Creating slide shows, placing on a DVD to view on a TV?

[Balliol]

I have spent the last week finding out about creating a slide show to place on a DVD to view on a TV and its been a confusing time.
First I tried to use Serif PhotoPlus10 and then Serif AlbumPlus4 only to find that I could not place captions on individual slides.
I then tried Adobe Photoshop Elemnts2 and could not work out how use it.
Someone sugested Windows Movie Maker and then Windows PhotoStory which looked good but I could move neither to my DVD recorder viw Nero6 Recovered.

Over the next few days I had the following sugestions:
Pictureshow 2
Magix Photos
Pictures to EXE
Picasa2
Ulead Video Studio 9
ProShow Gold
Photodex, Pro Show Gold
Pinnacle Studio 9

Eventually I worked out how to use Nero6 Recovered to build a slide show with captions and burn it onto a DVD. Now to my question:

Is there a consensus on what the best software is to do what I want to?

[Sifaga]

the ones i have used are
Ulead Pictureshow
MemoriesonTV
ProShow Gold

[delius]

i use dvd santa and ulead dvdmovie factory with success

[guns1inger]

I have used memoriesonTV in the past, but mostly I use my editor (Vegas). Most competent editing software can load stills with a predefined length.

[kschang]

Why DVD? VCDEasy has a MPEG still slideshow function too.

[collage]

My favorite one of all time is Photo2DVD Studio . Pretty easy of use, and lets you create your own menu templates as your wish.

[Bjs]

Commercial ware : Ulead picture it . dose a perfect job .
: Nerovision express , restrictive ... crap .

Freeware : Easyphototools

Just like dvdslideshowgui , only it work's .

As for dvdslideshowgui being a pain ... little or non existent support .. there is a method of creating 2 format's of slideshow's , but take's a little time and effort .

First format is an actual movie , play's from start to end .. easyphototool's will take care of that .

The second is more envolved , using the output of dvdslideshowgui , then passing all ouput picture's through dvdauthorgui , batch encoding of picture's to m2v's and basic authoring , followed by setting up time constraint's for each clip (picture) using pcgedit .

If you want it to be flash , you cant beat doing it the long way ... all other method's have restriction's .

[hech54]

I use an old version of Ulead Movie Factory 2SE...$5 on Ebay.