Resolutions of Scanned Pictures - Very Confusing

[GHZpc]

I've got quite a bit of experience with resolutions. But most of my experience has come through editing video, not just pictures.

I would like to take several pictures of various sizes (such as 6*8, and 3.5*3.5), and put them into a slideshow.

I realize that it would it probably is not possible to make this slideshow fullscreen, considering the pictures are soo small and they would have to be 352*240 to begin with right?

So Basically, my problem is that I do not know the best method of scanning and resizing the pictures. If anyone could offer some advice, that would be great. I'm doing this for my brother's wedding and I'd like it to look somewhat nice. Thanks.

And yes, I know there are tutorials on vcdhelp.com about this but they didn't get me far. In fact, I'm more concerned about the resizing, resolutions, and scanning aspect of this because I do not plan on converting them into an mpeg. Instead, I am going to use a dvd player that reads jpegs and then hook up a seperate audio source to the dvd player.

Thanks if you can help!!!!!!

[Karate Media]

I recently bought a second DVD player (Mintek 1600) that plays jpeg slideshows. All of the pictures I've tried on it were taken with a digital camera 1600x1200 ppi, and the player sized them for 640x480 automatically -- it didn't cut off 960 pixels horizontally or 720 pixels vertically - it just made the pictures fit the smaller dimensions.

Stop me if I'm misinterpreting your question...(which is by all means possible)

I would assume that you could scan in your pictures at any resolution and then simply crop them to be in a 4x3 ratio. It could be 1600x1200 or 640x480, just as long as the width to height ratio is 4x3. Alternatively, you could add white (or black) space to the edges to create the 4x3 ratio.

My experience watching jpegs on a DVD player is limited to my mintek, but I've seen the same rule apply to video editing programs such as Premiere -- the app always adjusts the source to fit the output, as long as it's in proportion so things don't get stretched out. If you want to be careful, make the final jpegs 640x480 in resolution, but I really don't think it will matter.

[mkelley]

Let me give you a different take.

First of all, there are in general two ways of addressing the "size" involved in scanning. There is a inches measurement, and there is a pixels measurement. Forget completely about inches -- that's really only relevent in the print world (and not too useful there, because then we need to consider resolution).

Far better to think in terms of pixels. In this case, we want to end up with (as the previous poster mentions) pixels in a TV ratio. Specifically, we need 720 x 480 pixels for NTSC.

In order to do this we want to scan at as high a reasonable resolution as possible. Why scan higher? Because we will then resample down which will minimize dust, scratches, etc. A rule of thumb is to scan about two or three times the final resolution. I wouldn't scan any lower than around 1440 x 960, IOW (and higher is better).

Now there's one more "catch": there are "square" pixels and there are "rectangle" pixels. In reality, to preserve the proper aspect ratio you really need to scan at a slightly different resolution and then readjust it to make it look correct for TV, but I'm just about out the door for the rest of the day and can't dig up the right numbers. If you really want to get things right I'm sure someone will jump in here and supply them.

[Karate Media]

I agree w/ mkelley -- higher resolution is better. Based on my experience (limited it may be compared to his), though, don't worry about 720x480. As I said, the jpegs I looked at were 1600x1200 ppi and every picture looked normal. That could just be a function of the Mintek, or it could be true across the board...

But -- In the video work I do, I often use stills taken with this camera and I never touch the resolution (they are all taken at 1600x1200) and if I crop them, the only thing I worry about is keeping them in a 4x3 ratio. They always work fine when broadcast on TV, so I'm really doubting that you need to think about 720x480.

That said -- do you have access to the DVD player now? Try 1600x1200, try 640x480, and try 720x480 jpegs -- your real-world results will mean much more than what I (or anyone) will say about the matter.

Also- what size TV will you be watching the DVD on? Remember to compensate for that as well.