PhotoDVD 4.0.0.37d

Overview

VSO PhotoDVD is a shareware for creating beautiful slideshows from your photo collections. You can also add music of your choice in the background as well as insert captions, with the ability to preview your slideshow live. Editing the photos is also possible, allowing you to rotate them or change their colors to black and white. After finishing with the editing, you can work on the DVD menu for a nice introduction to the slideshow.

Installation

Installation is straightforward and won’t give you a hard time at all. At some point, you will be asked of your used video format, PAL or NTSC. Choose PAL if your location is in Europe, Asia, Africa, Middlle-East, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Argentina… and NTSC if you live in Japan, South America, Canada, USA, Mexico, etc. In the next step you will be prompted to install PatinCouffin driver, which is basically VSO’s Low Level driver that connects their software with your hardware. It is only needed in machines with Windows XP SP2, since the current engine uses Advanced SPTI, which is already included in newer systems.

The supported operating systems are Windows XP SP2/SP3, Vista, 7 & 8.

Interface

The interface is nice and clean. At the top of the window you can see a series of steps, and the current step. You must go through only 5 five steps to finish creating your slideshow; the first one is where you add the photos you want to use and edit them. In the next step you add your audio files and make your playlists. The third step has a few settings to configure regarding the output video, and the fourth step is where the actual creation procedure takes place, which shows you a preview of the slideshow as it happens. The fifth step is just an informative screen, letting you know that the slideshow has been successfully been created (and burned).

Pros

There is no limit on the number of photos you can add in a slideshow. In addition, you can edit each one individually by making it black and white, sepia, changing its rotation, adding subtitles and choosing the preferred song for that photo from the playlist. The songs you may enter can be of any duration or size (as long as they can fit in the optical media), and you can create up to 3 playlists with them. The output video can be either in DVD or YouTube (MP4) format, and apart from that you can also choose the video standard (PAL or NTSC), TV aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9), and the DVD menu template. You can also choose the folder to save the output project and if you want to burn it after compiling it.

Cons

It could have a wider list of effects for use in the slideshow.

Alternatives

Photo DVD Maker by Anvsoft is a slideshow creation shareware like PhotoDVD, although it doesn’t have as many features. However, DVD Photo Slideshow, another alternative, has many tools in its set, such as an Audio CD Ripper, a Sound Recorder and a lot of transitions and effects.

Conclusion

It is definitely a great program to create slideshows for any occasions (weddings, birthdays, reunions, funerals etc.), and it is affordable too. A perfect choice for both hobbyists and professionals.