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you've got a ton of pictures ... and you want everyone
to see them
I took a great vacation last year for 23 days ... I enjoyed
a European getaway that let me see the sights and sounds of nine countries
as I saw some of the most historic landmarks in the entire world. Armed
with my trusty 5.0 Megapixel camera, I took some of the most amazing and
breathtaking pictures I've ever been able to capture.
Sadly, asking many of my family and friends to sit in front
of my computer to watch a Windows XP slideshow of my pictures has been
a huge pain in the butt to say the least ... and now, a year later, I'm
still wishing I could show off the pictures in a format that all my friends
and family would be willing to sit through (I have about 300 pictures
to show off).
I did some research on the net and found a company called
321 Studios that offered a product called DVDXSHOW (DVD X SHOW) which
allows users to turn collections of still digital pictures into an exciting
documentary-style DVD movie. To say the least, I was very intrigued and
was happy that the company let me use their software for the purpose of
the review (although I fully admit that I had a personal motive in all
this).
Summary of new features
The program has some nifty features and is definitely aimed
for the absolute novice.
-- Features / Benefits --
- Add background music or narration
- Animate still images with Ken Burns style effects
- Burns to a DVD to be played in your home theater DVD
player (or on the PC)
- Supports all DVD burner formats
- Available in CD-ROM or Downloadable formats
using the program
The first thing you should do is check the firmware on your DVD
burner. On my Pioneer internal DVD writer I had to update the firmware
(via download from their website) in order for the program to "find"
the drive to use it for burning. The external Lite-On 8X DVD burner required
no such firmware update.
Using the program itself is extremely easy. The second you
load it up you can tell the program was designed for the computer beginner.
There is a default tutorial file that loads up the first time (note: watch
it, without it you're going to be wasting some time figuring things out!).
The tutorial is completely editable ... so you can play around with it
to see the different transitions and features.
Getting a simple DVD Slideshow up and running was a breeze
... if you don't want any music or any fancy effects you can literally
get a project completed in minutes. You can, however, play with the nifty
effects to do close ups, pan outs, and many different types of transitions
between one picture to the next. I was impressed with the intuitive feel
of the controls, and after doing my third project, I was pretty fluent
in the program's finer details.
minimum system requirements
- Windows® 98/ME
- Pentium® 500Mhz or equivalent Processor
- 128MB of RAM
- 50MB of Free Hard Disk Space for Install
- 5GB of Hard Disk Space for Media Files
- Video 1024 x 768 24-bit color, 32MB RAM Video Card
- DirectX 9.0 or greater
- Windows Media Player 9
- CD-R(W) Drive (DVD-R or DVD+R drive recommended)
- 16-bit Sound Card
The costs
The MSRP through the website is $39.99 and can be downloaded immediately.
For the high level of use (a lot of people are wanting to do this) the
price is justified.
anything bad?
There were some things about DVDXShow that I'd like to see improved in
the future. For one, you can only burn one DVD project to a DVD ... so
if you only burned a three minute movie, that's all that will ever burn
to that DVD ... which seems like a waste of expensive blank media.
Also - using the sound and integrating songs (MP3, WAVs,
etc) wasn't a completely easy exercise. If the song was longer than the
project (put it in first) then there wasn't much hassle. If the song is
shorter than the timeline of the video, you could hit some snags that
would prevent the song from ever being played from one slide to the next.
Looping the audio did the trick for me, but I am sure there is some better
way of combating this issue.
Summary and general recommendations
I was able to put my entire European picture collection
into a slideshow with the music I wanted playing in the background burned
on a DVD ... I was finally able to show off these pictures to my friends
and family who were absolutely stunned and the "level of professionalism"
that the DVD carried. Using the "special effects" of zooming
in, panning out, and the various transitions, I was able to manipulate
the slideshow to look like a real-life documentary.
I was absolutely impressed with this product and I wholeheartedly
know that there are a lot of people out there looking for just this product.
In fact, my girlfriend's uncle is trying to put his vacation pictures
into a DVD slideshow and is using Adobe Premiere to do it ... after what
I hear are dozens of hours of work, he's still not close to finishing
his project ... all the while I invested about 2 hours of my time to create
*exactly* what I wanted.
Overall, 321 Studios has a fantastic niche oriented product
that I feel has a very high appeal to computer users of all levels of
expertise. The interface is very intuitive and the program is very easy
to use. I find DVDXShow to be one of the more useful and fun programs
to come along in 2004. This program is highly recommended for purchase.
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9 / 10 |
OVERALL SCORE
90%
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10 / 10 |
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9 / 10 |
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9 / 10 |
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8 / 10 |
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9.0 /
10 |
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