Software for putting camcorder footage & photos+music on the same DVD?

[The Big Cheese]

Hi guys

Basically I have a camcorder movie of a holiday, and some photos of the same holiday and I want to put them onto the same disc.

Nothing fancy - no blending the slides into the movie, just so a menu appears and you can select the film or select the photo slideshow (with music).

Can anyone recommend some software that will do that?

I have seen plenty offering to do one or the other but not both.


Thanks in advance!

[hech54]

I use Ulead Movie Factory 2SE for stuff like that. $5 on Ebay. Painfully slow compared to today's stuff but works like a charm for me.

[GeorgeW]

You could download a working Trial version of Ulead's MovieFactory or VideoStudio (see Ulead.com). MovieFactory is geared towards Authoring, with some editing capabilities, while VideoStudio is geared towards Editing with some Authoring capabilities (both should do what you need).

But sometimes "free" (bundled) software that comes with our equipment can do the basic tasks. I recently picked up a 16x DL DVD Burner at CompUSA for $7 (after eRebate). It happened to come with some software called Cyberlink PowerProducer. Now, I have many other software titles already, but this little piece of software can actually take in videos, and a bunch of stills, and make a nice DVD out of them -- the slideshow even had a choice of transitions and background music -- the transitions could be specific or random. The only thing I could not find was setting the video to 16:9, but I can do that using PGCedit after authoring the DVD Folders. The point is, you might have recently got a DVD Burner - so check if it came bundled with some Authoring software (I know some burners come with a "lite" version of MovieFactory).

Regards,
George

[The Big Cheese]

Thanks for the info guys, I'll get looking into them!

Does anyone else know of other software that will do the job?

Thanks.

[mats.hogberg]

Windows Movie Maker 2 - Free for XP SP 2 users. Crashes a lot (atleast on my system), but save often, and you're home free.
Export final edit as DV, encode DV to DVD mpg, author.

/Mats

[ozymango]

Good recommendations so far and as for "is there other stuff out there" request, there sure is, and a lot depends on:

1) Budget
2) Technical desire/expertise

There's freeware stuff that'll do this (check out the Tools section here), and pretty much any program that can handle video-to-dvd can also do photo-to-dvd (e.g. Nero, Pinnacle Studio, whatever version of Roxio is out there at the moment ) and the "recommendation" as to what to use really depends on:

1) Budget
2) Technical desire/expertise

Also one or more programs may work better for you depending on if you've got a lot of photos and less video, versus tons of video with a couple of snapshots thrown in.

If the bulk of your stuff is photographs, and you want to do some cool transitions and "effects" between photos, that might point you towards something like Proshow Gold, which gives you tremendous photo options (transitions, effects, etc.) and just a few video options, and is pretty easy to use all around (and, in my experience, gives excellent results). I can't remember the price and I'm too lazy to check, but I think it's about $60-70. Which may be cheap to you, or expensive. Oh, and you can add simple music tracks to your show, do some very minimal audio editing, but if you have soundtrack needs, something else may work better.

So, if you have specific needs or hopes for your project, let us know what you're looking to get in the end and maybe we can recommend more optimal choices.

[Bjs]

Dvdslideshowgui
Dvdauthorgui

Vobedit to demux each
Besweet to convert audio to ac3
The gimp to design menu's
Dvdauthorgui to put it all together including menu's with navigational button's
Imgburn to whack it on dvd .

Only cost's what the media set you back ... enjoy .