DVD slideshow GUI - development thread.

[golem14]

Polish translation is done!
How to add it into DVD Slideshow GUI?

[tin2tin]

Brilliant! I'll add it in the next update.

If you want to preview it, then you can follow these instructions:
- Download the .mo file from Launchpad.
- Rename the .mo file to ex. da.mo
- Move that file to DVD slideshow GUI\Locale\da\
- Start DVD slideshow GUI and select Danish.

[golem14]

I've used this method by replacing german locale files.
I still polish(ing) polish translation although its OK now.

[eepstein]

So far I am having a blast with this program

Does anybody out there have some animation presets for some Ken Burns effects that they have made? I have spent a few hours trying to get it exactly right and it would be awesome to not reinvent the wheel here. So far I have a single preset for a single effect that is not terrible, but not great either.

I am a total newb at this program, but from what I can tell accessing the avisynth editor only applies to transitions right? I think I am looking for a preset that would affect animation. From what I can gather the .kbp file is pretty simple. Just stores X,Y position, Zoom, and Rotate for as many frames as you specified in the duration. The project file seems to only contain the keys.

I guess my biggest issue is figuring out what is in the frame and what is not. When I go to animate there is a lot of black space around the picture, so it is hard for me to tell where I will end up. If somebody could tell me what the top-left position is and the bottom-right position is to keep the image completely within the video I think that would help. I could probably then calculate a smooth Ken Burns transition with 10 keys with that information and construct a preset file in a text editor.

Anybody that has gone through this that has some advice it would be greatly appreciated.

[tin2tin]

Does anybody out there have some animation presets for some Ken Burns effects that they have made?

No, not that I know of. My intention was that users easily could expand and share DSG with backgrounds, transitions, effects, animation presets etc. however none have done that so far. (hint hint... )

I am a total newb at this program

Check out the manual(in pdf) I'm working on - the link is one page back in this thread or take a look at the many videotutorials I've made.

construct a preset file in a text editor.

Why don't you just use the gui? The preview should be fairly accurate.

[eepstein]

No, not that I know of. My intention was that users easily could expand and share DSG with backgrounds, transitions, effects, animation presets etc. however none have done that so far. (hint hint... )

If I can construct some really nice Ken Burns effects I will post the custom preset files here for sure.

Why don't you just use the gui? The preview should be fairly accurate.

The problem I am having is that I am using 720x480 NTSC @ 29 frames in the project settings. All of my input files have been prepped by ImageMagick to conform to those dimensions. I even crop them if necessary to preserve the aspect ratio.

In the preview I notice these black bands around the picture itself. Default position I think is 180x100. What I am having a hard time getting a handle on is what will end up in the frame after it has been rendered. I want the entire "window" to be taken up by the picture during the Ken Burns animation and then I will use 2 seconds dissolves into the next Ken Burns animation on another picture. I don't want any black areas to appear in the rendered video.

Are the black bands around the sides present to assist with creating other animations that allow the picture to be taken off screen? Like Fly By, etc?

I think if I new the hard limits for the X,Y positions in the animation preset that guarantee that the picture will take up the entire screen then I could construct a nice gradual Ken Burns effect. So far I had to mess around for an hour to get one animation nice and smooth that keeps the entire image in the frame.

[tin2tin]

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but try:
Project Settings > Pixel Aspect Ratio > 1:1
1:1 is for web/computer playback where the PAR fits the DAR(Display Aspect Ratio).
On DVD the PAR is not 1:1.

[tin2tin]

Computer! Totaal has posted a tutorial on how to make and add a DSG slideshow to a DVDStyler DVD here!
(Google translated from Dutch)

[golem14]

I've problem with "Invert selection" in polish translation. It's translated in launchpad, but not in app.

[Antonsalimans]

I keep having a problem when exporting a slideshow with the PAL-settings. I get an extra subtitle. It is not there when I choose NTSC-settings. Also the preview looks fine. What tot do?

[tin2tin]

@ Invert Selection - good find - will fix that.

@ Subtitles What format are you exporting to?

Try to export to an empty folder and let me know if that solves the problem.

[Antonsalimans]

Right on the spot: the empty folder did it. The .mpg I made is working fine now. But why an empty folder works and another doesn't; no idea.
Thanks tin2tin

[tin2tin]

Cooked up a new slideshow out of 64 Years of Posters for the Cannes Film Festival. Watch it here!

@ Antonsalimans What format where you exporting to?

[Antonsalimans]

As I wrote: MPG.

