Is Ulead DVD Movie Factory 5 (for Toshiba) for me ???

[RonInRI]

I have a Toshiba Satellite Notebook, Vista Home Premium, which came with DVD MF5 bundled (Ulead DVD Movie Factory 5 for Toshiba). I am 70 years old and have had a great deal of difficulty finding and learning my "ideal" slideshow software.

What I want to do: organize digital image slideshows, using pictures already on my PC, to put on DVD and used on a DVD player (NTSC) to be viewed on home TV. I want the "slides" to be shown full screen, whether on TV or PC. I use Picasa as editor but might need to export them to Windows before using for DVD slideshow...maybe not. (I like DVD MF's Express Editing because I sometimes find that in uploading to other software, my prior editing is altered somewhat.) I want importing pictures to slideshow software to be easy and re-arrangement of pictures in slideshow to be quick and simple. I'm not interested in using audio or video. I want to be able to control zoom and pan, transitions and duration for each picture individually.

Want to add captions to some photos which will appear on the DVD slideshow. And would like to be able to add, here and there, a paragraph of text to explain the content of the slideshow. If possible, I'd like to be able to add a "blank slide" with text on it...again explaining content of the slideshow.

It would be good if the DVD slideshow, once assembled, could also be used to post on internet or send by email etc. And I'm wondering if this software can be used for backup of my digital images.

If "Movie Factory 5 for Toshiba" is what I need, is my "bundled" software ready to go? Does it need updating or upgrading? How do I proceed?

Many thanks for any and all help and suggestions.

[sjj1805]

I also had MovieFactory 5 for Toshiba pre-installed on my laptop computer.
At first I was quite excited that Toshiba had chosen this software - not for myself because I already have several full versions of MovieFactory - but I was excited that the number of users of MovieFactory would increase.

Unfortunately my excitement soon turned to horror when i discovered that the Toshiba version does not support JPG images. Almost every Digital Camera now sold takes and stores the pictures on a small postage stamp sized card - mainly SD or SDHC but also XD, MMC and a few others. The pictures are mainly saved in JPG format.

What this means is that to use the Toshiba Version of MovieFactory you would need to convert your images. Surprisingly the less common JPEG 2000 format IS included. Here is a list of the Toshiba MovieFactory 5 supported formats.

BMP, RLE, UPI, GIF, JP2, JPC, J2K, PNG, TGA, TIF, TIFF

[RickinSav'h]

Please consider Proshow Gold, by a company called Photodex. I find it very easy to use & does the very things you mention in your request very well.
Video Studio & Moviefactory can do some of the same basic things but they are designed for video editing & DVD authoring.
ProShow is designed for slide show creations. There is an excellent user group on the web at "www.proshowenthusiasts.com"

[lathompson]

For simple to complex slideshows, easy to use and quick workflow, not to mention low pricing, try Pictures to EXE from "www.wnsoft.com". It is designed for slide show enthusiasts. I love MF for what it does, but it is not a slideshow program specifically. P2EXE is.