PhotoToFilm 3.9.8.107

Overview

PhotoToFilm is an application designed to help users create amazing small movies of their digital pictures and favorite music. Using this lightweight and simplistic tool, you can create wonderful videos, compress them, send them to your friends and family, or upload to YouTube. PhotoToFilm allows you to add subtitles to your videos and is very easy to use.

The program is available in free and paid editions: the free edition comes with adware, the paid edition costs 15 euro. The developers website also offers a premium pack license for 100 euro, which also includes K – MP3, PhotoToFilm, ApHeMo, K-FTP, K-Mail and AVIToolbox. You can also get a license for free if you install the additional license package which contains the sponsor installer, as well.

Installation

The regular installation pack includes RelevantKnowledge installer, but you can choose one of the four options available on the developers website, two of them supposedly have no sponsor in the installer pack. Installation in itself is simple, and once it’s over you will see four shortcuts on your desktop: PhotoToFilm itself, Drivers update, Clean computer KCleaner, Check for update – SUMo. The latter three being urls to developers website and third-party website. The program supports Windows based operations systems, including XP, Vista, 7, and 8.

Interface

The interface is user-friendly, and the main window displays everything the program has to offer. The program supports many languages and has a link to the help video on developers’ website. Nevertheless, the help option in the program leaves to be desired. Interface itself is quite simplistic and is performed in Windows XP style.

Features

• makes transitions between photos
• can burn DVDs, but requires CopyToDVD add – on installed
• creates movies of your image files using your selected music with codecs available on your PC, but also offers an option to download additional codecs supports many photo formats and MP3
• offers dynamic images support and video dynamic text insertion

Pros

The interface of PhotoToFilm is quite simplistic, which makes it easy for novice users to create amazing videos blending their digital pictures with favorite music. It is possible to jump to a particular file, organize images, choose audio track to use as a soundtrack. You can select the codec, enable dynamic pictures, single frame mode and cross fading. You can also choose the time every picture is displayed in your video, or choose selected audio; you can specify the image resolution, and one of the most useful features is the preview. It can also apply sepia or grayscale, and save the movie in the AVI format.

Cons

Drag-and-drop option is not supported, and a video tutorial does not cover some important points, such as the following: it was not entirely clear whether the output video played the music in full, but displayed only the first image out of 5, due to the fact that it is the limitation of the free version, or if it is not, what could cause the problem. We eventually discovered that using the last and the oldest available codec fixed the issue with switching from one image to another, but we feel there needs to be a comprehensive FAQ on known issues.

We could not add or edit subtitles, either.

The unregistered version also displays the watermark on the output video. Graphic editing options are quite basic, and the interface is rather spartan.

Bundled adware does not encourage privacy minded folks. The free version also has the nag screen, and considering the Pros and Cons we would not want to buy the paid one.

Alternatives

Photo to Movie is a commercial product designed to create high quality slide shows, and features a large number of transition effects and 3D effects. Freemake Video Converter, as the name suggests, is free product which converts videos to avi, wmv, mp4, 3gp, rip dvd and more. Bolide Slideshow Creator is a free program which helps users create slideshows with music and save output result in avi, mkv or wmv formats.

Conclusion

Make movies with your digital images, add your favorite soundtrack, and surprise your friends and family with professional looking video clips. PhotoToFilm does not require any technical background and even novice users can master it. However, we have faced several issues that outweighed the positive sides of the program: bundled adware, even though we downloaded the installer that was supposed to be free from adware, an issue with codecs and subtitles. Overall, we encourage the developers to take into account that more users opt out from applications that can potentially compromise their privacy and security with bundled adware. Addressing the listed issues will make this product a viable alternative.