[golem14]

I want use Push Left transition (Push_Left.avs), like in this example on Youtube:

but without moving background.
Is this possible?

[tin2tin]

There are two ways:

- One is to use the animation tool with a negative duration overlay.as transition.
- The other is to use an a video/avs script background - you'll find some nice gradient backgrounds in the background folder.

[tin2tin]

- The first four slides is a video/avs script background and Push Left transition.
- The next four with Overlay.avs transition, a negative duration and animated with two keypoints.

And if anyone missed it, here's
64 Years of Posters for the Cannes Film Festival - done in DVD slideshow GUI

[tin2tin]

Worked some more on the DVD slideshow GUI eBook manual:

As pdf:
Here

Or as templated html on FLOSS Manuals:
Here

It's still only description of the funtionality. Tutorials might be added later. Let me know what you guys think.

[Frovingslosh]

Hello. I'm very new to DVD slideshow GUI, just came across it this weekend. Not sure I'm even posting in the correct place as what I have to post might be more appropriate for a user discussion than a "development thread", but the link on the home website led me here.

I'm excited about the program, but a bit frustrated so far. Having a few problems with it early on. I've read the website and the pdf e-book, and done a lot of trying to get things working right, which brings me here.

I'm seeing two problems with my first test compilation. It is just 5 jpg pictures, two short video clips (maybe 3 minutes total) and them a black jpg to end on. Here are my two issues:

I'm very excited about the "Ken Burns" effect, but have not had great results with it. I first set my project for NTSC. I'm able to set up what I think I want (just a simple "zoom in" on a part of the picture) and it does what I expect in the preview, but when I make a final video export (mpeg2, quality 25 or 0) I see bars on one or more edges of the pictures that were not there in the preview. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong in setting up my key frames or not. As I move the picture around the movement seems very sluggish and I sometimes overshoot the movement and have to move it back (this on a 4 gig AmD5200 running XP and about 200 gig free on each hard disk partition and a Nvidia 430 1 gig graphics card if that matters). I have decided that I need to set a final key frame some frames after what I intended to be the last key frame or the program will keep zooming, but I think I'm still missing something.

Although I don't want to overdo the transitions I set up the first test to use the "swing_one_out4" transitions between each item except the last video that just does a dissolve to a second of a black frame. The preview look as I wanted. but when it it exported to mpeg2 I end up with some black frames swinging in rather than all of the photos! And on some of them i see an error message about running out of memory. The system is as loaded as XP will allow, not sure why the problem is occurring. By the way, I'm confused by the naming of swing_one_out4 (and the related transitions) since as I see it the new image is swinging into the scene and the old one is staying put beneath, nothing is swinging out. But I degrees, as I really don't care what they are called, just want to find out what I'm doing wrong so that I can get them to work.

Love the examples on the homepage. Can't wait to get past my novice bugs and be able to try some of the really fancy stuff like the animated backgrounds.

So far I feel starved for information. Have read the pdf but it is light. I'm wondering if it might be possible to package up some projects like the fantastic demos on the home page, complete with source files, so novices like myself could pick through them and start to understand how they were done. Also, seeing my own computer generate the videos would help reinforce my belief that the problems I'm having must be with me and not with the program.

Thanks very much for this program. I'm just hoping that I can learn to make it perform as i expect it can.

[Frovingslosh]

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but try:
Project Settings > Pixel Aspect Ratio > 1:1
1:1 is for web/computer playback where the PAR fits the DAR(Display Aspect Ratio).
On DVD the PAR is not 1:1.

Could you elaborate? What is it for DVD? (NTSC in my case, would like to know the proper settings for both 4x3 and 16x9 if they are different). This is the kind of information that would be very helpful in the pdf e-book if you are planning on expanding it. As it is I just see the setting but wonder when I would want to use each.

Also, I've been using some other tools to make my final DVD ISO image, so at least for my current project hope to do some of it in DVD slideshow GUI but export the videos and import them into another application. In that case should I set the pixel ratio to 1:1 or to whatever it should be for NTSC video?

[tin2tin]

Did setting the PAR to 1:1 solve your problem with the black bars?

Explaining what PAR and DAR is is very difficult to explain. I hardly understand it myself. A user wrote about this further back in this thread. If you wnat to understand it try to do a google.

Yes, its a good idear to add a key to the first and last frame of an animation.

It's a bit abstract what you explain. could you upload the dsg file somewhere?

Have you watched the video tutorials?

Examples are not possible atm. because I can't make dsg load files with relative paths.

[Frovingslosh]

Did setting the PAR to 1:1 solve your problem with the black bars?

