Slideshow success story - WMM!!!!

[mpb]

I just had the easiest time ever of slideshowing!!!! And it worked with the most unlikely of programs: Windows Movie Maker.

I scanned and digicam-fed about 80 photos into my PC, and all of them had resolutions like 1780x2322 and 3032x2150 etc.

On a hunch, I ran Windows Movie Maker (XP Pro) and imported all the pictures. They kept resolution and aspect ratio. In the options, you can set the number of seconds to import them as video for. This is nice because when you choose your music, just divide the total number of seconds by the number of pictures you have, and set it to that many seconds in duration for each. My project worked fine at 5 seconds per picture.

I moved them all to the project bar, and then saved movie. Here was the best part: it allowed me to save this stuff as DV-AVI 720x480, and NOT in WMV! It was a perfect AVI! Razor sharp. The photos all maintained their own aspects, letterboxed and windowboxed as necessary in black. Usually in WMM, you can only save stuff as WMV. I think the DV-AVI option was there specifically because it was all digital image source. It's the same as if you feed DV-cam data into WMM with the firewire.

Windows movie maker lets you narrate the slideshow with your microphone, but I didn't use that function, since the client wanted music.

I then booted up TMPGEnc and NTSC-DVD template, and used the AVI from WMM as my video source, and used my audio music file as the audio source, and encoded to mpeg2. It worked perfectly. Authored in Ulead, burned with a data burning program.

The results were absolutely professional quality. The project planner that looked at my output to see if it would work remarked that he had paid quite a bit of money for inferior DVDs.

This was WAY easier than with the guides here, and provided absolutely top-rock quality. I can't write guides for shit, but if anyone can, they should put the Windows Movie Maker slideshow creation process into a guide and throw it into the how-to's here on this site.

fantastic!!! 8) 8) 8)

[Tommyknocker]

I drool. I cannot get my Windows Movie Maker to work to save me. I have tried system restore, updates, and anything else I can think of. I get as far as creating the movie and the program crashes hard. I am glad to hear about your success, though, I only wish I was as fortunate.

[FUNIL99]

Yes, I'm using this from 2 monhts and the result is very good, but remember to update to the last WMM using the Windows Update !

But sometimes WMM found one .MP3 audio files that is incompatible ( !! ), but I don't know why....

Funil99

[caresrg]

I realize this thread has been asleep for a long time, but yours was the post that came closest to something I'm trying to do. I've created a similar DV-AVI slideshow, albeit with ShowBiz. On your recommendation, I am trying to use tmpgenc to encode it, but I'm having trouble getting a DVD that will work.

My slideshow is only 7.5 minutes long, so DVD space is not an issue, and I'd like the highest quality video and audio possible.

My best attempt has worked on two different PCs and my Pioneer DV-414, but when I play it on my Panasonic DVD-RP62 (whether I'm using progressive output or not), you only hear a short blip of the audio about every 3 seconds. I've been using all of the defaults in the DVD wizard, with one exception: I chose Full Frame (keep aspect ratio).

What settings in tmpgenc do you recommend for my project? The same as in your post: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=147596? Will the audio and video be the best quality? Thanks for your help!