Help me make a great slideshow for Mom!

July 17, 2006 5:57 AM

Any ideas for how to put together a great slideshow with music for a birthday party?

So, my Mom is turning 60 this year, and the kids are throwing her a birthday party (friends and family). It's a pretty low-key dinner, and we decided that we would put together a slide show with pictures of her and her family through the years. I was planning on doing it as a PowerPoint presentation with music, but thought I would ask if there were better ideas.

Is there a better software package that will allow me to mix video clips and still images? One with nice effects, and not too steep of a learning curve (the party is late August).

Thanks for any suggestions. I'll check in later if anyone has questions for clarification.

posted by genefinder to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

i just had to do this for my friend's dad's 60th birthday party. she gave me pictures from his childhood on to last year and i put them together as a slideshow using iPhoto on a mac. it allows you to add music to but you can't mix photo and video clips together.

it has effects you can play around with too.
maybe someone else will suggest an non-mac solution.
posted by eatcake at 6:03 AM on July 17, 2006

Windows Movie Maker. I don't know, because i didn't have any, but i assume that clips aren't a problem. What I liked was the ability to time the entrance of each photo to a particular lyric in the soundtrack. Very easy to use, but a last minute change in venue meant a system that couldn't play it. sigh.
posted by b33j at 6:05 AM on July 17, 2006

Best answer: Both iPhoto and windows movie maker are well suited, but you if you're on windows you may want to instead check out Microsoft's 'photo story' which was specifically designed to do what you're describing.
posted by datacenter refugee at 6:43 AM on July 17, 2006

See the DVD thread, hereabouts. Probably the most portable way to do it is to use one of the home DVD mastering packages, most of which have a facillity for doing nice slideshows with music and transitions (though most won't caption).

Additionally Picasa (which you probably should be using anyway) will do all of this except the DVD authoring, but it does produce a movie file that's DVD compatible, I think, if you tell it to.

Anyone who shoots a lot of pictures and doesn't already have a workflow they're happy with should be looking at Picasa.

I'm Mr. Real Photoediting Tools, and I like it anyway.
posted by baylink at 8:10 AM on July 17, 2006

I usually use PhotoToMovie to create the video part of the movie. Then import to iMovie (on a Mac) or Movie Maker (on a PC) and add the music, titles, etc.
posted by nightwood at 8:11 AM on July 17, 2006

Adobe Photoshop Elements will do this, but costs money.
posted by noahv at 10:07 AM on July 17, 2006