure, you are presented with a program that divides its functionality into three main areas. These are designated as Organise, Theme and Burn. Using tabs on the programs main interface, you can easily switch between these different tasks.
By default, and logically, you start in the Organise section. You can import source material from your hard disk, digital camera or scanner in order to create a photo or video slideshow. Icons are available to add or remove images; sort by name or date; apply basic editing touches; plus decorate images with text and images that come with the product. Descriptions can be added to individual or groups of photos. When video clips are involved, these can be split into segments to help the flow of the slideshow. Information regarding available space and the current size of the presentation will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. After previewing the slideshow you can either make further adjustments or move on to the Theme section.
As its title implies, the Theme section allows you to apply a specific look and feel to the slideshows opening sequence by using design templates. This feature includes an opening title page with musical accompaniment and menu style. The menu will allow different slideshows to be included in a project with each one being represented by a thumbnail image. When video slideshows are included, the thumbnails will show a preview of the video while there is also an option to use a different video as the backdrop for the menu.
Numerous templates, categorised into groups such as Fantasyland, Special Events and Holidays, are available. The templates can be used as supplied or customised by the user. Backgrounds, audio and video sequences can be changed and the duration for the showing of each slide can be adjusted. Pan, zoom and transitional effects can be added to the slideshow. At this point you can save the slideshow as a video file or move on to the Burn section of the program.
The interface used for burning data is rather sparse. Information is shown as to the name assigned to the disk to be burned. This takes the format of the current date and time. An option button allows the user to select any ancillary files, such as audio and photos, to be included in the burn.
While the rest of the program hardly exhibits any speed qualities, the burn section is slow to say the least. Even a basic slideshow without any ancillary files could well stretch your patience with most of the time being taken up by the building of the slideshow rather than the burning process. However I have to say the results are worth the wait but hardly excuse the time taken.
You will need a Pentium 4 1.3 GHz processor with 256MB of RAM and 200MB of hard disk space. Windows 98SE or later will be required.
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