Free Slideshow Maker Comparison and Brief Tutorial

People are fond of free things, say free photo dvd movie slideshow maker, maybe more obviously during recession days. Not you? OK, you are special. Even so, you still could get through this article to know about how to create slideshow with dvd slideshow making software. None of them would cost you a penny. Actually they probably exist in your computer system. So, just locate and run to start slideshow making, at least to kill boring time or relive beautiful memory with photos. This article will contain following parts:

Part 1: Free Photo Slideshow Maker Comparison
Part 2: Using Free Photo Slideshow Maker for Windows
Part 3: Using Free Photo Slideshow Maker for Mac

Part 1: Free Slideshow Maker Comparison

Beside free slideshow maker for windows (Windows Movie Maker), free photo slideshow maker for Mac (iMovie), there are some other free photo slideshow maker for your choice. For example, Photo Story 3 is one of them, which also comes from Microsoft. Meanwhile, some multimedia companies also provide free slideshow maker products for their special customers. Before Mother's Day, Wondershare company has given away 3 light-weight slideshow maker for free: iPhone Slideshow Maker, iPod Slideshow Maker and PSP Slideshow Maker. Below is the brief comparison of these free photo slideshow maker.

Name	OS	Features	Input Formats	Output Formats
Windows Movie Maker	Windows	effects, transitions, titles/credits, audio track, timeline narration, and Auto Movie	Audio: .aif, .aifc, .aiff .asf, .au, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .snd, .wav and .wma Picture: .bmp, .dib, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .tif, .tiff, and .wmf Video: .asf, .avi, .m1v, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .wm, and .wmv	Windows Media formats or DV/AVI
iMovie	Mac OS X	Photo Effects include basic color correction; Video enhancement tools, and transitions effect, titles.	non-tape based HD or non-HD video cameras such as DVD camcorders, HDD camcorders, & AVCHD, 3gp, AVI, DAT, MOV, MP4, MPG	MOV, Disc, CD-ROM,
Photo Story 3	Windows	Create still pictures into slideshow in wizard.	Picture: .bmp, .dib, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .tif, .tiff, and .wmf	WMV only, and optimized for Pocket PC, SmartPhone and Portable Media Center
iPod/iPhone/PSP Slideshow Maker	Windows	Storyboard, edit video; backgrond music;2D and 3D transition effects; motion effects; auto sync;	Audio: .mp3, .wav and .wma Picture: .bmp, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .tif, and .tiff Video: .asf, .avi, .mpeg, .mpg, .rm, .wmv, .dat and .vob	MP4 slideshow for iPod/iPhone/PSP

Part 2: Using Free Photo Slideshow Maker for Windows

Windows Movie Maker 2 is an XP-only download that gives you the tools to create free photo slideshow. Compile and edit free photo slideshow with drag-and-drop functionality. Add special effects, music, and narration with ease. Share your photo slideshow over the Web or Email. Follow these steps to create your free photo slideshow.

Step 1: Import Media Source

Windows Movie Maker needs you import first media files into the collection before adding to your photo slideshow project. Following media formats are supported by this free slideshow maker for windows.

Audio files: .aif, .aifc, .aiff .asf, .au, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .snd, .wav and .wma
Picture files: .bmp, .dib, .emf, .gif, .jfif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .tif, .tiff, and .wmf
Video files: .asf, .avi, .m1v, .mp2, .mp2v, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .wm, and .wmv

Step 2: Edit Photo Slideshow

- Add transitions and special effects
Make your photo slideshow more polished with special effects and professional-looking transitions between photos.
- Add titles and credits
What's your photo slideshow called, and words you want to express to audience? Add titles, credits, and text to your photo slideshow to let the world know.

Step 3: Save your photo slideshow

Now save your photo slideshow in formats that you want. Windows Movie Maker allows you to save photo slideshow:

* To your computer
* To a CD
* To a DVD (with the help of third-party DVD burning software)
* For the Web
* For e-mail

Access desired task to the left hand side Movie Tasks and follow on-screen instructions.

Part 3: Using Free Photo Slideshow Maker for Mac

iMovie is a free slideshow maker for Mac users to enhance their photos. It is now a Mac OS X only application bundled in the iLife suite of Macintosh applications. iMovie also comes with a powerful organizing library, from which you can easily create photo slideshow with movies, photo and titles. Get through these steps to create photo slideshow for free.

Step 1: Create project and organize photos

iMovie is built for easily sharing photo slideshow with friends and family from iMovie library. To getting started, create a slideshow project and import photos to the library from iPhoto program. Quit iPhoto after you add all the desired photos and return to iMovie.

