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  1. Folks

    I'm keen to produce slideshows of digital images and burn them to DVD. I have a DVD burner and I've tried to make slideshows with uLead PictureShow 2 but the background music does not play? Any thoughts on the best software to use to burn slideshows on DVD?

    Best, PRL.
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  2. Member
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    I have Pictureshow 1 and never had a problem with music. Have you looked into the problem at all?

    I now use Adobe Premiere and that allows me to create great slideshows with fancy transitions and music, etc. and I can integrate the slideshows with my home movies, which was something I couldn't do with Pictureshow 1.
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  3. Many thanks for the info - Unfortunately I've no idea how to investigate the no sound problem - I'll see if anyone can give me advice on this forum. I'll also take a look at Adobe Premier.

    Best, PRL.
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  4. using adobe premiere will be the best of course...
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  5. Does Adobe Premier cater for burning slideshows using a DVD burner?
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  6. If by "cater" you mean "does it hold my hand and make it foolproof for me to do" then the answer is no.

    The power is unrivaled, but as with anything else in life, there are tradeoffs. Unlike PictureShow, you can't just select a group of images and have Premiere build a show for you. You *can* import a group of images as source files into your project, but you will have to add them one by one to your timeline. If you want transitions (and there are *tons* of them available) you'll have to setup each of them, one by one.

    After you've created your movie you can then export it as an MPEG file for use in your favorite DVD authoring program (I use DVDLab -- nothing better and the beta for this $79 program is free for the downloading right now) but Premiere won't create a DVD for you, as it's not an authoring program (it comes with Sonic's MyDVD, a bunch of @!#$! if I ever saw one). In your authoring program you will need to create your chapter points for each slide if you want to be able to quickly skip back and forth to each slide (DVDLab makes this process painless as it will do it more or less automatically for you).

    In short, all of the automatic things PictureShow does for you you'll have to do yourself. In return you can control things *exactly*, and time out the music, sound effects, narration, etc. and it will be perfect. I use Picture Show when I just want to show my images off to people like I would a slide projector show -- I use Premiere when I want a presentation that doesn't require me to be around when people see it, or if I want a lot more polish and power. They are *very* different tools.
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  7. PictureShow 2 does all that you describe, transitions, and can import video, etc. to include in your slide show.

    Only thing I couldn't figure out was I had like 200 some odd photos in a slideshow that was 22 mins in length. I didn't want an .mp3 to keep looping. So I used audacity (free search google) to add fade in and fade out to each mp3 and combine about 5 or 6 mp3s into one huge .mp3 then simply imported that one into PictureShow 2.

    Biggest thing is you hit starting and it'll burn your DVD....Premiere won't.
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  8. Yes, as I noted, I use PictureShow 2 for simple slide shows.

    However, nothing can beat the power of Premiere with DVDLab to create custom shows that do exactly what you want (for one simple example, in PS2 you can't design your own menus, although you can use your own background images and choose from among the supplied templates). PS2 does what it does extremely well -- but it's very limited in what it does.

    Quite frankly, I don't know why *anyone* would burn a DVD with PS2 -- you can fit up to 1900 images on a SVCD with the same resolution. A show longer than that shouldn't be allowed, quite frankly -- it falls into the same category as cruel and unusual punishment <g>. And while you can include video clips (and thus might need a DVD for MPEG2) I really don't like the way PS does this -- you can't choose a starting image and are limited to what in most cases is just a black frame.

    Just read my tag and you'll see why I think there is no one solution for everyone's needs.
    "Like a knife, he cuts through life, like every day's his last" -- Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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  9. Member
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    What is the best resolution to scan Images for the building of a slide show?
    To burn on SVCD or DVD for display on a TV.
    Thanks
    Jim Clark
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  10. I recommend scanning at least twice the output resolution. So if you need 720x480, then scan at 1440x960. Typically I scan about 3x my final output.

    Overscanning gives you more pixels for touching up as well as improves the dust/hair grain issues when the images are downsized. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to scan *too* large as the images then become unwieldy and slow in various programs

    By the way, I want to apologise to Mr. Bass -- I see he was probably addressing his comments to the initial poster and not me. In that context, they make perfect sense.
    "Like a knife, he cuts through life, like every day's his last" -- Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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  11. Member
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    Originally Posted by mkelley
    If by "cater" you mean "does it hold my hand and make it foolproof for me to do" then the answer is no.

    The power is unrivaled, but as with anything else in life, there are tradeoffs. Unlike PictureShow, you can't just select a group of images and have Premiere build a show for you. You *can* import a group of images as source files into your project, but you will have to add them one by one to your timeline. If you want transitions (and there are *tons* of them available) you'll have to setup each of them, one by one.
    Have you tried using the Storyboard? It saves tons of time/effort for this. You can choose a default transition, import all the stills and then 'Automate to Timeline' and it will place all your stills on the timeline with transitions, all in the order you have chosen. Add your audio track and any titles and send it off to the encoder !! It's a really useful feature.
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  12. I haven't tried that "Automate to timeline" feature -- thanks for the heads up (quite frankly, we're pretty new to Premiere, having done all our previous editing in a high end NLE suite).
    "Like a knife, he cuts through life, like every day's his last" -- Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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  13. Folks

    Thanks very much for all the information and your thoughts. They have all been most helpful.

