Looking for the best program to put Photos onto SVCD

[ebturner69]

I do tons of digital photography and recently realized that I could put my photos on TV by burning a SVCD disk.

I have Ulead Moviestudio and it works good, but it takes a ton of time to setup effects between photos. Then I have to use TempEnc to convert the MPEG to the proper format for a SVCD.

Is there any quick & easy program that I can buy that would allow me to just pick the photos I want on the SVCD...and create the file (or even better...burn it too!)

Don't get me wrong, the Ulead software is great and has tons of features... But I just want something simple and quick...and all in one program!

Thanks!
Eric

[mikerios]

have you tried DVD Picture show also by Ulead?

personally right now I am experimenting with Video Vegas 3 and outputting to SVCD format and the result have ben very good, I like the fact that unlike DVD Picture Show I can vary each photo time on the timeline ( if i so want to ) rather than have one setting for all the photos, and add fade in/out ot photos and or music plus have video dropped in here and there and titles ect.. for effect.

[dgaulin]

Ulead DVD Pictureshow works great. You can download a trial version off their website. You cannot vary the timeframe of individual photos, but the software is easy to use.

[roefoes]

how big is it? mmm K56ers

[PhArAoH]

Ulead DVD Pictureshow will not allow you to add transitions between photos. Doing it in a video editor is a time consuming process as you have to manually add a transition to each photo. Imagine if you have 1000 photos!

The best thing I have come across is Slide Show Movie Maker. It is freeware and you can output your slide show to many video formats (provided you have video codec installed).
You can automatically add random transitions between photos.

Download it from http://www.joern-thiemann.de/tools/index.html


I hope this will help

[kwag]

Try the latest version of VCDEasy. I think it has support for stills creation.

kwag

[ebturner69]

Thanks for the great help!
I downloaded the Ulead PictureShow demo and its not too bad (but I miss the effects).
I'm going to try the Slide Show Movie Maker too...

Thanks again!
Eric

[GreenChicken]

If I understand your post correctly you are only wanting to put digital photography on a cdr so you can view them in a DVD standalone player in SVCD format.


Easiest fastest way


Get newest version of nero

open select new
select svcd
in the box copy and paste from the dir of choice
right click and select all files
then select how long you want the delay in each pic


pop it in the vcd\svcd\dvd player and watch

[GreenChicken]

After further review it works but you can only put like 99 pics on this,..... anyone know a way around this?

[e-z-e]

ulead picture show is excellent.

[GreenChicken]

ulead picture show is excellent.

Ya but it won't allow you to make but 3 slideshows with only 10 pics each in it.


A whole cdr for 30 images to watch on the tv seems a bit of a waste.

Thank you for your help though.


GC

[Brotherhifi]

The VERY best program to author stills by far is......(Drum Roll)

Vegas Video v3.0 with the mpg plugins by Sonic Foundry. I have done a few wedding projects lately, and this program is the best for Audio and Video. Unless you have unlimited time to use Avid Xpress 3.0, then Vegas is the Master. Very easy to pic out transitions, that look great! and you can author in VCD, SVCD, XVCD, Divx, DV, DVD, or any other unstandard format you dream up. Myself I don't even use the VCD capacity, I render to the new Divx Pro 5.0 and dist. the AVI on CDR, and run the results off my ATI File Player to an external SVHS VCR. Great results. (I've actually had clients offer more money to me than I charge? Cool or what?)

If your project is SVCD, then Vegas has a Template for that, then you'll need to burn with Nero, or VCDGui image maker, or the like.

You can get a trial of Vegas 3.0 on Bearshare or some of the other file sharing programs. The One I got, had the mp3, and mpg plugin' number generator by ZONE (Crack Club) More Info here.

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products/NewShowProduct.asp?PID=612
Sonic Foundry Vegas Video 3.0

Good Luck. Glenn

[Fred©]

Have you already tried FlyVCD? It has lots of effects to create slide shows in VCD and SVCD... very simple, light and good software to create MPEG video files from still pictures...

www.flyvcd.com

Fred©

[frison]

ulead picture show is excellent.

Ya but it won't allow you to make but 3 slideshows with only 10 pics each in it.


A whole cdr for 30 images to watch on the tv seems a bit of a waste.

Thank you for your help though.


GC

This is for the demo version only! In the full version jou can create 99 slideshows with 99 picture in it!

[mikerios]

Brotherhifi-

have you seen a vcd slideshow output from Video Vegas? I am not impressed, either that or there is some tweaking that needs to be done for it, but the SVCD outpuit for slideshows is very good, still manipulating images inside of Vegas ( especially when you got alot of them ) is not very intuative, Ulead DVD Picture show is easier to handle the slide show but lacks the transstions that Video Vegas can do, for a quick slide show DVD Picture show can't be beat, but Vegas will have it in flexiblity at a price, and that's time.

[PhArAoH]

mikerios,

Please tell me how to add transitions between photos in Video Vegas 3.
I have about 700 photos. I hope you're not going to tell me to do it individually for each photo! Is there an easy way to do that? So far, I haven't ben able to do it.

[mikerios]

well unfortunaltely Vegas is not really set up to do mass slide shows, probally a jpeg inserted into a mpeg stream here and there, transition are easy enough from simple fade from one jpeg to another ( and strething the box of each jpg determine screen time on the time line ) and then you can easily add text and other generated media or effect, but for 700 jpgs, I have yet to fully explore VV3 to see if they have batch processing like Soud Forge 5 does.

[RoopeT]

WinOnCD 3.8PE does excellent job crating photo CDs. No 99 picture limitation, menus etc. It's a VCD 2.0, but it doesn't matter as the VCD 2.0 supports 720x576 still pictures, so there's no advantage making an SVCD. Furthermore, it also plays on players not supporting SVCD.

