Which program to create slide show ?

[roberttz@attbi.com]

Hi,
I am interested in creating slide show of my JPG files and add background sound.
FlyVCD seems very good except the pictures look strached and not sharp
after I burn the VCD.
However the background picture I used in Nero 5.5 menu to burn the disk was excellent.

I tried MovieXone which has lots of features but it created AVI file.
I guess I could use TMPGen to conver it to MPG2 ?

To create XVCD do I just make sure that I use proper setup in TMPGEN ?

Are there any other slide show creation programs that creates MPG2 directly ?

I tried ULead photo show but trial expired and I just bought a new CD-R writer that finally seem to work with my DVD player. I was having a lot of trouble with my DVD player reading VCD however the new writer came with Nero5.5 and it works great for burning the VCD (SVCD did not work).
Thus now I am looking at good authoring program and then burn it as XVCD to get better resolution.

thanks
Robert

[dgaulin]

I have been using Ulead pictureshow and it works great. Once you are ready to burn a vcd however, check this website for compatible dvd players and be sure to use the right media. High speed rewriteables work the best.

Good luck

[Bodman]

Hi
Ive been using Ulead pictureshow as well and I found it to be mint. you can create different albums on the disk and add music as well.

//Bodman

[ahfairley]

WinOnCD lets you create slide shows with music in the backgroud. You can put multiple slideshows and choose via menu. I thought the pix were a little sharper than with the Ulead product. You can make slideshows with Nero, but can't add music.

BTW, it may be that by going to XVCD you may not get better resolution than VCD. As I recall VCD displays still images at substanitally higher resolution than it does video. I remember seeing somewhere inthe ULead documentation that you get the same resolution if you burn VCD or DVD. I'm not positive, so double-check.

What you don't wan to do, IMO, is to use a program like Premiere to convert you stills into video, I tried it and the quality was lower. You want to burn the images straight to disk.

Alan

[seandvd]

Where can you get WinOnCD? I did a search and couldn't find any valid links. Can you do cool transitions? I've been using Premiere only because of the many transitions available.

Thanks,

sj

[Blitter]

Ulead PictureShow is a pretty good option for you. The price is right and its simple and works as promised. Two things it will not do, however, is:
1) provide any fades, wipes between successive images
2) show thumbnail preview of an albums images

So it depends what you prefer. WinOnCD does do thumbnails of each picture in each album which is a nice touch, however, it is generally more of a pain to use than Ulead PictureShow.

Also, VCD stills are shown in the same size/resolution as the DVD slide stills... so it depends on what type of media your standalone can play and how many images you want to put on each disk. I put over 3,000 of my images on one DVD easily..with plenty of room to spare (with music).

[tvtuna]

I had good results with Pinnacle Studio Ver 7 (Available on EBAY for $25 or so).

It allowed me to do fancy transitions between pictures and to put more than the 99 limit of Ulead Picture Show. Adjusting where the music was in relation to the pictures was handy.

I adjusted the viewing times so the total would match the music. You can do this in fractions of a second, so it was easy to drop in an additional photo and shave some fractional time off of other pictures to keep the playing time the same.

It outputs in AVI, MPEG 1 or MPEG 2

[roberttz@attbi.com]

Everyone,
Thanks for the ideas.
I have another computer where I can try Ulead again.
I also will tryout Pinnecle since I am familier with their products.

Robert

[roberttz@attbi.com]

Hi,
Here is the update on my search for the slideshow software.
1) Ulead I could not run on another computer (I think the original download knew what type of computer I was using). I need to re-download and try install again.

2) Pinnacle: Unfortunately in the trial version you can not insert JPG files. Too bad because that would have been a good program to try. Why don't ULead just put some other limit and leave all feature accessible in trial ?
As it is I can't use the trial version to verify what I want to use the program for (creating the slideshow).

3) I found xatshow
By far I found this program to be better then all only drawback is no transitions, only 1 background music file and on my TV it leaves black bar on the right. All other features are so better that I may go with this program if I can't find anything else.

4) Niro5.5.9.0:
The slide show feature on this software gives the best picture quality I have seen so far. This is the picture quality I can live with (other than going DVD etc.). However this one has too many limitations, no bg. music, no transitions. It also creates thumb nails of first 99 pics. I haven't figured out how to use it since I have 400+ pictures. Anyone has idea on this pls. let me know.

Robert

[Yournewcar007]

Hello,

I have had great sucess with Slide Show Movie Maker- Pictures In Motion By Joren Thiemann. http://www.joern-thiemann.de/tools/ssmm/download.htm This program, will show pictures in either Jpg, bmp or Gif for your desired amount of time each, add transition effects and background music and process it into an *.avi file that you can encode with TMPGEnc. It works a lot better than some of the other programs out there, since it doesnt think about encoding, it just sticks to what it was created for: Making A Slide Show Movie. Alos, since it makes an *.avi file, you can encode it to any standard you want! Ie: VCD SVCD DVD CVCD XVCD etc. While this program has a lot of things to set in its main screen, it is suprisingly easy to learn, easy to use and makes great output! And the best part is:It Is Freeware!!!!!!

Hope I Helped!


Yournewcar007

[evil_jeff]

SSMM is okay but it just turns the pictures into a single avi (which you then have to convert -hassle!).
Is there not a quick method of putting the images onto a svcd as stills?

Even better would be a way of grouping the stills into chapters or something (i'm showing my ignorance here). Can that be done?

[hot_spur]

everyone is talking about Uleads dvd picture show or roxios winoncd 5. I've posted a few replys mentioning "pictures on cd & dvd" by magix.

I've used all three programmes and magix is by far the best.

Go to their website, choose your language and watch a tutorial. The trial programme does't unfortunately let you copy to a cd, however, it is well worth it....!!!!

http://www.magix.de/select.html

[evil_jeff]

I recently downloaded a trial of Uleads DVD picture show.. it seemed very straightforward... though it put me off when it crashed on a directory with a large number of pictures. Admittedly 13,000 images is a lot but the program says it can handle nearly 10,000 so its not completly OTT.

Also, i'm cheap. I'm not going to pay any money for something which isn't going to make me any in return. So its either gotta be free or something i can 'aquire' for free.

I'll try out Magix.