What's this called, and how do I do it?

[AgentProvocateur]

Have been asked to find out for work, but without knowing what it's called, I can't google to find out how to do it!

It's a montage of still photos, coming up one at a time, fading in and out, and with music in the background. Sometimes people do it when they've had a baby or got married.

And my second question is, would it be terribly hard (and do you need specific software) to do a voiceover?

Thanks. It's Friday afternoon and my head's mince.

Try googling for "slideshow software" and see if the results are what you need.

Thank you. I'm rushing away now, but I'll do it tomorrow or sunday. Slideshow was the term I couldn't remember.

I've used Powerpoint for slide shows. Don't see why you couldn't do a voiceover. You'd just need some way of recording the voice and getting it onto the PC. My mobile does that. You can then embed sounds in Powerpoint.

There might be other, better ways of doing it.

Microsoft have a free application called Photostory3 which allows you to do this really easily (I use it in school with 8 year olds!)
You can add music and voice overs. When it is complete you export it as a media file and then it will play on any computer.

I have investigated all your suggestions, and I think Photostory3 is just the job. I'll be doing ot with adults with LDs, so it's good to know that it's easy to use.

Thanks everyone.

Windows comes with a program called Windows Movie Maker, might that be what you want?

AP, my top tip with photostory would be that once you have imported the first photo you can drag and drop all the other images in. For some reason it won't let you do this until you have one picture in place.

Great, thanks. I'll bookmark this thread, and then if I get stuck in the next few weeks, I may call on your expertise, if that's OK.

Juneybean, thanks. I think I'll stick with Photostory. It looks nice and easy.

Windows Movie Maker is so easy even my mum can use it

I'm guessing you're on a PC but in case you're on a Mac then this is the sort of thing that iPhoto does very well and it comes on all new Macs.

Photostory is probably the most intuitive of the Windows software mentioned

(For anyone else reading, Powerpoint is part of MS Office, which can cost a small fortune!)

I bought the student edition of MS Office, and anyone with a child in FT education living at home or indeed in FT education themselves can do so. Daughter was 5 at the time

Not convinced it would stand up in court as being entirely honest though, were there to be a mass of such purchases.

I thought they took steps to get something countersigned by the school, and it would need to be a fairly advanced (!) 5yo who was ready for all the (dubious) fun of MS Office.

FWIW I tend to recommend OpenOffice (free) wherever there is a need for a general purpose suite of software (unless MS Access is essential) as one doesn't extend the grip/ profits of the mighty (some might say evil) Microsoft Corp.

Update - I downloaded photostory today, and we played about with it at work. It fits the bill exactly, so thanks very much for all your advice.

I'm glad it worked.