Optimisation for photos on DVD

[bananadude]

I am putting together a DVD showreel for a photographer friend of mine, and I'm just wondering the best way to optimise the photos for display - or if it even matters?!

Basically, we want to create a video with the photos zooming in slightly, fading up and out, music etc. so the best way I can see to achieve this quickly and effectively is in Sony Vegas or Premiere. This just means bringing in the photos as Project Media, dropping them in the timeline, applying the fades, adding music etc. and rendering out the project as an MPEG2 and then creating the DVD from this.

Is this OK? I'm worried the images aren't going to look as good as they can, but I guess with DVD there is always going to be some loss in quality. I just want them to look as good as possible. Any advice? Thanks

[kingsley]

I use Pro Show Producer very good programme but very easy to use. Add your photos mess about with fades and effects then add your soundtrack then click sync audio to slides and it sorts all times out. Think maybe with Vegas will be very time consuming

[Noahtuck]

Yep,
proshow gold or producer, i've used both for making nice slideshow's to add to video dvd's through my authoring program.
I have been using photodex programs for years and years, cpic is one of my all time favs

Tons of transitions, effects, text/wording effects, add music, sync music, ect ect ect, They can be rendered and output in many diff. formats, incl. mpg2

And no matter how hi res the photos are, they will always be resized down to dvd video specs, that is if you want them to play on a standard dvd player.

And will absolutely be easier and faster than with vegas.

[bananadude]

Actually, I did it already with Vegas. Quite easy actually, although what i was doing was fairly simple.

Main question was just about the res and quality, but it makes sense as you say that no matter what you do or how you do it, it will be sized down.

[bananadude]

Posting here again because I'm getting some problems with the images when I put them to DVD. I am doing a slight zoom on them, and in doing so the images are 'flickering' - by that I mean any areas of the image where there is lots of detail or a pattern, they 'shimmer'. Is there any way to avoid this??

[Safesurfer]

I find with photos you will get flickering in the fine details on TV. The best solution I've found is to apply a very small vertical only gaussian blur to the images before rendering to MPEG2. This will soften the images, but should do away with any flickering.

[Captain Satellite]

Another Proshow Gold user here - love it!

[kingsley]

I know that proshow as an anti flicker option that you tick before render, not sure with vegas

[outerspacerace]

Bananadude, in Vegas this can be solved easily luckily.

Just select everything on the timeline, right click, go switches, reduce interlace flicker.

If you read the help file in Vegas (search by reduce interlace flicker) it gives a nice explanation of what is going on.

This thread also has some very helpful information indeed;

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/photo-dvd-maker-anti-flicker-filter-t333629.html

Getting more technical now and off track a bit - I'd love to know what the actual changes Vegas applies when reducing interlace flicker are.

I guess it's a slight blur along the lines of what DVD slideshow GUI creates, which is discussed in depth in the link above.

I use Vegas mostly as my slideshows are very basic (fades only) though if you wanna get fancy DVD Slideshow GUI seems pretty cool and it's free!

The only downside, was on the default setting the test render produced from the same stills wasn't up to par with Vegas. It was considerably duller and lacking in contrast. To be fair however, I hadn't manually configured the encoder - and again it's free

BTW using this method in Vegas I've tested on everything from old 4:3/widescreen CRT's/plasmas/monitors and it always removed the flicker without sacrificing image quality much at all.

The only unit so far that still shows flicker is my brother's new Sony Bravia 40 inch XBR LCD TV. But then again, it also does this slightly on HDTV streams from the built in tuner on certain scenes - so I'm assuming this has to do with internal processing going on in the TV.

If for example you change the mode to something like "game" or "movie" etc it's fine, or put it to interlaced rather than progressive.

Anyway off track I know, just use reduce interlace flicker in Vegas and I'm sure you'll get good results on the highest number of TV's.