I have a bunch of pictures I'd like to make into a basic slideshow, as a video (e.g. mpeg/avi). What software is available to do this?
I started using PiTiVi based on recommendation in another question, which seemed nice at first. However, it's very unstable - just crashed my whole system! Regardless, it won't let me do anything over 10 seconds because the timeline keeps jumping back to the start any time I try and move/resize a clip.
All I need is to fade between some images. Anything out there?
You can try imagination from the repository.
Imagination is a lightweight and user-friendly DVD slide show maker with a clean interface and few dependencies. It only requires the ffmpeg encoder to produce a movie to be burned with another application.
It currently features over 50 transition effects. Exporting the slideshow in FLV format is supported as well.
kdenlive works for me. You can install it from repo (sudo apt-get install kdenlive), but you can compile more codecs in with
ffmpeg
from source andkdenlive
from source.It looks a bit intimidating, but you don't need to know much to make a slideshow with it. First, put all the photos you want in a folder, then do Project → Add Slideshow Clip
and select that folder (there are some options for transitions and such there too).
Then, drag that clip down onto the timeline, e.g. to "Video 1", and click Render, pick a file name and format and Render to file.
If you also want music, do Project→Add Clip and pick a song and then drag it down to the timeline. Right click the audio clip at the end of the slideshow clip and Cut clip so you don't get audio after the slideshow is done. Then Render.
I for one really like Videoporama. The latest version comes with many effects, allows you to insert videos (or only parts of a video) too as well as audio (and edit audio).
Another similar tool is PhotoFilmStrip. It uses the "Ken Burns" effect for the pictures transitions and you can also add music and captions to your photos.
This command will transform all the images from the current directory (named image1.jpg, image2.jpg, etc…) to a video file named video.mpg.