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Entered CNET Catalog: 12/20/2005
SKU: CNETPHOTODEXPROSHOWGOLD2
Manufacturer: Photodex Corporation
Manufacturer description
Create slide shows for any occasion! Use ProShow Gold to easily create stunning slide shows for friends, family, business, or just for fun! Just select your photos and drop them in the show. Record your own voice-over track or add a soundtrack from a CD. Add motion effects and pick from over 280 stunning transition effects to add that final touch. Take your photos further! ProShow Gold gives you more output options than any other slide show software. Create DVDs and video CDs that play back on your TV. Stream your show on the Web. Generate MPEG video files for PC viewing. Build screen savers for yourself or others. Make self-contained executable slide shows (EXEs), perfect for e-mailing or posting online. Write PC autorun CDs that automatically play when inserted into a PC. ProShow Gold does it all! Amazing Effects! ProShow Gold allows you to add motion effects to your images and video. Zoom in to points of interest. Pan around on a panoramic image. You can even rotate a photo or video while the slide show is playing.User opinions
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User Rating: 
10/10
What professional photographers use for slideshows
Pros: Most fun of any slideshow software on the market, bar none. This is the one pro photographers use, because they want to focus on the photography and have the slideshows simple and fast to produce.
Cons: Minor quibbles only.
User Rating: 
4/10
Limited value.
Pros: Nice when working.
Cons: Crashes often. I call tech support every time I start a new slide show. Now, I cannot even view slide shows on line. Two tech support guys can not figure out the problem
User Rating: 10/10
Great software
Pros: Easy to use; nice slection of transitions; nice land simple layout for adding photos and edtiing variables; zoom and pan is incredible and you can customize exacltly how you want to bring in any picture or transiton
Cons: adding text through captions seems a bit limited; for example I was not able to add a caption cloud like in newspaper cartoons
User Rating: 
6/10
Tools more sophisticated than program files can handle
Pros: Endless artistic possibilities
Cons: Not good for big shows
Anyway, this year I am stalled trying to produce another travelogue--this one of a trip to China. Last year's show contained 120 photos and about 8 songs. No problem. This year I've got almost 300 photos I'm using, about four video clips, and 12 songs, and many more motion effects. The cache file is up to 225 MB; deleting the .pxc files as recommended by Photodex support does not help. My computer should support the program according to the hardware specs from Photodex, but it is now taking 6 hours to load this show and is unresponsive when it gets there.
Customer support via email has been excellent on the occasions I needed to contact them, both last year and this year. I do not know why other reviewers have not fared well with customer support. But the problem seems to be that all the glitz of the special effects cannot be supported by the framework of the program. They should amend the marketing language where they say the number of photos and songs that can be used is "unlimited." Certainly, there are limits! I was advised to beef up my memory to 2GB (from 768 MB). I may try that since I do not want to lose the show. Customer support also gave me an option to split the show apart and put it back together at output, which is not acceptable to me. I will say I have had no trouble burning DVDs though, and I have an external DVD burner.
I'd say if you intend to do small shows the product is excellent, but if you are trying to make a major motion picture, it's like Schroeder playing Beethoven on a toy piano.
User Rating: 
8/10
Excellent presentation maker
Pros: Ability to add music and edit it. Variety of output media. Excellent support.
Cons: Resource hungry. Some DVD drives not supported. Poor help documentation.
User Rating: 
9/10
A well written piece of software
Pros: Easy to use and impressive results
Cons: Won't print presentation to paper
The photo editor is pretty good and I wish it could print some of the edited pictures with the annotations from the presentation but it can't.
The reviewer missed the point of ProShow Gold. It is not close to PowerPoint in its purpose. I know and use PowerPoint all the time but I would never use it to put music to pictures. ProShow is infinitely more effective in dealing with music and pictures than PowerPoint.
This is my experience and I hope it has been useful to you.
User Rating: 4/10
ProShow Gold using 3 yrs a big disappointment.
Pros: Easy to use interface.
Cons: Constant battle to keep it running and burning good dvd's
I've been using this software for 3 yrs now. I have truly loved it for it's ease of use. Drag and drop system. It's gotten better over the years as its gotten auto rotate on pictures and better music manipulation. This program is great for small productions. 20 to 50 pictures. The program can't seem to handle a whole lot. It constantly freezes and shuts down (it does have an auto save feature that they obviously needed). I've also had many problems with the writing process. It's wasted many a dvd for me. Not all dvd players recognize the burn as well.
For those who run on a network this is definitely not the program for you. I've talked with customer support and they stated to me that the program will not operate with pictures on another computer over the network.
Today I had my last straw with the program and will be finding something else.
Thanks!!! and good luck!!!
User Rating: 4/10
Plug-in Not Mac Friendly
Pros: Great level of control; Full featured;
Cons: Best output requires a web plug-in not compatible with the Mac OS.
User Rating: 9/10
Best I've seen so far
Pros: After trying many products >>this one has the most features
Cons: Needs a way to have some premade templates
Proshow is for showing and archiving slides....and that it does very, very well. The display is great, the audio handler is adaquate and if you can find something better for the price (or even twice the price) please let me know.......
User Rating: 9/10
Love it. Fun to use.
