Photos on CD & DVD - View your Pictures on TV. (Fotos auf CD & DVD)

Member Name: derek-a

Product:	Fotos auf CD & DVD
Date:	20/08/05 (549 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use and some really good special effects

Disadvantages: Needs a lot of processing power or it can take hours

One of my favourite things to do on the computer is to mess about with my photos and videos. There is something very satisfying about taking out the odd wrinkle here and there! However, as enjoyable as digital photography is, it is all very well to have all your photos on your hard drive, but it means that everybody has to huddle around your computer to view them, unless you are lucky enough to have one of the latest entertainment centres with computer and TV all in one.

So, a little over a year ago, I decided to try Photos on CD & DVD. The idea of creating slideshows and burning it to DVD to watch on our television screen appealed to me more than fishing out the projector, fiddling about with slides trying to get them the right way up without dropping them, and regularly having to hunt around for them on the floor in the dark!

I had already begun transferring most of my slides and photos over to computer, which even to this day, I am still doing. When I say we take a lot of photographs, that is an understatement! Now though I have a digi camera whilst my analogue equipment gathers dust. I think I’ll need to put that on eBay, but I don’t suppose anybody would want it now. Still I digress…

I found Photos on CD & DVD 2.0 a very simple program to use. On opening it I was presented with a very user-friendly screen, at the top of which was an (explorer) window that accessed my hard drives (I have 2 fitted – something I would recommend for anyone considering working with photos or video on a computer).

From this window I could scan through all my folders and files and simply drag and drop singles photos or entire folders in the work area just below it. From there I could open and edit any photo improving contrast, lightness, rotating them etc.

After getting all the required photos into the work area, I could go back to the explorer window and access my music folders and drag my music files (in the same way as the photos) into the work area - more of the music files later.

Once you've loaded all the desired photographs you can access an area called the Time Line - this is where you can juggle your photographs into any order and add a variety of transitions from one photo to another. They can be simple cross fades or more elaborate 3D fades – which I’ve got to admit, are pretty impressive – page turning, door opening, Venetian blind effects and much more.

Back to the music files...
A thing about the time line that impressed me is the ability to manipulate the music files – shortening, fading in and out from one file to another to match various photographic group scenes. At the beginning and end of each music track are “handles” that, with the mouse, you can stretch up and down and from side to side to get the desired fading/transitional effect. All my music files are MP3, but WMA files can also be used.

Titles are another thing that are easily added and you can utilize any fonts you have stored on your computer, and drag them in and around a picture, change colour and size etc. I tend to have a pure black and a pure white blank photo stored on my computer, as I like to use these as backgrounds for titles in order to start and end a slide show. With my title added, I can have it as a crystallizing or exploding 3D transition into the main picture show and the same effect ending it. You never know who in Hollywood may see your masterpiece!

Your project can be saved as you go along and then when you are ready, you can burn the entire show to DVD, if you have a DVD burner or VCD (Video CD) - if you only have a CD writer. VCDs can be viewed on most modern DVD players. You could establish this by checking in your DVD player’s handbook.

If you are considering using this program, I would recommend that when using it, you have no other programs running in the background and you have as much RAM as possible and a fast processor is also an advantage. I have a 1Ghz processor and 512 MB of memory (RAM).

Rendering the final slide show and burning it to disk is a lengthy process. It took several hours to burn a 45 minute slide show complete with music and titles, during which time, all my computer’s memory and processing power was used up and I could not use it for anything else. I would not like to have tried this on a lower spec machine and, if I was doing a lot of this, I would seriously consider buying a much more powerful machine than what I have right now.

All said and done, in spite of the long process from the original files to DVD, I found the program a lot of fun, with informative instructions and tutorial.

I am running Photos on CD & DVD deluxe 2.0, but since I purchased mine, 3.0 and 4.0 are available on Amazon from a price of around £15 to £28.50 and a search on eBay brought some up with a bidding around £10 (brand new).

Thanks for reading.

Summary: It's a goo way of showing your photos on TV instead of having everyone huddle around your computer.

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