Please help select software for photoalbum/slideshows

[zeroknots]

I would appreciate help selecting a software package. I want to create slideshows that I can watch on my regular 32in. TV using my DVD player.

I've seen some pretty good programs but none that will do all that I want.

I want:
The best picture quality that a regular Sony Trinitron will show (I want it to look as though my digicam was connected directly to the TV).
A menu for different slideshows.
Background music for both menu and slide shows.
Control of more than 1 song for long slide shows.
Control of all transitions within a slideshow.
Control of photo delay time of each picture within a slideshow.
Storage of all original digital pictures on same disc.

And if possible, I would like to manually click through the pictures if I'm trying to find a particular section of the slideshow.

Any recommendations, comments, or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ron

[wzabawa]

I would really like to 2nd that request, as I am up in the air on any software now. I've tried and or bought the following:

Magix - Picture to CD/DVD - (bought it) almost all features as listed, except, picture quality of a VCD SUCKS, due to the transition effects (lower resolution required for some reason?), don't think you can store original pics also. Other than the quality, I really liked it.

Ulead - DVDWS - trialed it - picture quality is great, no trans effects (ok without though), cannot store photos (ok though), problems with pictures being "chopped" or "blocks" removed (see my post here: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=132612 any advice would be appreciated). Also a downside is only 1 song per title.

Tried a few others, and my bottom line is, I DONT KNOW? I don't think you'll get the trans effects and pic quality togethor. Thought DVDWS would be the ticket, until I got the picture problem I did (price is kind of steep though).

So I would really like a suggestion also.
Thanks, ahead.

[aubrey_q]

I've been doing nothing but DVD slideshows this past three weeks with Pinnacle Studio 7. I use it to create the slideshows and use other software to author/burn the DVD.

Although Studio 7 is oriented for video editing, I've made excellent slideshows and have received great compliments from family members.

Launch Studio 7 and go into edit mode. Then go to the frame grabs/stills menu and open the folder where your images are. Select the stills you want by clicking Edit - Select All or by "shift-selecting" a group of stills. After they've been selected drop them into the storyboard view. Then go to the transitions menu and add transitions between each still. Each still is by default 4 seconds long, but you can increase that. Add titles in the beginning/end or in case there is a change of theme or pace. Finally, you can add background music that will adjust to the length you tell it to (SmartSound), always finishing in a natural beat but not necessarily fading out, which you can do if you want to. You can also add MP3s and fade them in/out if you need to.

When you are happy with your project, you can either export it as a DVD compatible MPEG-2, or as an AVI that you can re-encode to MPEG-2 with TMPGEnc or other software. Studio 7's MPEG-2 encoding default is set to 6000kbps video bitrate and I believe 224kbps audio. You can always select a custom MPEG setting and increase audio to 384 kbps.

Use your favorite DVD authoring software. So far I've used DVD Movie Factory 1.0 with latest patch, Sonic MyDVD 4.0, and NeoDVD. Please note that authoring/burning software often re-encodes your video to ensure DVD Video standards compliance.

A note about why I recommend Studio 7 (with the latest patch) and not Studio 8: Studio 8 so far does not allow me to "shift-select" a group of stills. You either Select All or drop stills one at a time. However, Studio 8 has DVD authoring while Studio 7 does not.

For zeroknots:

The best picture quality that a regular Sony Trinitron will show (I want it to look as though my digicam was connected directly to the TV).

As long as the images are at least 640x480, they'll look good.

A menu for different slideshows.

Any authoring software that can create sub-menus (Sonic MyDVD is one of them) can take care of that.

Background music for both menu and slide shows.

Again, authoring software will take care of menu music (except perhaps NeoDVD) and Studio 7 will give you music on the actual slideshows.

Control of more than 1 song for long slide shows.
Control of all transitions within a slideshow.
Control of photo delay time of each picture within a slideshow.

Studio 7. I have a question though: When you say control, do you mean control as when creating it or control by the end user when watching it?

Storage of all original digital pictures on same disc.

I'm stumped on that one. Don't know if it can be done.

And if possible, I would like to manually click through the pictures if I'm trying to find a particular section of the slideshow.

Well, this is DVD Video, which you can scan forward or back, as well as pause and do frame advances.

I don't know if I wasted my time, but zeroknots, do you have a DVD burner, or were you asking about VideoCD (VCD)? In any case, you can always tell Studio or TMPGEnc to encode it on VCD compatible MPEG-1.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[huiwinsun]

You can also try out winoncd 6 power or dvd edition. Regarding long slideshows, u can create a long mp3 by stringing a couple mp3 together using <mp3 merger> (freeware) and add to the slideshow... Thanks.

[G-man]

If you are burning to a CD (VCD format), then you will probably not find anything that can do fancy transitions and also give you a hi-rez picture. Ulead's DVD Pictureshow gives hi-rez pics, but plain transitions. It does most everything else.

If you are burning to DVD, you can use freeware called Slide Show Movie Maker
( download at http://www.joern-thiemann.de/tools/index.html ) to
take pictures and convert them into a DVD (720x480) resolution AVI file with many selectable transitions. Has lots of features and options like text captions and background music.

Once you have the AVI file you can encode it into DVD MPEG2 format using something like TMPGEnc or DVD Movie Factory and burn it to a DVD.

[G-man]

The latest version of Ulead DVD Pictureshow, just available for trial on the Ulead website now supports fancy transitions and wil do SVCD quality on CD & DVD quality on DVDs. This is probably as good as you are going to find.

[hwoodwar]

Zeroknots:

G-Man: Mentioned Ulead DVD PictureShow 2. It looks like it can do most, if not all of what you want. Here is a link that describes many of the features you asked for:

http://www.ulead.com/dps/DVD%20PS%20FB.pdf

Like G-Man said, you can download a demo.

[LuckyLu]

I have evaluated Ulead DVD Picture Show v2.0. Although it produces VCDs with great image quality (MPEG stills with NO transitions), multiple slide shows with menu and background music (different music for menu and each slide show - nice!), it has several defficencies:

1. The viewer has ABOLUTELY no control during slide viewing:
"PAUSE", "FF", ">>|", "FR", and "|<<" do NOT function.
2. The menu does not wait infinitely for viewer selection - first
slide show automatically starts after music ends or some unknown
time delay.
3. Several bugs which caused program to crash, especially when
using any preview function.

Does anyone know of any (x)VCD authoring software (SVCD will NOT play on my Samsung DVD-N501 player) that wil produce photoalbums/slideshows with the following criteria?:

Absolute Requirements:
1. High image quality (MPEG stills, NOT video)
2. Good DVD player compatibility
3. FULL playback control: PAUSE, NEXT SLIDE (or FF),
PREVIOUS SLIDE (or FR)
4. Multiple slideshows with menu

Nice (but not necessary) Features:
5. Background music for slideshows and maybe menu
6. Transition effects

[tobee]

Why not to try Photo2VCD Professional from http://www.photo2vcd.com? It can do what you need. And it's very easy to use.