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One of the items often on the list as we prepare for the memorial service is a funeral slideshow or video memorial. Typically, this consists of 40 to 80 photographs from across the person's life rolling through in a loop, usually with slow cross-dissolves between each image and appropriate music. Often, it is played at the beginning of the service and then again at the end and it provides an important opportunity for people to reflect on the life just passed.

On occasions, the funeral slideshow will feature video taken of the deceased, and in rare, lucky instances there may be old film footage of the person taken in their youth. Sometimes, other items like hand-drawn cards from the grandchildren are included, or letters written by the person showing their usually graceful, early-century writing hand, or maps or postcards showing the geography of the life - even favorite poems or sayings can be incorporated in the memorial video.

This Buzzle article gives you 5 slideshow options - each one is free - for making your own funeral tribute video.

No matter which slideshow program you choose, there are going to be a number of preliminary steps necessary for each. And they are simple enough: You need to gather the the material you want to include - and that often involves getting in touch with friends or other members of the family to ask what they have. You need to digitize the images - that means you need to get them into your computer using a flatbed scanner and by taking digital photographs of them. You should, if possible, clean the images up with a simple (free) photo editing program like Microsoft Photo Editor or Apple iPhoto. Once the images are safely in your computer, you can now make your funeral tribute.

All the photo slideshow programs below are promoted by major and reputable software companies. Each will give you the ability to set the time you want each image to appear, select transitions between the photographs, add music, and add wording. One or two will allow you to add narration. Give yourself plenty of time though. While the programs are easy to learn, getting the memorial video slideshow just right requires some fiddling and finessing - it's the old 80:20 rule. You may spend 20% of your time getting the pictures into position; you may spend another 80% of your time fine tuning!

Microsoft Photo Story

Microsoft Photo Story is a photo editing and photo slideshow program distributed free by Microsoft. (A word of warning here: make sure that the site you visit for your download of Photo Story 3 is "microsoft.com". Other, non-Microsoft, websites may try to lure you in with offers to download Photo Story only to entice you to click on buttons that take you to places you may not want to go.

Photo Story 3 - the latest version - is quick to download and easy to use. You simply import your images; crop and correct contrast and color levels (if you wish); change an image to B&W, sepia or add another effect like "soft glow"; add text; add narration or voice over; decide how long you want each image to stay on for; select a transition (you have about 60 to choose from); add music and your are all done!

Moving around a photo or going from wide to close (or vice versa) is a popular effect (sometimes called the Ken Burns effect) and you can easily achieve that with Photo Story 3.

A video memorial prepared with Photo Story can be emailed, saved for later play on your computer, or saved to be played on another computer with Windows media player.

Google Picasa

Picasa is a stunning photo hosting, photo sharing, photo editing and photo slideshow program downloadable free from Google. It is ideal for creating simple but effective funeral slideshows and memorial videos.

Having downloaded Picasa from Google, open it, select your pictures and using the "add to" button place them in an album. Then select the album and simply click on the "slideshow" button at the top. To add music and to choose a loop option, go to the menu bar and select tools options slideshow and check the boxes. By clicking back on "slideshow" you can adjust display times and add captions.

Once you have your funeral tribute slideshow set up, simply select the folder or album from the right hand panel, go to "create" from the top menu and choose movie. Decide the size and the compression (small, large, widescreen) and you're off the the races!

Apple iPhoto

For those who use Apple Mac computers, you will have iPhoto installed already as part of the iLife suite that comes bundled with the computer. Creating a slideshow is as simple as choosing an album then clicking the slideshow button. A panel opens with your slideshow and a range of controls at the bottom. You can add correct contrast and color settings, add picture effects and transitions as well as select music to accompany the tribute slideshow.

Once you have music selected, you can choose to fit the pictures to the music, or fit the music to the pictures - a handy feature not offered by all the other programs. You can also apply a Ken Burns effect (called "Ken Burns effect") although it is not as controllable as the pan controls in Microsoft Photo Story.

Having created your memorial slideshow, you go to file in the top menu, then file>export and select your movie size and where you want it. If you want to burn the movie to a DVD, then with your Mac you should have iDVD and you can set the funeral slideshow to be written to a DVD that can be played on any DVD player.

Yahoo Flickr

Yahoo's photo hosting site is called Flickr. You are able to upload photos and view them separately or you can create a slideshow. One great feature of Yahoo's Flickr is that you can create a slideshow then automatically generate code that will allow you to embed that slideshow in any webpage.

Flickr slideshows are not at customizable as Microsoft Photo Story and it appears that to display a funeral slideshow or funeral video memorial at a memorial service you will need access to the internet.

Sun Microsystems OpenOffice Presentation

OpenOffice Presentation is like Microsoft Powerpoint except it is free. It can be downloaded from the OpenOffice website. OpenOffice Presentation is promoted and supported by tech behemoth Sun Microsystems and the program can also open Powerpoint and output to Powerpoint.

Not often thought of for funeral slideshows, both OpenOffice Presentation and Microsoft Powerpoint are powerful and flexible business programs that allows you to display images, create text, and imbed audio and video. Both programs comes with endless templates which you can use as a background - or you can choose to have the images fill the screen.

The beauty of OpenOffice Presentation and Powerpoint is that there is always someone in the family (if not you) who knows how to use the program - because they have used them at work. You can save them time by digitizing the images and determining how long you want the photos to show - then see what they come up with.

Once you have created the funeral tribute to your satisfaction, you can save the presentation on a disk to be played later at the memorial service. And as with any audio visual presentation, always test the slideshow on the computer you intend to use - and at the very venue you are using - before the big day. Gremlins have a way of creeping into the best laid funeral slideshow plans and even experts come up against issues that need solving.

Programs like those offered by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems allow you to create highly acceptable funeral slideshows and memorial videos, more than one of which will allow you to write the slideshow to DVD. For those who want to take their funeral tribute to another level, who want a more professional product, or who simply want help creating professional memorial videos and funeral slideshows help is available.