Compiling your photo story is a matter of dragging and dropping photos and clips into the desired order. Beginners will probably feel more comfortable working in the "storyboard" interface which gives you a simplified view of your production. As you gain experience and want to add more eye candy to your shows, it's one click to switch to the more advanced "timeline" mode. The timeline gives you precise control over timing, audio levels, cross-fades, and effects.
For large shows, users can switch to the "photo collection" which acts as sort of a light box for rearranging the order of your photos. There are a few photo enhancements that can be done non-destructively, and Magix Photo Clinic is included in the package for additional photo editing and effects, though this could have been better integrated. An audio cleaning feature helps to reduce noise and enhance the audio portions of your movies.
PhotoStory can combine still photos with video clips and music. It can import audio memos from digital cameras, or you can record voice narration directly in the software. If desired, you can add cross-fades, transitions, text titles, scrolling credits, and special effects to your shows. A number of effects, borders, sound loops, images, video clips, and menu styles are included. PhotoStory offers the popular Ken Burns effects which adds motion to still photos by panning and zooming over them. These effects really help to make your still photos more compelling.
When your production is complete, PhotoStory contains all you need to create interactive DVD menus with multiple shows per disc. DVD menus can include intros, sound, and animated backgrounds. You can mix and match menu backgrounds, borders, buttons, and text styles. You can also burn VCDs on CD that will play in a home DVD player, auto-run photo albums on CD for PC playback, or export to common video formats--AVI, MPEG1 and MPEG2, Windows Media (WMV), and Real Media. Both DVD and VCD playback was of high quality when viewed in my home DVD player.
Once I got over the initial learning curve that comes with this software, I was quite impressed by the powerful and professional features. It's not the most intuitive or elegantly-designed photo slide show program, but it's possibly one of the most feature-rich--particularly for under US$40.
