October 26, 2004

Great Slide Shows Made Easy

PhotoStory on CD & DVD 2005 (**** out of four) lets you use your digital photos to create slide shows of events such as vacations, birthdays, weddings and others, then add text, narration, sound and music. You can then burn the slide show onto a CD or DVD. The slide shows will play back on most newer DVD players or on the CD-ROM or DVD drive on your computer. The photo slide show can be used as a digital album or for archiving your pictures for safekeeping. And there are business uses too, such as training or demonstrating new products or services.

You start by filling the Media Pool with your pictures, which can come from your hard drive or directly from a scanner or digital camera. Add other items such as scanned pictures of birthday cards and such. Thumbnails of the photos are shown in the Media Pool, and you can drag and drop any or all onto the Storyboard in the order you want them. Change your mind about the order? Just drag and drop them into the desired order, that easy. A full-featured photo editor, MAGIX Photo Clinic 3.0, includes sophisticated photo editing features as well as options for correcting problems such as red-eye, poor color or exposure, add special effects and more. Changes only affect the slide show photos, and your original files are left unchanged.

Assign a length of time for each photo to be shown, and then choose from a host of transitions between slides--anything from simple fades to wild swirly things. Add text to one or more slides, using your choice of fonts, colors and text effects. You can even control the time that the text appears on screen, and it can bridge several slides. A selection of music is included to enhance viewing, but you can add your own music, sound effects or even record narration. For more precision in editing, use the TimeLine mode where each element, picture, effects and sound can be precisely controlled on its own track. Preview your slide show as you go to make sure it’s what you want.

Burning your completed slide show is pretty easy: just choose the type of burn format you want, such as VCD, SVCD, DVD, miniDVD or CD-ROM, and you have a slide show to share with family and friends, or a digital photo album to safeguard your pictures. The program also allows you to export the slide show as a movie in a variety of formats: AVI, MPEG 1 or 2, Real Media, or Microsoft Windows Media 9 and send the show to anyone via the Internet.

Help comes in the form of tool tips, some complete with instructional tutorials, a 32-page printed Quick Start User Manual, on-line help and a fairly detailed on-disk manual in PDF form.

There are 40 single-player scenarios with five levels of difficulty. With each scenario you’re given a task, such as building train service between two cities. The screen displays a 3D map with towns to connect. Now it’s time to create a construction company, lay your track where you think it’ll work the best, clear items out of your way (if necessary), add train stations and start your trains running. You start with a small bank loan to use for the initial construction, but that’s used in a hurry--so you need to get income from passenger and cargo revenue to keep running.

This sounds easy, but there are many details that need your attention. For example, choosing the right vehicles–-some do the job better and less expensively than others, while some may not appeal to passengers. You must pay attention to the industries that need transportation for raw materials or goods. As the scenarios get more complex, you need to create land, air and water transportation systems that are complete with terminals, airports and docks and much more. Soon your competitors are in the act, wanting some or all of those profits. Watch them closely, but there’s a status screen to help you see what they’re up to.

Two can play against each other over a LAN but Internet play is also supported.

Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion is an immersive program that’ll keep you engrossed for a very long time. And, if you want to change things around, there’s a Scenario Editor for customizing a scenario for unlimited options. Plenty of help is available from the 144-page printed manual and in depth, on-screen "tool tips" for most everything. Lots of fun for everyone.

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