Catalog on CD (2003)

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I’m not sure where this goes so if the admin wants to move it, that’s fine.

My wife runs a wedding decorating business and is preparing to set up at a bridal show. She attended her first one last year and gave out printed catalogs containing pictures of some of her work. I made these in Word and they turned out ok but were terribly expensive-around $9/ea. This year we were thinking about giving away digital versions on cd.

My question is What would be the best software to do this on? I was thinking about Powerpoint. I’d love to include the wedding march in the background too but I fear copywrite issues there.

Any better Ideas?

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The PDF format is fairly universal, and there is an option to open it full screen in a PowerPoint-like presentation.

Fewer people will have PowerPoint, but you might be able to include the free PowerPoint Viewer for the users to install (check the Microsoft download license to see whether you are allowed to redistribute it).

Once upon a time a script-driven show in a browser window would be a nice choice, but after Windows XP SP2, the CD drive is an untrusted location, so the show either will not run or most users will get security warnings.

Added: No ideas on the musical accompaniment.

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Hey, thanks, that was quick.

I thought about the PDF route after I hit “post it”.

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Consider PowerPoint 2003 Add-in: Producer for PowerPoint 2003:

Use Microsoft Producer 2003 for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 to capture and synchronize audio, video, slides, and images, then preview and publish a rich media presentation virtually anywhere for viewing in a Web browser.

Microsoft Producer 2003 for PowerPoint 2003 is the next release of this very popular add-in for PowerPoint 2003 and PowerPoint 2002. Producer 2003 provides users with many powerful new features that make it easier to synchronize audio, video, slides, and images to create engaging and effective rich-media presentations. Producer 2003 gives content and media professionals, as well as everyday PowerPoint users a host of new content authoring features.

System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows XP

This download works with the following Office applications:
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
Microsoft PowerPoint 2002

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Thanks, I’m not at all familiar with Producer. I’ll have to check it out. Sounds interesting.

I made a test PDF from Powerpoint. All my slides are landscape. The first page in the PDF output is still landscape but rotated 90 degrees relative to the rest. I used CutePDF writer to create the test. Other than this oddity, I think I’ll use PDF this time but will certainly look at Producer down the road.

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Hi there,

The other one that may be of interest is MS Photostory. It takes your photos, allows you to edit and add text and music and outputs a .wmv file.

Only works on XP SP2

Has shallow learning curve

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Photostory? I have never heard of it.

I ended up running the powerpoint presentation on my laptop with the wedding march playing in the background thru windows media player. Worked for the show. I also dumped the presentation to a PDF file using CutePDFWriter as hand outs on CD. For the short term, it worked. I’d like to make something a bit more professional though in the future.

Thanks everyone for your tips.

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See PhotoStory 3 for Windows if you’re interested. It’s free, but it requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation.

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