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PhotoStage Slideshow Producer User Reviews
Spectacular
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"NOT FREE: Limited trial only"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Works ok, but only for week. then you have to pay.
Cons
Actually Not Free
Summary
In wrong category... "Free trial", not "Free"
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"Very good, little bit more then basic"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Easy to use, good crash and recovery routines, good features, for me the best software to create simple but nice home videos.
I used it to create a DVD from images and videos. It takes a while to import everything (rather old PC).
It crashed 2 or 3 times (on windows XP and an rather old PC) but it did an amazing job of recovering an automatically saved project file (lost practically nothing in all crashes).Cons
It crashed a few times, effects cannot be assigned to one file-type, videos and images placed on the time-line don't represent their actual timeframe (audio does), they are just a thumbnail with a time label.
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"Easy to use, lousy end product."
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
It's easy to use, but ends up being a waste of your time because it is indiscriminate in what photos it allows you to import.
Cons
Won't import certain photos, and there seems to be no defining characteristics of those it won't import. Spent hours playing with file size, type, etc. to no avail on certain photos - which I wanted in my show. It also crashes for no reason.
Summary
I have used many video editing and slideshow programs, and while not expert, I'm no novice either. I have ample ram and and i7 processor, so that isn't an issue. I decided to try Photoshow because the 'trial' show worked well. Then I bought the full version. No matter how easy something is to use, if you can't get the finished product, or include pictures that are important to the production, it's not worth the time or money. It is a waste of your time and money.
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"Bad interface, crashes often, stay away"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Very easy to learn.
Cons
Too many to list! crashes when making the movie, can't see a preview of the pictures so it is difficult to see a picklist of what pictures you have to choose from. Also tried to export the project to an external drive and then open it up with another (faster) laptop which did not work.
Summary
Developers really need to go back and rework this product, I spent way too much time creating a project that should have taken no more than 10-20 hours and I probably spent over 120 hours because of the the crashing. Windows movie maker is much better.
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"Repeatedly crashes when burning DVD"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Relatively intuitive
Cons
Useless for distribution if it won't burn a DVD.
Summary
A real waste of time if your goal is to burn a DVD.
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"Made ugly images"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Nothing to say.
Cons
The slide show does not give a good by lowering the quality of the images.
Summary
I had to uninstall this software because of the inferior result(profit) to make a beautiful slide show.
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"Pretty Good"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Very simple to use.
Bulk editing of the view time and the transition timing so that you can match the slideshow to the length of songs or voice over is great.Cons
Didn't work on a cheap DVD player. That may have been the DVD player even though I had the correct settings set to burn the disk on the program and checked the settings on the DVD player.
If you have a lot of photo's that do not have a descriptive file name it can be time consuming to drag and drop them in the right order after loading them as they are in one long strip at the bottom. While you can manipulate the strip to see more slides at a time and can select mutliple slides at a time it was by far the longest process in setting up the whole show. Being able to cut and paste or being able to see more of the slide show in an expanded window would make organising easier.Summary
Had to put together a funeral memorial in a couple of hours with over 100 photos and three songs for a 10 minute viewing. Very easy to pick up the navigation.
Worked like a charm on a decent DVD player using PAL format in Australia. Also worked well in WMP and VLC when saved on thumb drive -
"Thought it was good at first, then I tried to render it"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Easy, perfect, until you try to save it
Cons
When you try to render it in any form or upload it, it just doesn't work and crashes...
Summary
Fix your program developers!
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"A major warning about this program!"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
I really liked this program at first, and even recommended it to a few friends; however, there is a major bug with it that is imo unforgivable.
An alternative application to this that can make nice slide shows and is fairly intuitive is: PhotoFilmStrip. I'll talk about it more in the summery.Cons
NHC does not just install this nice little application, but they also install usage spyware that will randomly pop up a message to try and install one of their other apps for dealing with a given problem. Many are easily dodge-able; however, this morning while waking up I got nailed unexpectedly by a random pop dialog that I was not expecting and wound up with Express zip, an app that is redundant, and removes one of my favorite features of windows, and now is going to be a royal pain to fix.
Most people don't realize that as of xp and beyond windows comes with a built in zipping utility. Thus there is no need for a third party app as it is redundant. Most third party unzipping apps also add additional steps to the process. The most annoying part about these apps is once they break the systems built in zip archiver, they do not repair it when they uninstall. So you have to go through a very annoying process to fix the damage they do for something you don't need.Summary
I like this app, but when I select extract files here using the systems built in dearchiver after having this application installed for over two weeks in which time I have unzipped at least 5-10 other items did their pop up suddenly decide that this was the time to ask if I wanted their product? More importantly, why when I was already using a dearchiver, and was in the process of launching the dearchiver did it decide to randomly pop up. Simple, they were hoping I would accidentally install their application, which BTW I only did because I was tired and miss clicked. For that I'm now punished with spending a few hours fixing something that wasn't broken until their spyware installer snuck this in.
Quick addition, a cropped pan can also be used for doing photo zooms, and if you are after that functionality which PhotoFilmstrip has greater precision with.
