Build Slide Shows Easily with Digital Clip Factory

Digital Clip Factory takes your jpegs and creates a nice, simple slide show with them--for free. Of course, you're limited to jpegs for images and MP3s or WMA files for an audio track, but that's the majority of what most people use anyhow.

DCF couldn't be easier to use. Simply drag the photos and music you want to use to DCF's timeline the press "Preview" for a quick look or "Build Final Movie" to render it for posterity. Digital Clip Factory allows more editing than I expect from a freebie. You're free to drag photos to anywhere in the timeline, delete any image or music clip, and insert black frames. There's even an options dialog where you can tweak the frames per second rate, quality and other more advanced parameters.

I did run into a snag or two. The program wouldn't render with smaller jpegs, complaining that the "resolution is too low". Unfortunately, there's no help file with the program or at the company's Web site so I couldn't tell you exactly what the limits are.

I have no real complaints about Digital Clip Factory. Sure, it could use some work here and there--and it would be nice if it supported more file types--but it's free and it works. The company does accept donations, so if you find the program useful and can afford it--help them out.