Step 2: Edit photo and add to Timeline

Add effects to your photo by clicking on the photo, and then on the desired effect on the tool bar. If you are not satisfied with the effect, simply click the reverse button. Click on the photo and move the slider to adjust the size of the photo, or move the second slider to adjust the emphasis of the photo effect. Next, simply drag photo to Timeline in the order you want them to display.

Step 3: Apply transition effect

Click the Transitions button to view all available transitions and select the one you want. After specify the effect's duration by dragging the Speed slider and when you are satisfied with the effect shown in the preview window, drag the transition to the space between the two slides where you want the effect.

Step 4: Add titles

Titles give necessary information about the whole slideshow (slideshow intro) or specific to single photo. To add titles, firstly select a thumbnail in the Clip Viewer and choose title style; type the title; choose options for font, size, color, and duration using the controls in the Titles pane; and drag the title style at the desired position just to the left of the picture.

Step 5: Export slideshow

Export your slideshow in QuickTime format. To do so, select Export Movie from the File menu and select QuickTime. In addition, iMovie includes some commonly used settings for exporting to different movie sizes, such as Web Movie, Email movie, or CD-ROM movie.

Appendix

• Make Free DVD Slideshow
After the slideshow is created with these two free slideshow software, you may need to burn slideshow to DVD for playback in Media Player or on TV. For Mac, you could use the iDVD, while for Windows, free DVD slideshow maker, like DVD Flick is available. Alternative, I have found commecial slideshow maker Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder could make slideshow and directly burn onto DVD. I have to say, free DVD slideshow maker surely exist, however, you need to search for it. Or anyone could suggest one?
• Convert DVD Slideshow
You may find out that the output formats of slideshow made by free slideshow maker described above are limited. But sometimes slideshow in other formats would be required. Well, video converter could help you. In fact, so many of them are flooding out there. You could google for some. As for me, iSkysoft iMedia Converter for Mac is my favorite. In Windows, you usually have no need to buy anything, free media converters are already enough. What I recommend is FFMpeg. It's free and powerful command line tool. Have heard that Youtube also use this tool? Maybe, but it really deserves your usage. Download Free media converter here: FFMpeg

How to play youtube video on iPod/iTouch/iPhone

Today, I will talk about how to play youtube video on your iPod/iTouch/iPhone. It will be divided into following parts:

Part 1: Download youtube video for iPod/iPhone/iTouch
Part 2: Convert youtube video to playable video for iPod/iTouch/iPhone
Part 3: Transfer converted video to iPod/iTouch/iPhone

What you'll need:
1. photo slideshow maker or free youtube video converter (I use FFMpeg).
2. Apple's iTunes 8 (FREE)

Part 1: Download youtube video for iPod/iPhone/iTouch

Although YouTube Video site doesn't provide direct method to download youtube videos, people could easily realize that small desire right now. Today, I want to tell you one most economic and simple way to download youtube video, not any installation required. Simply go to youtube video downloading sites, e.g. http://keepvid.com/ or http://vixy.net/, input the link and download youtube video by a single click.
Actually, I also usually download youtube video through Firefox extension DownloadHelper, if you use Firefox web browser, too, you could have a try to download as well. Get it here.

Part 2: Convert youtube video to playable video for iPod/iTouch/iPhone

I think the download of youtube video will be very successful as long as you have internet properly connected. Now that the youtube video is oh hand, we will go ahead to edit and convert youtube video to formats supported by iPod/iTouch/iPhone.

Method 1: Gui and Easy to Use

Install and run Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder, import downloaded youtube video (*.flv video). Afterwards, you could either edit youtube video, including crop, rotate, effects and frame, or combine youtube video with favorite photos to a new video. You can even add titles on youtube video. Combine several youtube video clips is also an easy job for Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder. More functions are waiting for you! It's not just a youtube video converter.

When you are satisfied with the result, output the new video in MP4 video format and specify desired video options. Depending on your device, higher parameter may be available, say larger video aspect, better audio quality, etc. According to my own experience, following options for iPod/iTouch/iPhone are generally accepted.

Video Format: MP4
Video Options: H264/320x240/30fps
Audio Options: AAC/44.1kHz

Method 2: Free and Powerful

FFmpeg is a complete solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It is a command line tool to convert one video file format to another. It also supports grabbing and encoding in real time from a TV card. Now go to next link to get the latest version of FFMpeg. (unzip the file with WinRar and you get the powerful youtube video converter)

http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/ffmpeg/
Several FFMpeg GUIs are also available like WinFF, Super, google it for more info and download.

