You can then load photos either by dragging and dropping them into the program interface, or by using the photo loader menu to do so. Photos are scanned and displayed in a strip in the lower half of the screen. The active photo is shown in the upper half. Here it is possible to select the visible space if the photo is larger than the maximum video resolution.

Additional tools are displayed between the two interface sections. Users can change a photo’s rotation here for instance, add Sepia or black and white effects, change the duration and transition period or add subtitles to the photo. It is furthermore possible to change the order of photos via drag and drop. Everything can be configured in short time.

Motion is configured in the upper half, between the two thumbnail photos. It basically moves the visible part of the photo for the selected duration. This effect can be disabled if it is not needed.

The number of images and the video duration are displayed in the footer of the program window. That’s handy to sync the video duration to the selected audio file.

A click on the Render Filmstrip button opens the rendering options. Users can select a quality profile, for instance medium, full HD or VCD, Pal or NTSC, and an output format. Available are MPEG4, Flash Video or MPEG1/2 among others.

The rendering process can take a while, depending on the selected number of photos, the output format and the processing power of the computer system the software is running on. The video will be saved to the project folder automatically.

The program lacks a preview feature, which is probably the biggest issue that I had with it. If you want to test how the selected photos and music look like on video, you have to render it to do that. That’s especially problematic if you have selected to process many photos, as the processing can take quite some time then.

PhotoFilmStrip is nevertheless an easy to use program for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. Interested users find additional information and download links at the developer website.

It requires the creation or existence of a (free) WeGame account but that is the only nuisance in the process. The videos and screenshots that can be produced with the screen capture software are stored on the local hard drive and only uploaded to the WeGame portal if the user selects to do so. (Automatic screenshot upload can be disabled in the options).

Two hotkeys are defined for the video recording and screenshot creation. The quality of the video recording can be changed from web recording to high quality recording if the computer meets the requirements.

A green square in the left corner indicates that the screen capture software is ready to record. The hotkey will start the video recording or screenshot creation. Pressing the hotkey again will stop the video recording.

The high definition videos were recorded as avi files in a resolution of 1024×768, a bitrate of 12290 Kbps and an audio stream bitrate of 1411 Kbps. WeGame will automatically convert the video into that format even if the game resolution is larger than that. 30 seconds of recording take up about 70 Megabytes of hard drive space. There was no visual impact on game performance while recording the game videos.