    I have produced my first slildeshow with Ulead's PictureShow 2 but the picture quality, when the DVD is played on my stand alone DVD player and TV set, is not quite as good as it could be. I get a slight flicker to the picture - almost as if it is moving up and down slightly. Any more ideas for me please?

    Best, PRL.
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  14. There is a well known flicker problem when making DVDs -- you can look for threads on the Ulead forums here:

    http://news.ulead.com:8080/~Webutilities/newuser

    My advice for now is to create VCDs which do not have this problem (and have the same effective resolution as long as you don't use transitions).
    "Like a knife, he cuts through life, like every day's his last" -- Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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  15. Greetings mkelly,

    "Unlike PictureShow, you can't just select a group of images and have Premiere build a show for you. You *can* import a group of images as source files into your project, but you will have to add them one by one to your timeline. If you want transitions (and there are *tons* of them available) you'll have to setup each of them, one by one."

    Oops - learn to automate to timeline and save yourself tons of time - even adds your transitions automatically! This is really an amazing feature. I regularly create 500-200 image slideshows without any problems.

    Cheers.
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  16. Thanks, Raf1. If you look earlier in the thread, one of the moderators gave me this same (good) advice.

    Learning Premiere is one of those "roundtoit" sort of things I definitely need to do -- isn't it always axiomatic that we are too busy trying to get the work out the door to learn our tools?

    So much software... so little time.
    "Like a knife, he cuts through life, like every day's his last" -- Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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  17. Hi mkelly,

    Amen to "so much software, so little time"! I know what you mean as I just started the TotalTraining AE 5.5 Production Bundle DVDs. I'm sure many of us find ourselves in the same boat - these software packages are so powerful, just scratching the "feature" surface allows us to create strange and wonderful things. Any you're right, there are many "roundtoit" opportunities out there - I thought I was fairly knowledgeable with AE until I started the TT DVDs - I realized that I haven't even covered the basics that well. Hang in there and thanks for your reply.

    raf
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  18. movie factory 2 makes perfect slideshows and there are no flicker and music can be MP3 or wav, add your own background music and photos for the menu's also.
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  19. Folks

    This flicker problem - does anyone know a SIMPLE program such as Ulead Pictureshow 2 that does not produce a flilcker when a DVD is burned?

    PRL
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  20. PRL,

    Let me clarify what I said earlier: if you use PictureShow 2 to produce a slide show VCD, you will not experience any flicker problem. It's only with DVDs (and they *are* working on it, although no fix yet -- you can visit the Ulead board and see what the status is by going here:

    http://news.ulead.com:8080/~Webutilities/newuser )

    As I mentioned earlier, I don't think there's a compelling reason to make a DVD for simple slide shows, *unless* you need transitions (ah, but then it's no longer a simple show, right?) Transitions force MPEG, and thus cut the resolution in half (on a VCD, which can only do MPEG1 -- they can display stills at the MPEG2 resolution, however).

    Otherwise I'm with the other poster -- Ulead's MovieFactory is about the only alternative out there right now that meets your requirements.
    "Like a knife, he cuts through life, like every day's his last" -- Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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  21. Member
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    Originally Posted by mkelley
    Thanks, Raf1. If you look earlier in the thread, one of the moderators gave me this same (good) advice.
    I'm actually not an assistant moderator. I wrote it as a bit of cheek toward the mods . I'll change it in case anyone else thinks I'm one
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  22. Well, *I* don't care <g>.

    It was actually much easier to refer to you as a mod rather than trying to remember (puzzle) your tag out -- I'm sure I would have misspelled it.

    (But anyone living in the mother country is all right with me :>)
    "Like a knife, he cuts through life, like every day's his last" -- Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
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  23. Member
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    The tag is actually from quick and easy keyboard strokes on the left side of the keys q1 aq za. I'm lazy and it's easy to type!
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  24. I use Ulead picture show 2 to make VCD slide shows. The picture (JPEG) quality is not lost unless you add transitions and effects. With transitions and effects it will have to render the pictures to a VCD format which is probaly much less resolution the the base jpeg. So I don't add trasnsitions. If you burn on a DVD then the rendered quaility would be much better and the picture better preserved with transitions.

    For music I add MP3 files with the fade in/out feature. The highest bit rate I have tried is 192Kbs.

    Menus are kind of week but adding music and a background picture is a plus. I tried adding the slidshows to Ulead movie factory 2 which has better menu control but couldn't get it to work yet.

    Anyway for simple slide shows with music picture show 2 is quick, good, and easy to use.
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  25. I forgot, I've used movie factory 2 to make slide shows also. It doesn't have as many features as PS2 like no music fade in/out. But also easy to do.
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