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Windows DVD Maker - Slide Show Page

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To keep things simple, DVD Maker puts all still images in a single slideshow. This page is used to set the options for that slideshow.

The top part of this page is used to set the background music for the slide show. You can add, re-order, or remove items with the buttons on the right, and you can also drag/drop into the listview.

There are two modes for the slideshow.

If you set the picture length through the "picture length" combo box, the length of the slideshow is based on the number of pictures that you have. If you have more background music than required, we'll fade it out at the end of the slideshow. If you don't have enough music, we'll loop through the songs until we have enough.

If you check the "Change slide show length to match music length", we'll modify the length of each picture so that the slideshow duration is equal to the music duration. If we can - there's a lower limit to how short each slide can be, which I think is 1 second.

The transition combo is used to - you guessed it - set the transition used between pictures. I've tried to describe the transitions below, but it's a bit challenging on some, so bear with me:

  1. Cut. Switches directly from one image to the other.
  2. Cross fade. The cross fade gently fades from one image to the other.
  3. Dissolve. Individual pixels randomly change to the new image..
  4. Flip. This one's a bit hard to describe. Take two post-it notes, and draw a picture on each one. Stick them back-to-back, but put a pencil vertically between the two in the middle. Hold the pencil so one picture is towards you, and the gently rotate the pencil so the other one comes into view. That's what flip looks like, though we use a "virtual pencil" that you can't see.
  5. Inset. Stack the new picture under the current one. Starting at one of the four corners, progressively reveal a rectangular-shaped portion of the new picture.
  6. Page curl. Stack the new picture under the current one. Grab the lower-left or lower-right corner, and peel the old picture off the new one.
  7. Pixelate. Like a cross fade, but the picture is pixelated into big pixels at the middle of the transition.
  8. Random. A random choice of all the transitions except for cut.
  9. Wipe. Stack the new picture under the current one. Starting at the top or left, progressively reveal the picture underneath, but blur the edge between the two. It's the effect used in the early Star Wars movies...

Finally, the "Pan and zoom pictures" checkbox lets you control whether there is a slight pan and/or zoom of a slide between the transitions (this is sometimes known as the "Ken Burns" effect or the "Photo Story" effect). There isn't a ton of intelligence in how it does this, but the effect is mostly pleasing.

That's about it for the slideshow page.

In my next installment, I'll return to the Hub page and talk about the styles that we support.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2006
    From this screen shot, it looks like you are limited to one transition per slide show? (Or can you set the transition on a per-photo basis elsewhere?)

    Also are you limited to one display time "Picture length"?  (Can you adjust the display time for individual photos?)

    -=Glen=-


  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2006
    Glen,

    The transition setting is global to the whole slide show. Some transitions (such as wipe) support multiple variations, and DVD Maker will use all the variations, but there is no user control over this. Similarly, the picture time is the same for all pictures.

    DVD Maker is intended to cover the most common scenarios. If you want to use a different transition between each picture and/or change individual picture duration, you can easily do that in Movie Maker, and burn the result to a DVD.

    Eric
  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2006
    I'm also curious if their would be any desire to set the picture length per individual image. I think it would be neat to try to sync up the images with the music so that changes happen on a beat  or a certain bridge etc..
  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2006
    Eric,

    I tried DVD Maker and I am really unhappy with it. I tried to make a DVD from four episodes I recorded. I start 5 minutes earlier and end 5 minutes later - so I would need to cut out some stuff - but this is not possible. Its also not possible to set (change) the bitrate - to fit 120 minutes of video on the dvd-r.
    Maybe I missed something -hope it is so.
  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 07, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2016
    How do you rotate photos for the DVD? And how do you add videos in with the pictures when the DVD maker will not find them on you computer?