Photo to Movie 3.2 a nice iLife companion
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jun 9, 2005 at 10:55pm
If you’re an iLife user (and if you’re on a Mac, you almost certainly are), you’ll certainly want to check into Photo to Movie 3.2, a US$49.95 application from LQ Graphics that makes a great companion piece to iLife.
While Photo to Movie has always been a great addition for iLife users, providing slide show features not available in iMovie or iPhoto, the latest version is even better since it integrates more closely with iPhoto and iTunes. And, like all good Mac software, it’s a breeze to learn how to use.
Photo to Movie lets you turn a digital photo collection into a QuickTime movie slide show. It utilizes a version of the Ken Burns effect that can include more complex pans and zooms than iPhoto itself, such as moving from face to face to face in a family photo. You can have multiple segments of motion and even rotations. What’s more, you can take advantage of QuickTime transitions such as crossfade, cross dissolve, wipes, iris and zoom.
Version 3.2 adds an integrated media browser for iPhoto and iTunes, which means you can now browse for photo and music files and even search by name and keyword. Photo to Movie 3.2 also integrates with iMovie HD (high definition) codecs, allowing for high-quality HD format exporting.
With the latest version, you can add a title to your work by dragging it to a photo, a really nifty new feature. You have the flexibility of using a variety of fonts, sizes, colors and transparency in the titles.
Ditto audio files, which can also be added by drag and drop. You can even add narration by recording directly into Photo to Movie, then fine-tuning the audio’s timing within the timeline and adjusting the volume.
Photo to Movie is compatible with most photo formats, including JPEG and TIFF. You can export to widescreen or standard formats, as well as export to DV (NTSC or PAL) or any QuickTime format. All of this makes it easy to export a QT movie and burn your masterpiece to DVD using iLife’s iDVD.
The quality of the output is excellent. Photo to Movie uses a special algorithm to optimize each frame, which near eliminates flicker when played on a TV. It also has QuickTime VR support.
I do wish that you could layer titles and sound for things such as recording narration over a soundtrack or other audio. Oh well, maybe that will show up in Photo to Movie 3.3.
System requirements: Mac OS 10.2 or later; a PowerPC G4/400MHz system or better; 256MB of RAM; and a CD-ROM.
Macsimum rating: 8 out of 10.
Have a product you’d like us to review? E-mail dsellers@macsimumnews.com
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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