How to make a DVD movie of my photos?

Question

I want to make a slide show out of my photos, burn this slide-show to a DVD as a movie that can be played on a regular old DVD player. Suprisingly, I am finding this difficult to achieve. All the programs I've seen want to burn either onto a CD or a program that is runnable on a PC.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

Probably the best software there is for this task:

MemoriesOnTV is our award-winning photo/video slideshow software. This feature-packed program comes with beautiful and elegant pre-built effects that you can use. In addition, the powerful and advanced features and tools allow you to craft your slideshows any way you want. Let your creativity flow with MemoriesOnTV!

Output: DVD, Web, AVI or MPG

MemoriesOnTV is shareware, try before you buy.

Answer 2

On Windows, here are two products you might use to create an movie file from your photos:

Foto2Avi

Foto2Avi is a freeware video/photo converter to avi/mpeg/flv. It is an video editor too. Has thousands of special effects like Transitions (Flippage,Swirl...), Basic Effects (Brightness/Noise/Fade in/Fade out), Advanced Effects (Distort, Ripple), Animations, Subtitles, Logos. It support external audio sounds [mp3/ogg/wav] and can trim audio video streams, so you can edit your sounds synchronized with your videos. You can save your work in *.f2a project files and reload later.

Slide Show Movie Maker :

Slide Show Movie Maker can create an .avi vide slideshow from a series of .bmp or .jpg images. Images can have professional-looking fade-in and fade-out effects, plus attractive text overlays.

Then use Avi2Dvd to convert the .avi to DVD:

Avi2Dvd - converts with one click an AVI / OGM / MKV / DVD to DVD / SVCD / VCD. Uses only freeware software. Supports: VideoStream, AudioStream, Subtitle Streams (in DVD mode)

Answer 3

Although I'm sure there's software out there that can do it all automatically, you can find instructions on how to manually create a slideshow video at this link. The instructions are linux-specific, but I'm sure the specified software (or equivalents) are available for Windows/MacOS/Whatever that can do the same thing.

A quick summary to protect against link death:

1. Take all the images you want to slideshow
   • Convert/stretch/shrink/pad them to 320x200 resolution
   • Higher resolutions should be possible, but I've not tested this
   • Save images in uncompressed .ppm for best results
2. Copy them over and over and over and over again
   • Name these something like frame0001 frame0002 ... frame9999
   • You'll want 25 frames for each second of video
   • Fades and transitions are possible with clever scripting and mogrify
3. Use mpeg2encode to turn these into an mpeg video
4. Optionally create a sound file to play over the slideshow
   • Use ffmpeg to combine the video and audio tracks
5. Enjoy your new video. (Yay!)

After that, you'll probably have much better luck burning a normal mpg video to DVD with your software of choice.

Answer 4

Not sure what OS you're using, but there is a linux script called 'dvd-slideshow'. It takes a text file of instructions as input, but allows for the easy addition of images, title slides, transition effects and multiple audio tracks. The text file format is basic. 1 command per line, # lines are comments.

There is a related too called dir2slideshow. If you want to make a quick & dirty dvd of all the images in a directory, you could do this:

dir2slideshow -n "Thanksgiving 2009" <Your images directory>

dvd-slideshow gives you full control over every image or effect individually. For example:

dvd-slideshow [-n <slideshow name>] [-o <output directory>] [-b <background jpeg>] [-a <audiofile1> -a <audiofile2> -a <audiofileN>] [-p] [-L] [-H] [-mp2] [-r] [-smp] -f <input text file> 

The -f specifies the commands that provide all the instructions to the program.

The finished product are all the files you need to provide to a standard burner to make a dvd. There are several simple examples of the to get you started - like this one:

# simple example with fades
# instead of specifying the background image on the command-line
# it's often easier to do it in this text file:
# background:duration:subtitle:image
# a duration of 0 means to set the image, but don't display it.
 background:0::background.jpg
# Titles are put in the center:
 title:5:My title
 background:1
# The titlebar type of title has two titles, one on top and one lower:
 titlebar:5:My top title:My lower title
 background:1
#  there are simple transitions that you can use:
# fadein, fadeout, and crossfade. They all fade to/from whatever
# background you're using.  Syntax is:
# fadein:duration:subtitle
# you can add a subtitle during the transition, but it's optional
# use a backslash to escape a colon ':' in the subtitles.
# use '\n' to force a newline (only two subtitle lines supported now).
 fadein:2
 picture1.jpg:4:Picture 1 is so cool\:\nI can't believe how cool it really is.
# fadeout is similar:
# fadeout:duration:subtitle
 fadeout:2:Fading out
# it's possible to specify a new title slide in the middle of the slideshow:
 fadein:1
 titlebar:4::Panoramas  # note this just has the bottom title specified.
# crossfade works similar to fadein/fadeout
# crossfade:duration:subtitle
 crossfade:1
 pano.jpg:4:Cool panorama picture
# now let's change the background color:
# syntax is background:duration:subtitle:image
# where you can use "black" or "white"  or "#RRGGBB
# as the image name also.
 background:1::#11a004
# or
 background:1::black
 picture1.jpg:4:Picture 1 is so cool.  I can't believe how cool it really is.
 crossfade:3
 picture2.jpg:3
# it often looks nice to end the slideshow with a fadeout to the
# background instead of just stopping the video quickly:
 fadeout:2
 background:2:This is the background
# note that the background is black now...

Answer 5

I just use a program from Magix called Photostory. It costs about $40, but it is extremely easy to use. You can add music, transitions, and dvd title screens to your project. I have made 3 wedding videos with this software and they came out perfect. You have the option to make them for PC or use on a regular DVD Player.