Starting up business need help w/pic DVD

[goirish!!]

I have a start up business where I take peoples photos and transfer them to DVD w/music. I am running Ulead MF2 and am having some serious issues with photo resolution.

As a test I have been burning CD-RW VCD shows. Some photos look great others are crap. Here is my issue. The photos look over saturated in some and in others they are "hollow" looking. I use Photo Elements 2.0, Photo Shop 7, all the best rendering software I can find. On my computer they look great but once they are moved to video and to my Mitsubishi the quality drops fast.

What am I missing? I have no drops in music, no transition issues, just photo quality.

I am using an Epson 2450Photo scanner plus the desktop set up listed above.

Please help, I have a meeting in three days with a potential client and am no where near ready.

BTW - I have been "lurking here for over two months just reading and trying different things so please don't tell me to read the forum. Most of what I have tried is from reading and I'm just at a sticking point.

[pixieboy]

If your editing photos etc then you need a decent quality CRT and you need to ensure the CRT is correctly configured ie contrast etc. BEFORE you start editing.
Its quite common for people to spruce up photos on their PC, "making" them look good only to find when viewed else where the quality is rather poor. This is all because their monitors are either poor quality or incorrectly configured. I cant remember the names of the top off my head but there are some utilities about which will help in setting up a monitor and adjusting it correctly. Perhaps somebody can remember or you could use a search engine.

[goirish!!]

If your editing photos etc then you need a decent quality CRT and you need to ensure the CRT is correctly configured ie contrast etc. BEFORE you start editing.
Its quite common for people to spruce up photos on their PC, "making" them look good only to find when viewed else where the quality is rather poor. This is all because their monitors are either poor quality or incorrectly configured. I cant remember the names of the top off my head but there are some utilities about which will help in setting up a monitor and adjusting it correctly. Perhaps somebody can remember or you could use a search engine.

I agree about the need of calibrating a monitor, however, I am running a Viewsonic LCD that is running a good color setup. I really think that the problem lies in the rendering software. All photos I print are fine so I doubt this is my problem.

[Gees]

Just wondering if I read right - have you tried a DVD version yet? I'd want to eliminate the possibilty that the VCD version is causing the low quality.

If you aren't able to hook a TV monitor to your PC, to view final outcome before burning, you could burn to a RW disc first as a test.

But being able to view each photo as it would appear on TV is the best option because you could then edit any that need more work before you move to other stages of production.

[vance43211]

i use pinnacle expression to do what you are doing

and i have great pictures and sound on my vcd's

why waste a dvd

you would probably need a million pictures to fill it up

[lordsmurf]

Hook up TV to PC, but test PC output with DVD-ROM and tv with DVD player to ensure like gamma/color/contrast. Use same DVD movie.

Run NTSC filter on images in Photoshop.

Use the ADOBE 98 color management. There's also some tv managements, but I don't use them, so can't help you much with them.

Get a good monitor, preferably SAMSUNG or SONY. Those two companies invented most of the parts found in most monitors/tv's.

Remember DVD is 720x480, but images are 720x540 in aspect. Size images to proper aspect, else they will come out funny looking on DVD.

[Gees]

Vance, the post said the business was transfer to DVD so my thinking was to test what results the ultimate end product would show.

Lordsmurf, great points about filters and aspects - if the DVD is for U.S. viewing. I use PAL settings (720x576, pal colours), goirish! may as well, so they'd need to keep that in mind.

[lordsmurf]

Lordsmurf, great points about filters and aspects - if the DVD is for U.S. viewing. I use PAL settings (720x576, pal colours), goirish! may as well, so they'd need to keep that in mind.

Change accordingly. Use PAL ratio and PAL color filters - you'll have to look for the Photoshop one, as I know my Video filters in Photoshop do not have PAL. You don't want un-broadcast-able (is that a word?) colors on screen. They'll go awry.

[flaninacupboard]

you don't need to prcoess PAL for that. it's only NTSC that can't produce some colours on a TV screen.

[lordsmurf]

you don't need to prcoess PAL for that. it's only NTSC that can't produce some colours on a TV screen.

Didn't know that. Interesting.

Hey, what's up with you and TGPO? That's funny. Sort of.

[tygrus2000]

Sounds like its just the nature of the digital photos themselves that is the problem, not anything else you are doing. Digital pics are notoriously "flat" looking and sometimes with weird color schemes, some are over enhanced, the next ones will be washed out giving you varying results. Unless you want to spend a bunch of time digitally touching up the photos your quality is probably going to only be as good as you see now.

Encoding down as far as VCD bitrate is gonna pull out even more quality from the original. Use a good encoder such as Mainconcept so the quality is not lost.

There is a program called DCE Autoenhance by Media Chance that I use to quickly adjust digital pics in sharpness, color, satuturation and color cast. Photoshop will do it for you too, but it takes a PHD to run that thingI find. In DCE AutoEnhance, two clicks and you are done. Maybe you want to use that as pre processing for the digital pics. All digital pics require some sharpness, color and levels adjustment after they are downloaded.

[vance43211]

i use pinnacle expression to do what you are doing

and i have great pictures and sound on my vcd's

why waste a dvd

you would probably need a million pictures to fill it up

expression leaves the quality the same as the original picture

in it's vcd slideshow

they don't downgrade it like you would a movie

because there is plenty of space on that cd for pictures and there is no reason to.

a lot of program reencodes the picture like you would a movie

expression do not