Every once in a while, I find the desire to put together a nice slideshow of photographs and package them on a DVD. In fact, for the last five or six years, I have done just that as a Christmas present for my family and friends.
I have found no better program to accomplish this than Nero Vision, which, unfortunately is not available by itself. You have to purchase the whole Nero package in order to get Nero Vision. Nero Vision is an amazing program that makes it incredibly easy and painless to put together really nice photo slideshows with narration and/or music in the background.
Starting Your Project
Nero Vision makes it extremely simple to create video files from a batch of photographs and sound files, add other video files and package them all together on a nice DVD with a professional looking menu.
Creating a Slideshow
To begin preparing a photo slideshow, you should open Nero Vision and mouse over the “Make Slide Show” menu item. Then, select the appropriate type of video disc you would like to create. You can choose from DVD, Mini HD DVD, Blu-Ray, HD DVD, Video CD, Super Video CD, Mini-DVD and HD-BURN. You actually have even more options, but I’ll get to that later in this article.
Once you have done that, a new window will open. This is the interface you will use to compile a video file from your photographs and sound files. From here, you have a couple of options. You can either click the “Browse For Media” button and find the photographs and sound files you want to add or you can simply open the appropriate folder in a Windows Explorer window and drag the necessary files into the Nero Vision interface.
Then, if you would like to add a narration file to a specific photograph, you can simply drag that audio file to the appropriate photograph within the Nero Vision project. However, if you would like to simply add some music or sound to the background of the entire slideshow, you need to click on the audio tab and drag the audio file there.
Next, if you want the photos to run for the exact duration of the sound file, you need to click the “More” button at the bottom of the interface. Once the details area appears, you need to place a checkmark in the box next “Fit slideshow duration to audio duration”.
If you are ready to move onto creating the next slideshow, add other video files or create your disc menus, click the “Next” button.
Exporting to a Video File
If, however, you would like to export this slideshow to a standard video file format, you can do that by clicking the “Export” button. From there, you will have the option to save this slideshow as a standard video file (I’m not sure if everyone has the same options here, or if they are dependent on the codecs you have installed). In my Nero installation, I have the choice to export the video to AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVC and a few Nero formats. Each of those has a list of codecs I can use for compression and formatting (for instance, under the Nero format options, I can choose to save this as an iPod video or PSP video file).
Continuing Your Project
If you choose to press the “Next” button, you will be brought to your main project window. From here, you can choose to create another slideshow, capture video from a camcorder (or, presumably, a webcam), add existing video files and much more. Once you have added all of the video you want in your project, click the “Next” button again.
Selecting a Menu Template
Once you do that, you will be prompted to choose a menu template for your video disc. Nero includes a handful of simple DVD menu templates, and a few more are available from Nero’s Web site. If you don’t like any of those, or you simply want to put your own touches on it, you can customize the menu as much as you want. If you don’t want a menu at all, you can disable the menus altogether.
Preview Your Project
After you select and finalize your menu, clicking on the “Next” button will bring you to the preview stage. The preview stage is really nicely put together. When you preview your project, you see almost exactly what you will see on the TV or computer when you play the finished disc. The preview area includes a screen that shows what you will see, as well as a virtualized DVD remote control, so that you can “press” some of the common buttons you would find (next, previous, up, down, left, right, menu, title and enter/select). If you don’t want to use the remote control, you can also interact with the preview the same way you would with a DVD on your computer – by using your mouse to simply click on the appropriate menu item.
Finalizing and Burning Your Project
Once you decide that the preview is perfect, you can click the “Next” button to bring up the burn dialog. The burn dialog is similar to most of Nero’s other burn dialogs. You can choose to burn your project to any of your optical drives or save it as an NRG disc image (which, as of Nero 6 or 7 is actually just an ISO file with an NRG file extension in many cases). You can set a volume name for your disc, set the write speed and a few other options.
After you’ve set all of the options the way you want them, you simply click the “Burn” button to create the disc or disc image and you are finished.
Some Extra Notes
First of all, you should absolutely press the “Save” button as often as possible. It has been my experience that Nero Vision is prone to crashes occasionally, and it can be extremely frustrating to have to go back and redo everything you’ve already done.
Secondly, when you are viewing your main project window, you have the option to add the original photographs that you used in your slideshow, an HTML photo gallery or a PC slideshow if you choose to do so. I wish you had the option to add other files to the project, but there is no easy way to do that within the Nero Vision interface.
What I ended up having to do when I wanted to add additional files (for instance, I usually do a PDF picture book with the DVD slideshow) was to burn the Nero Vision project to a DVD image. Then, I would mount the image on my computer and extract all of the files. Next, I would open the classic Nero program (Nero Burning Rom) and choose to create a new DVD Video project. I would copy the appropriate files from the mounted DVD image (VIDEO_TS, etc.) to the right places in my new DVD video project.
Once those are added, I then create a new directory in the DVD video project and put my desired files in there. If you choose to do that, however, you need to be careful what you call your new directories. It seems that DVD players do not react nicely to long directory names or directory names in anything but all uppercase when trying to read a video disc.
