Newbie here, thanks for reading.

I need to create a large number of slideshows on different subjects. For each of these slideshows, I have the text for each slide written out. All of it is in one big text file. Other than the text slides, I only need to add an opening and closing image slide.

What I'm trying to learn is whether there is some software that will allow me to create slideshows (whether in mpg/avi/quicktime/etc) of this kind by scripting them, and avoid having to create each of these slideshows by hand?

Even if I can't script them all in once fell swoop, being able to script them out one at a time would still make it much easier. If I can make a single slideshow by scripting it out in text:

first slide, size, image location, duration, etc
second slide, size, background color, text, duration, etc
third slide, size, background color, text, duration, etc
fourth slide, size, background color, text, duration, etc
fifth slide, size, background color, text, duration, etc

... using the syntax of some scripting language, then I can easily create a macro to do the copy and paste necessary to repeat this over and over for each of the slideshows.

But I am coming up short when I look for information on how I might be able to do this. I read about flash's "actionscript" but it seems like that is more for making interactive videos as opposed to using a scripting language to create simple videos (which is what I want to do).

I would really appreciate any advice.