PhotoFilmsStrip can also be found here on Cnet downloads, and if you are mainly interested in doing slide shows with fades and pans, it's actually much more intuitive than this application, and can do cropped pans with greater precision. The downside is it only does photo slide shows, so if you want video cut in you'll have to mix it with another application like windows movie maker, Vegas, Lightworks (overkill but now free) or what ever.
Updated on Jan 7, 2012
Updated on Jan 7, 2012Adding one more tid bit for those who found them selves in this same situation. Here is how you fix the zip association problem:
1. In the run dialog type:
cmd /c assoc .zip=CompressedFolder
2. If you are running windows XP also do the following:
A. in the run dialog type:
REGSVR32 ZIPFLDR.DLL
B1. Then with a folder open click the Tools menu and select Folder options.
B2. In the folder options click the , "File Types" tab.
B3. Scroll through the Registered File types till you get to, "ZIP" and select it.
B4. Under, "Details for 'ZIP' extension" there shoould be a button marked, "Restore" click it.
B5. Reboot your computer.
3. (Optional) As a bonus, if you are really spiteful and feel comfortable with modifying the system registry (Can be dangerous so do it at your own risk), go through the registry and delete every key that contains, "ExpressZip" -
"99% Amazing, 1% Horrible"
Version: PhotoStage Slideshow Producer 2.13
Pros
Simple, powerful, easy to use/learn, very flexible, lots of cool features/effects, include your fav music files!
Cons
1. The program reorders the imported images according to their file name, not according to the order in which you import them. So, when adding picture files to the program, if you want to keep them in a specific order, you need to do some up-front work in your file naming convention. See summary below for example.
2. When previewing your slideshow prior to creation, the video is compressed, and appears pixellated. However, the finished product (if you can get it to finish) was high-definition just like my photos.
3. Program would NOT compile a slideshow to any file format!!Summary
I love this software! It is free, and simple to use. It uses your still-pictures and allows you to put them in any order, choosing a separate display time for each image, and a separate transition for each image, and multiple various effects for each image. The effects are not cheesy either. For example, you can zoom out a picture starting in the upper right hand corner (or any portion of the image) and expanding to show the entire picture (or any portion of the image), while simultaneously applying effects (like automatic color hue changes for example) and slide transitions (like page turns or many others). It is a really powerful, free program.
I put together a 6 minute video complete with music. I simply dragged a song from my iTUNES library and dropped it into the PhotoStage gui. It imported the audio file seamlessly. Then, I was able to align the picture display times with the music transitions so that the pictures changed as the intro, verse, chorus, etc of the song changed. This is done manually, which takes some time, but I don't know any other way to do it. Finally, I took a bunch of still pictures of my son playing his toy guitar and put them in a fast sequence to make it look like a choppy video. I had about 50 pictures that were sequentially displayed for only 0.1 seconds each. When put together in sequence it looked hilarious along with the music, and I loved it! Also, the program has a "duplicate slide" feature which came in handy! It duplicates the image as well as any assigned effect and transition!
After reading one review I realized that the naming of each picture file is important. So, I renamed all the picture files that I wanted to use with a letter and a number. For example, "A1, A2..." for the first set and "B1, B2..." for the second set, etc. This took some time, but worked well and allowed the program to keep my files in my order. If you have more than ten files in your "set" you will want to start over with a new alpha-numeric file name. Otherwise, the program will reorder them as "A1, A10, A2, A3...".
It would be an awesome feature to "tag" the music file in certain time positions which would indicate musical transitions. This would make life easier when trying to align the pictures to the music. But, I was still able to do it manually without too much effort.
Here is the 1% horrible part. After spending 2-3 hours creating a 6-minute slideshow complete with transitions, effects, music, etc, I could NOT get the program to properly create the end product. I tried creating a DVD, didn't work. I tried creating a CD-Data file, didn't work. I tried creating a Computer-Data file, didn't work. Each time I tried to finalize the slideshow, the program begins to convert the video and it shows a percentage of completion. The completion percentage would go from 0 to 65% and get hung up. I retried it and it went from 0 to 97% and hung up. It showed a "program not responding" error in the pop-up window. I tried multiple times changing the format type (DVD, CD, data, etc) and also changing the file type (HDTV, widescreen TV, and others) and each time it would hang up during the video conversion. This was extremely frustrating. There was one time that the program actually created a CD file. I was amazed that it finished! However, when I played it back in Windows Media Player there were portions of my slideshow that did not display. The music always played correctly, but the video went blank in certain spots. I traced the bad video portions back to my slideshow and found that whenever I used the "Old Film" feature (which is really cool) the finalized product screwed up and the video went black. It would stay black for a few more slides after this effect was turned off, and then recover.
All in all, this is an amazing program! Free! Lots of cool, useful features and transition effects. Simple to use! Complete with music! Well thought out gui and low learning curve! However, it would not "compile" for me. I am sure the coders will eventually fix this major error in future versions. (I am using a new Dell Laptop with Windows XP, lots of RAM, lots of hard drive space, lots of computing power. I seriously doubt my problems were due to my computer's resource limitations).
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