Computer Slideshow

I recently needed to create a slideshow of images on the computer set to music.  I've never created a slideshow before so I didn't even know what software to use.  Of course, I want free and/or open source whenever possible.  I researched software to use and I came across several good free pieces of software I wanted to share with others.

Microsoft Photo Story 3
Photo Story is the software I used to actually create the slideshow.  I was very impressed with this piece of software.  Very easy to use and it does a great job.  The finished product was very professional; panning and zooming slides, transitions effects, overlayed text, mixed audio track, etc.  And it's free.

Gimp
Some of the images for the slideshow needed editing; e.g. cropping, color correction, removal of certain elements, etc.  That's where Gimp (free open-source) came in very useful.  This extremely powerful image editor can do just about anything, once you've taken the time to learn this tool.

Audacity
I also needed to edit and mix the audio tracks together for the slideshow.  For this I used Audacity, a great free and open-source program.  Very easy to use, no steep learning curve with this program.

MP3MyMP3
One of the audio tracks I needed for the slideshow, I could not find the audio anywhere except in the background of a youtube video.  I tried to record it using Audacity but that apparently doesn't work for streaming audio/video.  Enter MP3MyMP3.  This free program (with a funny name) allows you to record the audio that is being played out of your sound card.  That may sound like a strange thing to do, but that's the best way to capture streaming audio.  This program worked great, my only complaint with this program was it's a skinned application and I don't particularly care for skinned apps.

VLC
I think the only downside to Photo Story is the output was in Microsoft's proprietary WMV format using a codec that few programs can use.  So I needed to convert this into something a little more common, like MP4.  Fortunately VLC (which I've talked about before) can play WMV using this codec and is even able to convert the file into other formats.

DVD Flick
With the slideshows saved as an MP4 file, I next needed to create a DVD from that video.  Doing some searches I came across DVD Flick.  This great free open-source project allows you to create DVD ISO images from existing video files (e.g. MP4).

ImgBurn
The final step is to burn the DVD ISO onto blank DVDs.  For this I used to tried and true ImgBurn.  Easily the best CD/DVD burning software I've come across.

So there you have it.  A 100% free way to create a slideshow and burn it onto a DVD.