Customer Reviews

Slideshow Expressions (Version 2)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

TSlideshow Expressions (Version 2)
I am such a klutz that I can't even get redeye out of a picture. I wanted to make a catchy slide show for our Golden Anniversary Party, but every program I looked at involved taking many hours to learn plus a steady hand with a mouse, all way beyond me. I would have hired a pro to do it, if I could have all my pictures of the past century scanned into my computer with enough lead time so she could do it. However, life intervened and I still have cartons of pictures to be scanned.

Browsing though Amazon late one night, I found Slideshow Expressions (Version 2) annd figured, "What the Heck? For so little money and the good reviews, I'll try it." When it came, I approached it with trepidation. Installing it, of course, was easy, but as soon as it was installed, just by looking at the opening screen, I added my pictures from my Pictures Library. As soon as I did, I just chose a set of transitions, previewed the resulting slide show, tried another set of transitons, previewed it, then saved it. Voila! A great slide show in 5 minutes or so. You can take aother minute and add music from your library and check off "sync music to slideshow." Done immediately.

If you don't want to use automatic transitons, you can choose each transition between slides manually from a drop-down list of I'd guess a hundred or more effects. You can choose to record audio comments on your slides. You can also label pictures with text or put in blank slides on which you've typed comments using a variety of fonts
and colors.

Nothing could be easier or have more options to choose from. It even has a simple picture editor if you want it. If you really care about editing pictures, however, you would need a more advanced program, but you could put your edited pictures into Slideshow.

My only complaint is that it allows you to save your slide show as a document but you can't use that for playback by hooking your computer to a TV. To play your slideshow, you have to burn it. You can't save a playable version on a thumb drive, either, or at least I can't see how. When you're ready for the final step, Produce, the only option is to burn to DVD.

Considering you would pay much more for a more sophisticated program and get the same results, this is a terrific little bargain. Easy to use. The best part is the conversion program. Since I've had it, I've made two DVDs as gifts for people. But, best of all I could convert them into a format for my IPod Touch, so I have the videos at hand and can share them with others or review them for my own enjoyment. Someday I may graduate to a program with more "bells and whistles" but for beginners and those who don't have a lot of time to spend on the fine details of putting pictures into a video program, this is the most practical and cost efficient way to go. I have Windows 7. This program was advertised to work with it and it does.

I bought this program for my father's 80th birthday. we weanted to do a big slideshow. I am not the most computer savy person, and this program is really easy! The picture show was great. The best part was I put it on a DVD and played it at the party - and then my father when home with the DVD. He watches it every day.

I thought this would be an easy program, but it was very complicated. The music is hard to download, I don't like the finished product and the time to burn to DVD is over 5 minutes per DVD which is only 10 minutes long...

excellent product.

if u are a busy person and do not have time to learn software or read manual,this is the best product.

just insert pics,songs,select prefrences like slide show brightness,crop,zoom etc,insert titles if u want to,preview and burn on dvd disk.

whole process is like cutting a cake.

u can also insert video clips and powerpoins from your computer.

very userfriendly,lots of features and superb quality.

u can also download this programm rightaway from internet.

The biggest drawback to this program (and if I'd paid more attention I might have noticed this before buying) is that it will not create slideshows that you can upload to sites like Youtube or FaceBook. If there is a way to do this I can't find it anywhere. Also, you can't custom time the slides so that they fit perfectly with the song/music. But programs that can (like DVD Photo Slideshow Pro) cost over 3 times as much. So you get what you pay for. I just wish I hadn't spent all afternoon creating a slideshow that I can't upload and share. And if someone has found a way to do this, please do tell!

I don't often write reviews for Amazon but I just have to tell you about this great little program. Not only does it do all of what the description says it does but, get this, you get excellent, timely support if needed! How many programs can you say that about at this price level?? But you probably won't need any support though; the program is easy to use and has a small help section that will answer most how-to type questions. We're not talking about a barrel of bells and whistles here. If you want to get very fancy, Individual Software as well as other companies have more expensive programs that will be more feature rich. I've been looking for a program that was this simple yet would produce what I wanted; a DVD that others could watch on a TV.

My gf and I both ordered a copy. On my Win 7 64 bit machine the program ran first time without a hitch. On her Vista Gateway PC everything worked except that we could only get it to record to the hard drive. A Sunday evening email to them was answered the next morning. All that needed to be done was to download the patch for Vista, found on their web site, and now it works perfectly. So I'd have to say, for the money you just can't go wrong! Thanks to Amazon.com for the easy download as well!

I spent a couple hours using this. Very simplistic, you can't alter many things, just a very basic program.
But that doesn't matter, because I spent two hours and couldn't get this to burn a DVD. Utterly worhtless

This is one of the worst software that I had ever encountered. This version is said to be compatible with Windows 7, which it does. However, it crashes extremely easily!
First of all, loading pictures takes a long time (about 20 minutes for 500 pictures).
Second, you can't run other programs while it is loading pictures. Otherwise, this program will crash, and you need to re-load the pictures all over again.
Third, after you load the pictures and give the length of each picture going to be shown, the program does not tell you how much DVD disk space it will take only until the next step. After you go to the next step, if you find out that not enough space for your blank DVD, you have to go back. The program will re-load the pictures again, that means it will take another 20 minutes! And you can't multi-task your computer during that 20 minutes! (I have a pretty modern computer with Core Dual Quad processor and 8GB RAM!)
Fourth, the program does not have the function to create tracks in between the pictures (at least I did not find such function).
After it took me more than five hours to eventually burn a DVD, I said, enough is enough! Very frustrated!

Worked beautifully the first time I used it. Created a slideshow viewable on our TV. I have Roxio Media Creator nine and was never able to create a TV-viewable slideshow. Very simple to use and a low price!