Update
This tutorial was based on Nero 9. I have recently upgraded to Nero 10, which includes a completely new version of Nero Vision, entirely different than previous versions. I am still feeling my way through the new version of Nero Vision. It is much more of a proper video editor than old versions, but I have come across one major downside to the new version: Nero Vision 7 (which is the version that comes with the Nero 10 Platinum Suite) does not include the “Fit slideshow duration to audio duration” option that was in previous versions. I’ve checked the Nero forums and found a few other people complaining about this change. There are some indications that Nero is working on re-adding this feature to future versions.
20 Responses
Just a couple of questions:
1/ When you say Nero Vision is not available by itself, that one must “purchase the whole Nero package”, does this mean that Vision is part of ‘Nero 9’?
2/ If I purchase the program that Vision is part of, will the program (including the ‘Vision’ part) work with the 64-bit version of Windows Vista-which is my operating system?
Thanks for advising,
—Greg Hutchinson, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
1. Yes, if you purchase Nero 9, Nero Vision comes with it. Nero used to have multiple versions that all came with different peripheral applications; but it looks like Nero 9 only comes in one flavor, which includes Nero Vision.
2. I honestly don’t know for sure. I would guess so, but that’s probably a question best asked of the Ahead team (http://www.ahead.de/). It’s a great question, though, as I may have to find that out for myself soon enough.
Is there a way to burn two Slideshows to the one DVD?
Appreciate your clear instructions and your willingness to accept questions.
Thank you
Absolutely. You can create as many separate slideshows as you choose. Each slideshow and/or chapter is created as a separate video that’s then accessible from a single DVD menu. You can configure the menu behavior to do quite a few different things. If you want each chapter to return to the menu when it’s over, you can do that. If you want them to play in succession, you can set it up to do that, too.
Also, to follow up on my response to Greg Hutchinson, I have been trying for two weeks to install Nero 9 on my 64-bit Vista Business notebook with no luck. I’ve contacted Nero support, and they e-mailed me the same instructions that are on their Web site. I sent them some in-depth debug information last week and have yet to hear back from them.
If I get it working, I’ll post back.
Thank you for your prompt response, I will start exploring the configuration settings and get on with it.
Hey Curtiss,
What is the procedure (step by step) after creating multiple slide shows to burn them to a DVD that will play each slide show in succession without any futher user intervention? I’m using Nero9.
Thanks
I’ll take a look the next time I login to Windows. It should be a simple matter of looking for the right settings when you’re customizing the menu for the DVD.
Hi-
What type of audio file is correct? I am having troubles dragging it in. Not working correctly
Thanks so much!!!
Hi I am using nero 9 I placed all my photos in the correct order that I wanted hit the save button in vision however I had to leave this part of program when i came back i had to open file but cannot find file if i hit the find a very small box opens to find files very frustrased to find
I just tried creating a slideshow, and Nero seems to make all my pictures fuzzy and blurry? They are fine, but once they are loaded in, they get all fuzzy. Any idea why this is happening, and what I can do to stop it?
Hello Curtis I have read your article on making a photo slide show in nero vision, however I can put in my pics and audio track clicked the more button but the fit slideshow to duration to audio duration is greyed out and I cannot use it.
It sounds to me as though the music is getting added to the timeline with the photos, rather than being added as the soundtrack of the project. I remember having this problem a few times myself; but I don’t remember off the top of my head how I solved it.
When I try to burn my slideshow Nero rejects the operation saying that files are wrong format. I have used various file format conversion programmes and tried different formats without sucess
Hi
I cant seem to get the slideshow to accept any audio tells me unable to insert file. cant drag from explorer help
How do I create a slideshow with music using NERO that will play on my (any) DVD player?
I am trying to edit a video that I made using my camera but I am unable to drag the video file into Nero. Is it possible to combine my homemade videos with photos and music on Nero? If so, how? I appreciate any help!
I have just created a slideshow on Nero 10 with audio files . . the same way I have done in the past; but when I previewed my slide, there is no sound atall. What have I done wrong or could it be from my audio format? I used WAV though this is the same format I used in the past.
Thanks for your kind response and assistance.
Shooting photos with digital camera or smartphone is a great fun in daily life. You may have a big amount of photos and plan to make a photo slideshow with music and photos you’ve shot, but you may wonder what kind of photo slideshow maker software to use to help you create photo slideshow easily.
Here is a post that you will get satisfactory photo slideshow making solutions, no matter you’re using a Windows or Mac.
http://www.leawo.org/tutorial/create-photo-slideshow-with-photo-slideshow-software.html
How do you put transitions on as random to a slide show instead of putting 1 on at a time.
Thank You
I have just purchased Nero Platinum Suite as i have alway used Roxio i am finding some things with Nero hard to understand.
I have been doing a slide show to put on dv Pal i can get the photos, Music but trying to put the transitions on seems impossible.
On Roxio you would select Random and the just click and that was that but on Nero you seem to have to put them on one at a time.
Any help would be appreciated . Thank You.
Fred