Recently I have been jumping heavy into Album Creator software...I started simple with one menu and burning to SVCD VCD DVD MPEG… the type I wanted and submenus with tons of interactivity. I have gone from little no editing and manipulation of audio and video clips to all sorts of special effects and tweaking. add background music and effect pics

The programs I have tried..…

1) WinX Photo to TV 4.0.2
2) Photo DVD Wizard
3) Smart Pix Manager
4) Max Album Creator 3.5

They all have their quirks and advantages, but one thing I have to state is that most all are quite buggy and require frequent trips to user forums to work through issues.

Photo DVD Wizard is the least professional quality out of all of them with very simplified approach and very little room to screw up. In response it tends to have the least options and border on the cheesy. I think the program can be hard for 30-60 dollars, but it is more famous for being bundled with certain Pioneer..… The program is easy to follow with the tutorials but is full of stagger and glitches… I recommend having less than 100jpg photos to transcode in once. Also keep clips on same drive that is well defragged. Glitches happen when replay on family player I found. Also if the clips are strewn about there is more likely a chance it will give a DVDerr code during the writing to file or disk..…
Overall I give it C+..…. for beginners I give it a solid B..….

WinX Photo to TV software is far more professional and I believe retails right around 60 dollars. ease of use is not quite there as it does take some playing around to figure some stuff out and three steps to complete, Once you get the hang of it the functionality is incredible. Think of some of the best menus you have seen in photo professor and this can nearly be attained. It was bundled with encode engine which has some very sweet transition features to give it even more of a flare. The more photo you have the bigger the value. Most of my bugs were fixed with the upgrading version...However I have noticed that when chose mpeg clips are brought in if they are in NTSC standard and 16:9 stander television mode the program will transcode slowly but with higher quality. If it isnt in it does not have slow happen. The problem is that it does a horrible job and usually leaves audio pops. this may be high picture quality related but in all other programs I could not do it with same file in same standard mode. So make sure when you capture mpeg clips that you stop and think the balance between quality and efficient if this is going to be used in Photo to DVD...If so definitely make sure it is NTSC....
Overall I give the program a solid A-...For beginners I give it a B
I will add the others later.....

Welcome Stpaul,

Your comments are a good contribution to this forum.

I have some experience with two other "professional" slide show softwares, which I've used with 400 jpg photos:

Ulead CD&DVD Picture Show 4: It's the easiest to use, with very good quality. It lacks support for widescreen mode.

Photodex Proshow Gold 2.6: Also easy to use, with very good quality. Offers support for both normal and widescreen mode. The only drawback is that it doesn't offer music loopback.

GB

i have download Ulead CD&DVD Picture Show and Photodex Proshow Gold 2.6:

its really what are u posted

The WinX Photo To TV also with the same drawback that cant add music backgorund