You can even add background music (I've seen a guide for this somewhere).

[cheryl-anne]

uhm, I noticed all of you are saying "SVCD" , if you notice correctly, Ulead's program creates a VCD, NOT a SVCD, If I am wrong, where does it have an option for SVCD ?..... I have used this program several times at the office, and I have never seen an option for "SVCD"

you have 2 options available..... DVD or VCD.

I have seen multiple posts on this thread, and nobody has mentioned that......


Cheryl-Anne.

[AndyWatkins]

Cheryl-Anne,

DVD Picture show only does VCD 2.0 I don't know what resolution it does but the results are AWESOME. Much greater than I expected or have got from other VCD programs.

I just bought a new Nikon 995 e.e mega pixel camera, take pictures full resolution, look at them on 19" computer monitor. Then put them on VCD 2.0 and watch on old 29" Sony TV through DVD player results pretty much virtually the same, MUCH better than I had expected....

Andy




you have 2 options available..... DVD or VCD.

I have seen multiple posts on this thread, and nobody has mentioned that......

[afreitas]

Somebody could describe how programs like Ulead DVD Picture show make the slide show? Do they create a mpeg from the input images? If so, the slide quality wouldnt be worse than still images?

I think still images produce a lot better quality compared with mpegs, at least mines Maybe I wasnt able to setting right parameters in the enconde process to mpeg. But thats another story....

[Cooly-O]

uhm, I noticed all of you are saying "SVCD" , if you notice correctly, Ulead's program creates a VCD, NOT a SVCD, If I am wrong, where does it have an option for SVCD ?..... I have used this program several times at the office, and I have never seen an option for "SVCD"

you have 2 options available..... DVD or VCD.

I have seen multiple posts on this thread, and nobody has mentioned that......


Cheryl-Anne.

The Pictures in the Ulead PictureShow are of stills per VCD 2.0. They come out superior to VCD and SVCD motion. The stills on PictureShow are of the same quality as those possible with SVCD.

Per NTSC http://www.vcdhelp.com/svcd.htm
Extra :
Menus and chapters.
Still pictures 704x480,352x240

Per NTSC http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcd.htm
Extra:
Menus and chapters
Still pictures in 704x480,352x240

[mrbass]

I vote for ulead picture show. It can't be beat. If you go with transitions then you must encode video and you lose the nice resolution still images provide. Vegas video, flycd all seem to create video as far as I could tell.

here's my little page on Ulead PictureShow
http://www.mrbass.org/pictureshow.html

[cheryl-anne]

Hi MrBass ( giggle )

Thank you for your site, I copied it to my document folder on my computer so I can read it over more closely.

I love Ulead's program also, but it's a shame that you can't make a song keep playing after the photos are done with.

If you only for example have 20 images for an album, and place a .mp3 song to play with them, - the song will say play for only until those images are shown, then it just stops dead. They should implement a fade out routine or something.

I wish we have more control on the music aspect.


Cheryl-Anne.

[mrbass]

it'll loop endlessly. Good reason not to put music on the menus unless you find some humdinger of a song.

I've done 4 VCDs and always calculated it so the song would end precisely when the slideshow ended plus or minus 2 seconds.

[cheryl-anne]

Hi MrBass

ah ok, strange.

Let's say I create an album with only 4 images on it, and add a .mp3 song..... the song will in theory play only until the 4 images have been displayed.... then the song will stop.

are you saying that when you would do this the song would just continue on ? ... I have made quite a few discs and they all do the same thing, it's very annoying, you just start enjoying a song, - and then ding-dong, it stops, because there are no more images to display

Cheryl-Anne.

night night, I was just turning off my computer when your post came in

[zaqxsw]

Hi MrBass :-)

ah ok, strange.

Let's say I create an album with only 4 images on it, and add a .mp3 song..... the song will in theory play only until the 4 images have been displayed.... then the song will stop.

are you saying that when you would do this the song would just continue on ? ... I have made quite a few discs and they all do the same thing, it's very annoying, you just start enjoying a song, - and then ding-dong, it stops, because there are no more images to display :-(

Cheryl-Anne.

night night, I was just turning off my computer when your post came in
:-)

I find that Ulead does not give you control over this soft of thing. Try Slide Show Movie Maker (SSMM) it has lots more options, you can specify the number of frames it displays per picture. So to sastify your requirement you would specify enough number of frames on the last photo in the series for it to last the whole song. A quick calculation, 25f/sec*60 is the number of frames for a minute viewing. If you have a 3 minutes music clip, you would time this number by three. Another thing about ulead that I dont like, that you have to merge a couple of mp3 together for the music to last 99 photos, if you dont like one sone keep on repeating. With SSMM you can specify more than one mp3, it does the rest.

[Cooly-O]

....you have to merge a couple of mp3 together for the music to last 99 photos, if you dont like one sone keep on repeating. With SSMM you can specify more than one mp3, it does the rest.

What's a good way to merge songs together when you have to manually??

[mrbass]

your right it will end the song obviously. What I was referring to is if you have 30 images at 5 sec intervals. 30 x 5 = 150 seconds or 2mins and 30 secs. So if you mp3 song's duration is only 2mins and 15 secs then it'll start looping when it ends.

Usually I keep intervals between 4 to 6 seconds depending on the duration of the paticular mp3 and how many images I wish to include in a paticular slideshow.

[zaqxsw]

Another thing about ulead that I dont like, that you have to merge a couple of mp3 together for the music to last 99 photos, if you dont like one sone keep on repeating. With SSMM you can specify more than one mp3, it does the rest.

I meant WAV files not mp3 :) SSMM does not work with mp3