[MP-Ryan]

I'm working on doing a slideshow presentation of still images and music for our wedding reception.  So far, Powerpoint seems pretty limited and Movie Maker degrades the image quality horribly.  I don't have much experience with making presentations in general, and my usual medium of Flash is really overkill for something this simple.

All I want to do is create an automated slideshow of pictures on a black background with minor transition effects between them set to music.  Can anyone suggest a good and simple piece of software for doing this?

[Sushi]

I'm working on doing a slideshow presentation of still images and music for our wedding reception.  So far, Powerpoint seems pretty limited and Movie Maker degrades the image quality horribly.  I don't have much experience with making presentations in general, and my usual medium of Flash is really overkill for something this simple.

All I want to do is create an automated slideshow of pictures on a black background with minor transition effects between them set to music.  Can anyone suggest a good and simple piece of software for doing this?

No suggestions, but congrats! 

[Colonol Dekker]

Windows media centre? Or Adobe photo album SE.

[Stealth]

congratulations.

i'd say powerpoint

[Black Wolf]

This is precisely what powerpoint is designed to do. What are the limits you're running up against?

[Mefustae]

Hire a bum to hold up placards.

Cheap and humerous.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

PowerPoint should be good enough. If you want to embed music, convert them to WAV format and tweak the settings in PowerPoint (should be under Options or Customize) to embed all files below 50 000 KB. Expect your PowerPoint file size to go beyond 10 MB.

My personal record is 428 MB, and that's because I had many WAV and BMP files embedded in my presentation.

[IceFire]

Power Point maybe...also apparently the new Windows Live software has a easy to use slideshow feature.  I'd check it out and see if its any good.

[Polpolion]

Powerpoint seems pretty limited

Somehow, I don't think you're doing it right. What kind of walls are you running into with PowerPoint?

[redsniper]

I think irfanview can do this...

[MP-Ryan]

Powerpoint seems pretty limited

Somehow, I don't think you're doing it right. What kind of walls are you running into with PowerPoint?

Adding sounds to play over multiple slides.  Specifically I'm trying to avoid converting the MP3s to WAV

[Grogs]

now is this just a presentation? or are you burning the files and giving them out?
If its the former, i'd use windows picture viewer & windows media player/itunes/etc.->start music-> start slide show in windows picture viewer. 

if its for the latter, Picasa by Google should do the trick for a freeware option.  good luck