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I keep hitting the other memory problem on the transitions so I have not seen a good externally rendered video again and the previews have always looked good, so I don't have an answer to this yet.

Explaining what PAR and DAR is is very difficult to explain. I hardly understand it myself. A user wrote about this further back in this thread. If you wnat to understand it try to do a google.

To be honest, it is a long thread and I had not read it all yet. But I'll make that tonight's project. Still, you have some curious looking preset pixel aspect ratios available on the project page, and stated not to use 1x1 for DVDs, so I thought that you might know what they were used for and which to use for DVDs. And yea, I find pixel aspect ratio and display aspect ratio confusing myself. Discovered that I had to use settings in that area a few months ago when I was doing some encoding in VirtualDub to get things right. And I had expected the 1:1 setting that I used to actually screw things up and make the video stretch to fit the full height of the screen, but the encoding turned out beautiful. So I still have a lot to learn in this area.

Yes, its a good idear to add a key to the first and last frame of an animation.

That would be one of the things that might help others if mentioned in the ebook. I didn't actually use the last frame though, I just put two similar frames a few frames apart. I found that if I didn't then the zooming would continue past my last key frame. Is it really important that the key be on the last frame, or just that it be some frame beyond where you want the zooming to stop with the same settings as the previous key?

It's a bit abstract what you explain. could you upload the dsg file somewhere?

Have you watched the video tutorials?

Examples are not possible atm. because I can't make dsg load files with relative paths.

I've watched the tutorial (not sure that I saw more than one, although I've also watched your YouTube channel videos). Honestly I found the tutorial that I did watch a bit hard to follow since it lacked any audio, I expect that I'll get more out of it if I watch it a few more times.

I have not yet posted the project file, but my thinking on that is pretty much the same as you mentioned later, it may not be much use without the source files. However, to help explain myself better I'm uploading the erroring video now and will also upload the project file. It is a 150 meg video, so thanks much for taking the time to grab it and please let me know when you do so I can take it down and regain the space. The video also shows the memory error that I mentioned. It should have been 5 still images and then 2 video clips, followed by a dissolve to a brief black screen.. The content and the animations are not great, this was just for testing and getting to know the software.

The files should be at
http://www.toebes.com/harry/dvdslideshow0.mpg
and
http://www.toebes.com/harry/dvdshow330.dsg

As I wrote my previous post last night I started to think that maybe I was causing the memory problem by using full size 8 megapixel camera photos without reducing them to video size. But I decided to discount that since five 8 megapixel photos should hardly overwhelm a 4 gig XP system, and to properly benefit from the ability to zoom in on a part of a photo, one would seem to need the higher resolution to avoid pixelization after zooming in. The failures happen even after rebooting and running with a fresh system with no other significant application running (just the normal junk in the tray).


I understand the issue about paths in the project file for demos, but I would still very much like to download a zip of a project file and source material and see the magic happen in a way that I can pick apart and understand. Let me suggest that pretty much everyone will have a C partition and a root directory on the C partition. An example file could be a zip of a directory directly under C:/, with the project file in the directory rather than in the DVD slideshow GUI directory. While I normally dislike installing things on my C partition, I would willingly make an exception for example files for DVD slideshow GUI and I expect others would too. For those who feel even stronger about it, there is always the file editor option, as project files seem to be simple text files, they could put the files wherever they like and edit the project file to reflect the move.

[tin2tin]

Downloading now, but I'll not be able to verify the files till after work. I might need the original files though.

If you what to try to loacate what is causing the error, you could try to render a slideshow without the videos first. If that works okay, you could check what codec the original videofiles is with MediaInfo. After doing this you should check if ffdshow have those codecs enabled. If they are enabled, you could search this thread for the avisynth script wrapper to import video files and use that method.

There are several tutorials on dvdslideshowgui.blip.tv

Off to work.

[I see it now - will be late for work damn -I dunno why it can't load the background image!? Try a different backgroundimage, or try to open the slides at those points in the slideshow in a reliable program and resave them to make sure that there aren't eny error in the files]

[Frovingslosh]

We're on different schedules, I'm already in bed, but I'll try without the video files tomorrow. Yea, I really should have tried to isolate it and render without the videos. My mindset was just that I wanted both together and see the transition between stills and video, but I should have back off that when things started going south, I already know that the videos are in motion jpeg (MJPEG), specifically they were taken with a Canon A590IS, as were the stills, which are jpgs. Not sure exactly what I'm to do with ffdshow, but I'll poke around. Didn't even realize that I had a background, as I was going for the images to be full screen within the NTSC 4x3 frame, but I guess DVD slideshow GUI gives me a black one by default. I'll play around with that also and see if it changes anything. I did already change my black ending slide to a grey one for some tests, that had no effect and the image that flipped into the picture was still black, not grey.

