DVD slideshow GUI

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

Yet another new version with bugfixes mainly.

Including some evil black-frame(16:9) misrenderings.

And now the animation menu respects the aspect ratio.

Have fun,
tin2tin
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Render and Author DVD slideshows free: DVDslideshowGUI

Baldrick · Administrator Joined: 09 Aug 2000 Location: Sweden

http://www.videohelp.com/~tin2tin/DVDsGUI060B7setup.exe does not work....have you uploaded it?

Baldrick · Administrator Joined: 09 Aug 2000 Location: Sweden

fix the latest version download link!

should it be http://www.videohelp.com/~tin2tin/DVDsGUI060setup.exe ?

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

It's should up now - sorry.

Please let me know if you run into any bugs.

Have fun,

Tin2tin
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Render and Author DVD slideshows free: DVDslideshowGUI

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

Found some bugs on avi loading, added a preview avi feature, and uploaded the new version.

Tin2tin[/url]
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Render and Author DVD slideshows free: DVDslideshowGUI

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

Updated to 0.60 beta 9
- Check space left on harddisk when export/preview.
- M2v noaudio preset for Quenc
- Load wav bugfix.

Tin2tin
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Render and Author DVD slideshows free: DVDslideshowGUI

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

My time is very limited - but I uploaded a new beta9 with the latest QuEnc - it seems less buggy - though it might have broken the 4:3 vs. 1:1 ratio setting. I have to look into that sometime...

I've used the same name for uploading: 0.60 Beta9.

Tin2tin
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Render and Author DVD slideshows free: DVDslideshowGUI

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

I wonder is this proggy only working on my computer!?

I could use some feedback from you people.

Tin2tin
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Render and Author DVD slideshows free: DVDslideshowGUI

Nelson37 · Member Joined: 14 Aug 2001

OK, here you go. Just spent a few minutes with the prog, further evaluation pending.

Like the auto-resize for correct aspect ratio.

Love the animation tool, with ability to save presets. Haven't seen anything like this on any other slideshow tool. Setting the keys seems a little glitchy, mostly in preview. Preview is however very important when creating new presets. May be CPU related, see below. Final output gave the desired result, but I wasn't sure from the preview.

Need the ability to make the thumbnails larger for easier re-arrangement.

Need a smoother way to change slide position in the show. Current method not sufficient for large number of slides.

Preview mode not working correctly for me. Could be my CPU, Athlon 1700. Several slides were skipped, animation did not display correctly, dissolves did not display correctly. Final output was correct.

Safe area dotted lines should be switchable. Handy for preview, but definitely unwanted for final output. It appears I need to make a blank JPG and use this for backround? Blanking the box uses last entered JPG.
Now I have to look for the dotted-line backround to put it back, as it is useful for the animation. Not a big deal, but a checkbox in addition to a backround picture would be useful.

Haven't tried sound yet, also need to play with the arrangement tools. If the move up\move down arrows are all there is, this is almost a no-go item.

Would also like the ability to output to AVI, though this is easily accomplished by loading script into VDUB, though I assume prog deletes it when finished? Need option to save.

Also would like option to use already installed version of AviSynth. While this raises the possibility of your script not working with my AviSynth, forcing the install raises the possibility of MY Avisynth scripts no longer working, which, to me at least, is a bigger problem.

Nice work, worthy of further investigation.

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

Thanks Nelson37 for spending your time on this!

Nelson37 · Member Joined: 14 Aug 2001

Text position for NTSC 720x480 is outside the TV display area.

Trying to use a created animation preset results in a "no keys for current image", or something similar. I know you just got this working but this means you cannot re-use an animation.

But before that, you have GOT to fix the re-arrangement feature. Need drag-and-drop, preferably with a grid display of picture only and the ability to increase picture size. A couple of pre-determined sizes would be sufficient.

Imagine 99 slides in a list. Number 98 needs to be moved to number 2, number 87 needs to move to number 5, Number 10 to number 72, etc. Get the picture? Moving by arrow key just will not cut it. Don't get me wrong, many of the big boys make the same mistake, while getting the aspect ratio wrong, fewer transitions, and no animation.

Nice work here, fix a couple of things and you'll have the best slideshow program on the market. And I've tried most, have about 1200 slides to put into a show.

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

Nelson37 · Member Joined: 14 Aug 2001

Text OK, animations OK.

Somewhat related to the Preview issue, setting precise position for text or picture box in animations is difficult with mouse only. I get a lot of lag between movement and display. Slid the picture clear off the screen once and couldn't grab it any more. How about an X and Y position indicator for both animation keys and text? Could transitions be inserted into the animation? Could you butter my toast for me?

How about selectable color and/or transparency for text?

On both the load preset for animation and the import files - this should be a one-click process. When I select files, I want them in the show. Shouldn't have to select them twice. Same with the animation preset. Should activate when selected, instead of Select and then Load.

Backround file and dotted lines should be checkbox selectable. Clear box for no backround, check second box for Show Dotted lines Instead of backround image. Check this for initial preview, off for final preview and export. In code, would just use lines.jpg instead of backround.jpg.

Encoder should start automatically with default settings, or have checkbox option for this. Export should Export, not get halfway there and stop.

How to lock to NTSC setting? Keeps defaulting to PAL.

