How to make a summer slideshow

Beat the summer heat and move the activities inside with a fun summer activity the entire family can participate in. Gather your photos, videos and music and make a summer-time slide show. Use the steps below to start your project today.

What you'll need

*Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Version 4.0 or later
*Photos and videos in digital format
*Audio track (MP3, WAV or CD track)
*Blank DVDs
*DVD burner


How to Make it

Step1 Gather Your Photos, Videos & Music
Think about all the content you want to use in your slide show. Photos of the kids playing sports, candid shots from a recent summer BBQ, or maybe you took some photos or video of your local 4th of July fireworks show. All this can be easily added to your Summer slide show.

Step2 Import images, videos, and audios
After I gather the content 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 3: 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 4: 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 5: 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 6: 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 7: 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 photo movie.


Step 8: 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 photo movie 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 right click the menu and then change the background images to your very own, and set the "Frame Style" to make your DVD menu unique.


Step 9: Preview photo movie
At any point, you can preview your photo movie 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 movie.


Step 9: Output & share
Planning on giving out copies of the Summer slide show to family and friends? With built-in DVD authoring tool in DVD Slideshow Builder, 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 photo movies on their TV and I love sharing that experience with them. Using video output, I can convert photo movies to videos directly for use on mobile devices like iPod, iPhone, Zune, PSP, cell phone and more.


Now, done! Sit back, grab a cold drink and enjoy!

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