How to make your very own home movie for Christmas

Nowadays sharing your digital photos with family and friends is such an easy thing to do. But the next time you're thinking about sharing your latest batch of photos, don't just e-mail them or put them all on a disk and send them off in the mail. Take a little bit of extra time and create a photo movie with background music and DVD menu templates using Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder.

With DVD Slideshow Builder, you also have the option of using video clips in your photo movie. Your photo movie can contain a combination of still photos, video clips, and audio—it's up to you. Viewing your photos with stunning transitions and background music will definitely make an impression the next time you decide to share your photos.
You can still share your finished movie by e-mail or by burning it to a DVD/HD DVD/VCD disc, but watching it will be a much better experience for your audience. Making a photo movie is fun and easy and doesn't take much time.

Here's what you'll need:

•Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Version 4.0 or later
•Digital photos/videos located in your hard disk
•Digital music located in your hard disk

In the following how-to, I'll create a basic home movie using DVD Slideshow Bulder. There are so many features in the software that you could spend hours on one slideshow, but getting started is pretty simple. Where you go from there is up to you.

Step 1: Import images, videos, and audios

After I edit the images I want to use, I find the folder I saved them in. In this case, I'll just add the whole folder. Click on the first button on the Tool Bar located above the Story Board and select “Add Photo/Video”, press CTRL+A to select all the files in the pop-up window, and then click “Open” to import. This works the same way for videos, but for audio, what’s the only different is that click the second button on the Tool Bar. The files you added will be displayed on the Story Board at the bottom.







Step 2: Choose transition & motion Effects

DVD Slideshow Builder has close to 200 different transition and motion effects to pick from, which includes 2D & 3D effects. Click on a transition thumbnail between two slides and you can look at all of them by dragging the slide bar. If you click on any of them, you can see a preview in the bottom left. To choose one, double click on it. Also, click on a transparent pentacle on the bottom left of a slide and you can select one effect for each slide. The pentacle will become blue if an effect was added on the slide.







Step 3: Timing

All the images I added show up in the Story Board now. This step makes a huge difference in the feel of the show. You can change the slide times and transition times to make the show go as fast or slow as you want. Set different timing accords to different effects to make the slideshow look the best. Just double click on the timing underneath the slide thumbnail and transition thumbnail and then set to one as you want.







Step 4: Time Line

With DVD Slideshow Builder Version 4, a brand-new feature TimeLine was added. This feature helps users much easier to adjust the starting and ending position of the audios and captions.







Step 5: Edit Slides

This is where things really get interesting. Double-click on any slide to open Edit Photo/Video. Here, you can crop the slide, add effects for slide, make image adjustments, and so on. It’s so easy, and you will learn how to do by using.







Step 6: Add Intro/End Credits

Now it’s time to add intro/end credits to make it just like a real movie. The credits you created will appear in the beginning and ending position of the Story Board. Right click on the first slide and select “Insert Blank Slide”, and then click the third button “Add Text” to add captions for the credit movies. This works the same way to add End Credits but “Add blank slide” at the end of the slideshow.







Step 7: Customize your DVD menu

More than 160 professional designed DVD menu templates are available to use for any occasions. Choose your favorite templates to make your slideshow look good at the first sight. Drag the positions of the frame, text, play button to anywhere as you want. Customizing the DVD menu is also a fun. Just click the button “Custom…” at the bottom left and then change the background images to your very own, and set the “Layout” & “Frame Style” to make your DVD menu unique.







Step 8: Preview slideshow

At any point, you can preview your show to see how it's coming along. In the “Slideshow” Tab, click the black Play button and the preview will start. But if you want to preview more than one slideshows with DVD menu, please switch to “Preview” Tab and click on the number to preview the corresponding slideshow.






Step 9: Output

When I am through making a slideshow, there are generally two ways that I distribute the show: burning as a DVD/HD-DVD/VCD discs and converting as a MPEG-I/MPEG-II/MPEG-IV/AVI/WMV/3GP video. DVD Slideshow Builder has built-in DVD authoring with all kinds of options, from quality settings and encoding options. This saves a lot of time because I don't have to use any other software to create menus or burn DVDs. My family and friends love watching my slideshows on their TV and I love sharing that experience with them. Using video output, I can convert slideshows to videos directly for use on mobile devices like iPod®, iPhone®, Zune™, PSP®, cell phone and more.