Sorry about you being late for work. Please don't be again on my account, my ignorance and my little hobby projects are not worth it.

[tin2tin]

I don't se any black bars. The videos works well. So it is somehow related to either the background image, a bug in one of the images missing or maybe you set the Animation quality too high? Or a wild guess is that it might be because you installed DSG in the H: drive and not in 'c:/program files' folder.

[golem14]

Push Left transition without background moving solved by accident

I converted jpg file into avs script, by pushing wrong button in Slide Setting window.
Today i used this file as a background.

It's my slideshow:

[tin2tin]

Very nice. Is it a Push_Left transition and a zoom in and out animation?

[golem14]

Yes!
Duration of whole animation is 200
1 st key on frame 1 - zoom 90%
2 nd on frame 30 - zoom 100%
3 rd on frame 170 - zoom 100%
4 th on frame 200 - zoom 90%

[Frovingslosh]

I don't se any black bars. The videos works well. So it is somehow related to either the background image, a bug in one of the images missing or maybe you set the Animation quality too high? Or a wild guess is that it might be because you installed DSG in the H: drive and not in 'c:/program files' folder.

A little bit more to report, but still no joy here.

First step was to remove the avi files. The slide show seemed to render without any of the black pages swinging into view. OK!

OK, so could it really be some issue with the jmpeg codec, even though the videos themselves were playing back fine in the slideshow? Wasn't sure about what to do in ffdshow, so instead I decided just to eliminate the video's codec as an issue, I went into Virtualdub and converted both to xvid files. Not thrilled to have to re-encode them, but certainly a valid thing to do as a test. Went back into the project, deleted the original videos and added the xvid versions, reset the transistions. Also checked the PAR and found it at 8:9 from its original setting, so set it to 1:1, a I still don't know what I want for a NTSC 4x3 DVD. Went back into all of the animations and reset the zooming so that I didn't see any black bars. Exported this all to an mpeg2 video.

It didn't work. Now the 4th slide swung into the picture as a black slide. No memory error printed on the top of it, but still no picture of puppies.

So could it really be a problem with the jpgs? After all they rendered fine when the video wasn't on the end of the slide show. To test that I tried to convert the 5 pictures to 16.7m color bmp files in Irfanview. Imported the 5 new pictures into the project and deleted the 5 jpg files. Went back in and applied the transistion to all and applied an animation to each of the "new" bmp files. All of that went fine, but when I went to export it I got an error that only RGB32 was supported and AVIsynth couldn't handle a file between 5 and 6. So I just removed the fifth bit map image from the project and tried to export again, this time got that same error saying it couldn't handle an image between 2 and 3.

That's were I'm at now, frustration level is pretty high, I need to back off a bit and let it all sink in before I continue. So I apparently can do a slide show with the original jpeg files as long as I don't include the videos. But if I include the videos the part of the slide show that is the still photos breaks. If I replace the jmpeg videos with xvid encoded videos the still image part of the slide show still breaks. And if I replace the jpg files, which seem to work on their own, with bmp files, I can't get avisynth to let me do an export or preview at all. Actually, I remember seeing the bmp error before, my original black final image was a very simple bmp file, I ended up just reasaving it as a jpg to get past that. But if it turns out that I need to re-encode all of my jpegs, which I'm not convinced of since they seems to work find by themselves, then I wanted to re-encode then into a lossless format to avoid further image degrading.

Not sure what to make of the "installed on H" theory. After all, it did get installed on H because the installer gave me a choice. My gut feeling is that it really isn't a problem and was just mentioned because it is something different than your system, but I'm sure there is a lot different between our systems, particularly if you consider the unique combination of software that each of us has installed.

[Frovingslosh]

Push Left transition without background moving solved by accident.

I converted jpg file into avs script, by pushing wrong button in Slide Setting window.

Very nice.

I'm not ready to try this yet, but may as well ask now while the topic is fresh. Can you elaborate on how you made the settings to keep the background from sliding with the top images? I don't really grasp the "negative transistion" concept. I have fround a tutorial that seems to cover it, but the video is too compressed for me to be able to actually read what is going on and there is no audio accompanying it, so I don't understand what a negative number in the transition field would mean, or exactly what values to use.

Thanks.