Video Slideshow Maker

A desktop GUI for building MP4 video slideshows from your photos and videos, with music, transitions, captions, and more. No subscription, no watermark — runs entirely on your machine.

Windows users: grab a pre-built installer from the Releases page — no Python or ffmpeg install required.

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Features

Media

• Mix photos (JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WEBP, TIFF, HEIC/HEIF) and videos (MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, etc.)
• Drag-and-drop reorder, or Cut (Ctrl+X) / Paste (Ctrl+V)
• Per-item captions
• Optional title card image at the start
• Blurred-background fill for portrait photos on a landscape canvas

Music

• Multiple audio tracks (MP3, WAV, AAC, M4A, OGG, FLAC, WMA)
• Crossfade between songs and end fade-out
• Music ducking under video clips
• Auto-fit photo duration to music length, or snap to BPM

Transitions

• Crossfade, Fade to Black, Cut, Zoom In, Zoom Out, Wipe Left, Wipe Right
• Adjustable transition duration

Output

• Resolutions: 1080p, 720p, 4K, Vertical/Reels (1080×1920), Square (1080×1080)
• Auto-detect hardware encoding (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD) with software fallback
• Quality presets: Fast, Balanced, High Quality
• Save and reload projects (.ssproj)

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Download (Windows)

Download SlideshowMaker-<version>-windows.zip from the latest release, unzip, and run SlideshowMaker.exe. ffmpeg is bundled — nothing else to install.

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Run from Source

Requirements

• Python 3.9 or later (standard library only — no pip install needed for the app itself)
• ffmpeg available on PATH
  • Windows: winget install ffmpeg
  • macOS: brew install ffmpeg
  • Linux: sudo apt install ffmpeg

git clone https://github.com/owenaslin/slideshowmaker.git
cd slideshowmaker
python -m slideshowmaker
# or: python slideshow_maker.py

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Build a Standalone Executable (Windows)

Produces a self-contained folder in dist/SlideshowMaker/ with ffmpeg bundled.

pip install pyinstaller

# Copy ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe into vendor/ffmpeg/
mkdir vendor\ffmpeg
# (download from https://ffmpeg.org/download.html and copy the two .exe files here)

pyinstaller SlideshowMaker.spec

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Project Structure

slideshowmaker/
  app.py          — main window and UI layout
  media.py        — media list, drag-reorder, cut/paste
  music.py        — music playlist and BPM estimator
  preview.py      — thumbnail previews
  rendering.py    — ffmpeg encode pipeline
  ffmpeg_utils.py — encoder detection and probing
  settings.py     — timing controls and output picker
  project.py      — save/load .ssproj project files
  constants.py    — file types, resolutions, config
  theme.py        — dark-theme colour tokens
  widgets.py      — reusable UI components
tests/
  test_timing.py  — unit tests for clip timing and fit-to-music logic

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License

MIT © Owen Aslin