SlideShow Maker Freeware for Windows

User Reviews

• Needs a lot of work

  xyz7270June 8, 2011

  Pros

  Installs in a heartbeat Very simple interface

  Cons

  Ridiculously slow for large projects No transitions available?

  Summary

  I'm trying to put together a simple end-of-year slideshow on DVD for my wife's kindergarten class. Initially I tried Windows DVD Maker, but was unsuccessful since, like most other Microsoft products, it doesn't work properly. So, being the cheapskate that I am I started searching for other free solutions. SlideShow Maker downloads and installs very quickly, and I like the ultra simple interface. However, upon dragging and dropping a list of 548 image files into it, I could tell right away it might not be up to the task. Each file took around a second and a half to import, which meant around 15 minutes of waiting for it to finish. I then added some music files to the project before trying to preview it. During the preview I saw that it wasn't using any transition at all between images, so I exited the preview mode (by clicking on the slideshow -- using Esc didn't do anything) and tried to figure out how to insert transitions. I wasn't having any luck finding transitions, but out of sheer paranoia I decided to save the project in case something went wrong. Upon saving the project it became clear that it was going to take a long time to do the save -- at least several minutes, if not longer. So I decided to hit "Cancel" on the "Saving project..." window. Oops! Guess what! When I canceled the save, all of my project data disappeared. No images. No music. In other words, right back to square one, facing another 15 minutes of importing before I could give it another try. I decided to cut my losses and look for another program. This one is simply not up to the task. I have no idea whether it could successfully burn a DVD, but if I was laying odds on it I'd say "no way".

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