Best Photo Slideshow Software (Free)

[Barmaid]

Can anyone recommend a good bit of software that is free (since I only want to use it once) please?

I inherited about 400 family photos last year. I want to put the best 50 or so into a slideshow which I shall animate with a family tree. I want to add music and captions, and I'd like to be able to pretty it up with some nice transitions. I tried NCH Photostage but my licence expired cos I never got round to dealing with it. I tried Smilebox, but I cant burn my project to a DVD unless I pay them.

OK so I can google, but I was looking for personal recommendations, please.

(And yes, I am a cheapskate).

[bhg481]

Windows Photo Viewer does that for you. Copy the photos you want into a new directory, open photo no 1 and just click in the centre of the bottom panel. The speed can be set as slow, medium or fast.

[bhg481]

Sorry Barmaid - I only read the first line of your post.

[anaxcrosswords]

While I was out and about today a guy at Maplin recommended VideoPad:

http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/

It's free and works like any of the big video editing suites - Win Movie Maker etc. Can't give a personal recommendation as I'd just bought Cyberlink Power Director (I'm already familiar with how that works and didn't fancy a new learning curve!).

Like the others, VideoPad accepts image files as well as video, music etc.

When you install there are options to install Google Chrome and other 'closely related' stuff; it'll be garbage and you can uncheck the option boxes.

[bhg481]

I use Pinnacle Studio. It's a very good video editor and will do all that you want. It's not free BUT you can buy it and get a full refund within a month if you don't like it. I use a fairly old release (12.1) and decided to try the latest (19) to see if I liked it - I didn't and getting the refund was hassle-free, so that could be worth trying.
Other video packages give you a trial period, so it's worth looking at around, but many of them put a watermark on the output until you've paid for it.