With the Holidays here a lot of you, me included, will be taking pictures.  Load all those digital images on your computer and then what.  SHOW THEM OFF!  I just purchased Muvee Reveal version 8.  All the Christmas party photos are now set to music and burned to DVD for the best Christmas gift ever.

With Muvee Reveal Version 8, you’ll have everyone wanting to watch your pics over and over again.  It’s Easy!

Step 1: Load images. Simple enough. (You can load video but am only reviewing usage of program for .jpg images.)

Step 2: Choose a style for your presentation. Several to choose–from laid back to uptempo. I chose standard disolve for the transitions. You can preview each picture and further enhance the color, direction of panning, (go in, go out, side to side, slow or fast…or just set the ) set length of time on each picture (up to 10 seconds), add captions if desired, and more.

Step 3: Add music of choosing. You can also set the start and end points of each song. Crossfading is available too if you want continuous mix of music or have each track end and next one start like a c.d. You can further personalize the overall presentation. I added a picture to the front page of the dvd once inserted and added a title and border. Muvee Reveal will sync to the music beats if desired, and display images to length of music added which makes it simple to have your last picture fade to black on the last note of the song. (I would like to see the ability to have Muvee Reveal let us select the “auto end”–in the “personalize section” and change some of the display times of certain pictures and still have Muvee adjust for the difference and still end on the last note.) You can adjust the energy and pace of each production as well. Further enhancements to color and saturation may also be made. You may also select the program to repeat music if images run out or fade music out when last image is revealed. You may also force the program to a certain “duration” if you’d like.

The finished production was so outstanding I can’t wait to show my work to family at Christmas. (A perfect gift I might add!) I was so excited that I made another disc of images from a Christmas party over the weekend. Added few up-tempo Christmas songs and Muvee Reveal did the rest. I chose “Kinetic” style which flips images, cuts them, disolves, moves side to side, twists, mirrors and more. This style also added flashes of subtle light to highlight portions of the pictures. It was perfect! The finsihed production was so entertaining we watched it four times!

Glitches: Like any software, you may experience a “freeze” of the program. Muvee Reveal has a Recover feature that allows you to fully recapture all data input when you relaunch the program. That feature was a lifsaver as I had to restart the program twice. Suggestions: Would enjoy being able to choose my own color from a palate for font…even textured fonts and add images to fonts.

You can upload directly to Facebook, Youtube and others. I suggest to simply SAVE the project to your hard drive in the highest quality format (.avi) and then upload to youtube yourself. My experience with direct loading was in .mp4 quality and it was not suitable for my quality production. Burn directly to DVD and hand to your friends to play in their home dvd players.

Computer requirements: You’ll need to have enough ram and power to allow the program to work best for you. People having problems may not have adequate system resources.

Want to make a beautiful high definition photo/video mash up before your kid graduates from college? Yes!

Want to make friends, family movies that your significant other won’t hide from? Yes!

Want people to know those great YouTube/Facebook videos are yours? Yes!

The new muvee Reveal 8 — in my opinion is currently THE best 3-click, Windows-based HD video production software PERIOD!