Familiarity brings slide shows to life
ProShow Gold 2.5
$69.99, Photodex Corp.
Windows 98 and up
www.photodex.com
This may be the best Windows software available for creating slide shows to play on your living-room DVD player, your computer, as an attachment to e-mails or for posting on your Web site.
But like all geniuses, this program from Photodex, one of the oldest makers of PC software, takes getting used to.
Write this on your hand or refrigerator door: Control + Shift + Alt + 0. That code returns the software’s on-screen display to the default configuration.
This upgrade to the splendid version 2.0 of ProShow includes modules like a simulated studio light box that can be detached and floated as a separate window on the screen.
Sadly, this can create confusion when one works with the cream of the program, such as tools to correct each slide for color and contrast and to create zoom-in, zoom-out and rotation effects to bring life to otherwise immobile photos. It is far too easy to lose key elements of the display, messing things up so badly that the only way out is that four-finger salute.
ProShow files are saved in the AVI format for computers as well as the flavors of MPEG needed for DVDs and smaller-but-otherwise-identically performing video CDs.
This allows some amazing yet simple tricks, because the software can import AVI format files and, with the 2.5 upgrade, QuickTime movies from Apple. This means that you can create a number of stand-alone slide presentations, save each as an AVI and then later mix and match the elements to suit specific audiences.
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With the light table floating at the side, you quickly can find video snips as well as thumbnails of photo slides to drag into the software’s timeline.
When it comes to sound, things are less rosy. Unlike some competitors, ProShow does not allow sound editing by snipping in the timeline as one does with the slides themselves. Instead, one must call up an awkward toolbox and hold down a key to start and stop the music over each slide.
Fix that, Photodex, and you’ll really be cooking.
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