Use this command to convert downloaded youtube video in FLV format to MP4 format, which playable on your iPod/iTouch/iPhone.

ffmpeg -i input.flv -acodec libfaac -ab 44100 -vcodec mpeg4 -b 768kb -s 320x240 -y output.mp4

Options Description:
* -i Input file name
* -acodec codec for audio
* -ab Audio bit rate
* -vcodec codec for video
* -b Video bit rate
* -r Frame Rate in fps (frame per second)
* -s Output dimension
* -y Overwrite file without prompt

Part 3: Transfer converted video to iPod/iTouch/iPhone

Now, you get the final video. It's time to transfer it to your IPod/iTouch/iPhone for playback. You need to install iTunes for this purpose. iTunes is the best interface to manage the contents on Apple's popular iPod/iTouch digital media players as well as the iPhone. If you have not yet installed, never mind, download iTunes 8 now. Once installation finished, follow next steps to import your converted youtube video to iTunes Library.

Step 1: Open iTunes.
Step 2: Plug in your iPod/iTouch/iPhone to computer. They will automatically show up in your iTunes under Devices category on the left hand side.
Step 3: Click "File/Add file to library" to import converted youtube video to iTunes Library.
Step 4: Create a new Playlist for saving your converted youtube video, say youtube-video
Step 5: Drag and drop imported youtube video to the playlist.
Step 6: Drag and drop the playlist to your iPod/iTouch/iPhone. (Note: To snyc iPod without deleting other files already in iPod, just set iPod to manual snyc. Click iPod tab and check "Manually manage music and video".)
Step 7: Disconnect your devices and enjoy youtube video on iPod/iTouch/iPhone.

OK, did you get it? There are three key points:
1. Download youtube video successfully
2. Convert youtube video to correct format
3. Move youtube video to iPod/iTouch/iPhone

Done. Get youtube video and put it on your iPod/iTouch/iPhone now. It's not a big deal!

How to Create Picture Slideshow for iPod/iTouch/iPhone

This article explains how to create picture slideshow for iPod/iTouch/iPhone:

Part 1: Create picture slideshow for iPod/iPhone/iTouch
Part 2: Import slideshow to iTunes and transfer to iPod/iTouch/iPhone
Part 3: Free iPod/iPhone/iTouch slideshow maker

What you'll need:
1. Digital pictures, music and some creativity
2. Picture slideshow software (here takes DVD Slideshow Maker for example)
3. Apple's iTunes 8 (FREE)

Part 1: Create picture slideshow for iPod/iPhone/iTouch

To make picture slideshow for iPod/iTouch/iPhone, you could select a favorite slideshow making software. Here I suggest Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder. With it, you could easily create cool and amazing iPod/iTouch/iPhone picture slideshow in a snap. Now follow me to make your first picture slideshow for iPod/iTouch/iPhone, please.

First, download DVD Movie Maker and install. After finished, launch it and you will start from Slideshow tab, in which import everything you need to create iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow, for example, digital photos for iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow, music, and/or videos to create iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow, etc.

Second, add some words/subtitles on your iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow. If you are making iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow concerning to travel to somewhere, give some explanation using animated titles, say what, when and who the photo is taken. To do so, turn to Timeline view and double click Subtitle track to start. And input desired text before assigning text effects.

Third, switch to Create tab and select MP4 video formats followed by clicking Options button to make settings. Afterwards, click Start to go on generating. It will soon before your iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow are ready.
Depends on your device, parameters may vary from time to time. If having problem, you could lower the settings to have a try. Following settings are safe:

Video Format: MP4
Video Options: H264/320x240/30fps
Audio Options: AAC/44.1kHz

Part 2: Import slideshow to iTunes and transfer to iPod/iTouch/iPhone

iTunes is the best interface to manage the contents on Apple's popular iPod/iTouch digital media players as well as the iPhone. If you have not yet installed, never mind, donwload iTunes 8 now. Once installation finished, follow next steps to import your created iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow to iTunes Library.

Step 1: Open iTunes.
Step 2: Plug in your iPod/iTouch/iPhone to computer. They will automatically show up in your iTunes under Devices category on the left hand side.
Step 3: Click "File/Add file to library" to import created iPod/iTouch/iPhone picture slideshow to iTunes library.
Step 4: Create a new Playlist for saving your iPod/iTouch/iPhone picture slideshow, say Apple-Slide-Show
Step 5: Drag and drop IPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow to the playlist.
Step 6: Drag and drop the playlist to your iPod/iTouch/iPhone. (Note: To snyc iPod without deleting other files already in iPod, just set iPod to manual snyc. Click iPod tab and check "Manually manage music and video".)
Step 7: Disconnect your devices and enjoy picture slideshow on iPod/iTouch/iPhone.

Part 3: Free iPod/iPhone slideshow maker

Besides Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder, we also provide free iPod/iTouch/iPhone slideshow maker for you. The general differences are that Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder has more output settings and accordingly could help your make more picture slideshow as several usage.

iPhone 3G Slideshow Maker

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