What the hell does "exposition" do?

These are all relatively minor quibbles.

The arrangement thing is a killer. How about a position variable on each slide, ie click on slide 99, change position number to 5, enter. Needing 94 mouse clicks to do this simply will not work. Also need ability to make thumbnails larger.

How about a simulated drag-and-drop? You have mouseclick selectability. Seperate each slide with an empty slot. Click on slide 99, then click on empty slot between 1 and 2. Dialog pops up, "move this slide to position#2? - OK." Positions redraw, empty slots re-created. Dialog box perhaps not needed. Obviously, empty slots removed on preview and display. Maybe a "move"menu option which would bump it in front of next selected slide, this would eliminate the empties.

The ability to arrange the slides in proper order by sight is absolutely crucial. Renaming is a work-around for small numbers of files, but not for large numbers. Particularly as proper order not always obvious and may be changed several times.

You've passed several of my tests :
Do I keep it? yes
Can I use it? yes
Would I recommend it to fellow geeks? yes

The arrangement problem knocks it down a bit:
Is it now primary app for this task? no
Would I pay for it? yes, but not much (miss lunch at Wendy's)
Would I recommend it to my customers? yes, with reservations

With better arrangement, those would be:
yes, and other slideshow apps deleted from hard drive
yes, and low double digits, too (dinner at Red Lobster)
absolutely as the best one I know of

I think you are close to something commercially viable. Don't know if that's your goal. But I certainly appreciate your efforts.

Nelson37 · Member Joined: 14 Aug 2001

There appears to be a maximum import limit of less than 340 and greater than 230.

There appears to be a maximum encode size of less than 230 and greater than 180.

Resize keeps aspect ratio, but need an option to resize to full-screen view.

Still checking, some minor glitches but only one killer.

The re-arrangement method is simply not usuable for much over 20 slides.

BUT, the creatable transitions and animations make it worth further study.

tin2tin · Member Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Location: In orbit

Thanks for testing it!

This is just a quick reply, I'll look deeper into your thoughts later.

But concerning the re-arrangment of the images. Why don't you use copy/paste/cut to reorder the images? Cutting and pasting is pretty much the same as the menu-drag-and-drop idea. When pasting the images in the buffer(cut/copy) will be added above the first selected image(highlighted).

And using the '-' or '+' keys on the keyboard will move the images fast without using the mouse.

Tin2tin
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Render and Author DVD slideshows free: DVDslideshowGUI

Nelson37 · Member Joined: 14 Aug 2001

Cut and paste seems to work OK.

Am getting seemingly random issues with files being skipped. It is in the AVS script, I preview with VDUB before encode. Reboot seems to temporarily solve issue. Slides skipped will vary when the problem arises.

Increase thumbnail size needed, I suppose a 2-d grid would not be possible, eh?

ballywho · Member Joined: 22 Jan 2006 Location: South Australia

dupcak · Member Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Location: United States

I just downloaded this too (also about 2 weeks ago). I've been able to use it with some success but have had the following problems:

1) occasionally slides will show up in the resulting video as complete garbage. If I start the process over again, it will either be fine, or different slides will be messed up. Usually I can get around this by just doing 1 pass encoding - not sure why that works.

2) I can't get sound to work at all. As the doumentation suggests, I feed it a 44.1kHz wav file and while nothing chokes, there is absolutely no sound in the resulting mpg output.

Issue #1 is a minor annoyance for me.
Issue #2 is a major hassle - if someone can point me in the right direction for how to debug this, I would be grateful.

(Actually I could probably get around issue #2 if I could figure out how to mux the audio file with another process - however both of the DVDAuthor GUI's use mplex and that doesn't seem to be happy with the ac3 converted from the .wav used - there has to be another way)

liquid217 · google addict Joined: 21 Feb 2002 Location: United States

dupcak, 44.1khz is not dvd standard. mplex needs 48khz
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DVDAuthorGUI
http://www.videohelp.com/~liquid217/dvdauthorgui.pl

dupcak · Member Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Location: United States

ballywho · Member Joined: 22 Jan 2006 Location: South Australia

I had many issues with wav files and even getting the encoding part of the process working properly. I now have a series of settings I use for cretaing successful output. I am not sure if there is one of the settings I use that is un-neccessary but I can't be bothered trying without them.
One setting I stick by is that I save my wav files at 48kHz.

ducpak - Specifically on your problem of no sound. While learning how to use DVD Slideshow GUI I had crashed out so many times and created some really bad mpegs. Then I found that no sound was being added to my slideshows. I could not even create a 2 slide show with sound track. In the end I resorted to uninstalling the program and re-installing. This resolved the issue and I have not looked back.
Cheers ballywho

dupcak · Member Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Location: United States

@ballywho - Thanks! I had to uninstall and reboot (just a plain uninstall didn't work) and now I have sound.

ballywho · Member Joined: 22 Jan 2006 Location: South Australia

dupcak · Member Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Location: United States

I also played around with "Use VBR" and have sometimes unchecked that option. However my latest trick is to use just single pass encoding (uncheck the option for 2 pass encoding) This seems to give me consistently functional results.

Given that the "scenes" aren't really changing 1 pass should be good enough. The transition points are the only real change and depending on the transition type, you can't really tell how the encoding affects the quality. Of course I could be completely wrong about all of this.