Picture and Video Assistant

An add-in for Microsoft Excel that helps you organize, randomize, and copy your pictures and videos into folders ready for slideshows and video DVDs.

FREE — no purchase ever required.

  • Create a list of all your pictures and videos
  • Randomly assign files to video folders so each video gets a sample
  • Copy files to a folder and add the date to each file name for chronological order
  • View pictures and videos
  • Rename files individually or in batch mode
  • Change or re-date the date and time on your files
  • Delete files or open the containing folder for serious editing

If you have thousands of pictures and videos collected over the years, sooner or later you will get the urge to show them. One way is to stand around a computer and do slide shows — but often the files are not in the right sequence, you are jumping from one folder to another, and each video has to be opened separately. We decided there had to be a better way!

The Picture and Video Assistant is our solution. Use it to build a list of all your pictures and videos, randomly assign them to video folders so each video gets a sample, and copy the files to a folder — adding the date to the front of each file name so everything lands in chronological rather than alphabetical order. Copy one folder at a time, then move on to the next.

At this point you can copy the files to a USB drive and play them on your TV. Most TVs now have slide-show capability, and Roku units and most DVD players accept USB drives.

One catch: videos cannot be played inside a slide show — they must be played one at a time. So we found a solution. Use a video creator program to combine pictures and videos into a single large HD MP4 video that plays back on your TV. There are two programs we like: Microsoft’s free Movie Maker, which is very easy to use, and PicturesToExe, which is far more powerful but must be purchased. Full disclosure: we do not receive any payment if you buy it.

To use either program: copy the files you want into an output folder with the date and time in front of each file name, select those copied files, set your transitions and motions (select an image and press CTRL-A to apply to all), then create your output. A note on durations: in PicturesToExe, changing the duration of all images at once can truncate the length of your videos — with Movie Maker you can select all and change duration without affecting the videos.

Best of all, the Picture and Video Assistant is FREE forever.

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