Pros: Easy and fun to use. Great product for the price.
Cons: Would like a user guide that is more detailed.
Some of the problems the other users have had, I have not experienced. Dropping in a sound track straight from a CD has been relatively easy. I have not had trouble burning to DVD, only in trying to find a format that will play on my DVD player. I have also found Photodex to be responsive to my questions. Perhaps, some of these past issues have been resolved. I love the number of transitions available and also the fact that I can link up editing a photo in Adobe Photoshop Elements. I also don't understand the big deal about printing a photo from this program, when Adobe Photoshop Elements or other similar programs are available to do that.
I'm having so much fun that I have started to think about whether or not I want Photodex's professional program.
User Rating: 
3/10
previous versions better
Pros: more information
Cons: large memory hog
User Rating: 9/10
My favorite application, bar none!
Pros: Easy to use with minimal learning curve; Great motion effects; Bug-free; Numerous output options
Cons: Emphasis on digial pics - not video input
In fact, I came to this site to capture the URL address of CNET's review so that I could pass it on to a friend. I just knew it would be a raving review. Boy was I surprised - and disappointed.
User Rating: 4/10
Problems adding music
Pros: Can include video clips, burn to DVD
Cons: Balks at adding music , lack of online support for problem
User Rating: 4/10
Buyer Beware
Pros: Lots of features that you cannot use
Cons: Un reliable
Program frewuently locks up and burns non-usable DVD's. Tech support promises help, but you never hear from them again.
Not being able to use all of this programs featue and having to use "work arounds" to try and get it to work is unacceptable and not what I paid for. Have wasted over 75 DVD's over the last 8 months trying to get this program to work. (Reinstalls and updates done.)
In my opinion, Buyer Beware!
User Rating: 9/10
Great product for the price. Many transitions, easy to use, good price.
Pros: Records DVD, VCD's in PAL mode. Easy to use with 100's of transitions. Music can be added to your show. Drop and drag technique. Can use with very little knowledge of the product.
Cons: Uses allot of memory, make sure you have enough RAM before purchasing this product. Check requirements of the priduct
User Rating: 10/10
PROSHOW ROCKSSSS
Pros: it is great at what it does
Cons: it doesnt have any
User Rating: 9/10
Hello? This isn't a PowerPoint Wannabe'
Pros: Great for Professional Photo Presentations
Cons: Lacks Fine Timeline Adjustments / Audio can be quirky
No charts & graphs? When's the last time you presented your photos with a sales forecast or bullet list?
ProShow's import & output options are also excellent. Next time you use PowerPoint, try to output an EXE file. You can't even view a PowerPoint presentation on a PC that doesn't have PowerPoint installed without Microsoft's proprietary viewer (which has it's own pile of quirks).
CNET's reviewers should determine a program's PURPOSE first -- and then compare it to similar products. ProShow fulfills it's Purpose and then some. And for very short money.
User Rating: 9/10
Great Product...Reviewer missed the point with his rating
Pros: Makes great slide shows...not intended for business presentations
Cons: Nothing that hasn't been fixed by recent updates
User Rating: 9/10
Spectacular
Pros: Amazing Results, Lots of options.
Cons: Slllooooww in creating DVDs.
Creating the show itself is very easy, straightforeward, and ituitive. As C-net metions, the interface can be croweded if you don't have a lot of real estate on your monitor. I have a 19-incher and it isn't a problem for me.
I have created output to VCD, DVD, Exe, and web shows. Compiling the show to burn to a DVD takes quite a long time. (Maybe a P-IV, 1.2gig with 1 gig of RAM isn't enough horsepower.) It took 4 hours to compile a 20 minute show with high quality video and audio options. The other problem that I have run into is that I can not get DVD menus to work on my Bose Home Theater. They do work on most plain old DVD players, though. I consider this to be only a minor annoyance. Documentation could be better organized.
As I mentioned, the results are spectacular. Check out the Photodex website and view the sample shows. Believe me when I tell you that you can do as good or better. All in all this is an incredible product. If you want text, use Powertpoint, this baby is for showing off your pics!
User Rating: 10/10
Honestly, the best slideshow software out!
Pros: Easy to use, all file formats, hundreds of effects
Cons: haven't found any....yet
It will read any pic & vid format too, which can't be said for other programs.
I like the ability to open, position, edit, & do everything to your pics all in one application. You can even burn them straight to a DVD or CD.
P-show gold is easy. Not too much to say
Tech-support was nice too.
User Rating: 9/10
Nice Software package
Pros: Easy to use, Nice fade effects
Cons: Some CD/DVD writing compatibility issues
Its super easy to use. The ability to add soundtracks and fade effects is very nice.
I was able to take pictures christmas eve and create 3 slide shows christmas morning for the extended family to watch.
In the past I have created a DVD which did was not readable, but this may have been a problem with my burner.
Real nice professional package. I do not know why the cnet reviewer gave it such a low score and what he was comparing it with.
User Rating: 8/10
Top notch application for Video and Photo shows
Pros: Technical Support
Cons: A little bit unstable
Tehcnical support is excellent and included.
On the bad side, the product is a little unstale when writing to DVD. I found that writing to a file is better, then using a program called DVD decryptor to burn works best.
