Checked out both ProShow Gold and MemoriesOnTV agains MyDVD4

[WeeJavaDude]

I have read a number of the reviews and comments on these products for slide show use and I thought I would through a few the forums way. I am currently looking for a slide show solution and these seem to be on the tope of everyone list. I would have to say that with my configuration I am not too impressed with ProShow and MemoriesOnTV.

I will start with the problems I ran into.

1) The MPEG2 that ProShow created did not work with DVDComplete. It caused DVDComplete to lock up. I have contacted the ProShow folks and I am assuming it is related to the encoder they use. I had a similar problem with an older version of TEMPGENC.

2) the same MPEG when placed into MyDVD, resulted in MyDVD rerendering the pictures.

3) Lasted verison of MemoriesOnTV did not run on my system. The 2.0.6 would so I used that.

Test:
Took about 80 digital pictures and created the MPEG2. I added the resulting MPEG file to MyDVD and produced a DVD. Played the DVD on a 60" Grand Wega II Sony. Great for bring the worse out of medicore material.

ProShow:
Picture quality was not was I would consider great. Found the pictures soft and not as sharp as the orginallys. It might be ok here, but compared to the slide show within MyDVD it was poor. I liked the transitions and loved the adjust to end of music feature. As you add a lot of pics to a project, it is very hard to rearrange. UI does not lend it self to that operation. Nice quality UI. Looks good. Has some usability issues.. Main issue here is the final product. the MPEG is very soft and there is no plug in or adjustments one can make.

MemoriesOnTV:
Picture quality was actually a tade sharper but no where near MyDVD's final outputs. UI was not as good as ProShow, but it does the job. THe panning on a large scale got me dizzy. It is cool at first but rubs off real fast and I woudl not use it.

MyDVD:
Pictures produced through this process where much sharper. Nice and clear. There was a jerky motion right before a transition that I found annoying. Also when the music stopped the picture quality went south. Looks like a bug to me. Also there 5.0 verison only works with XP at the moment. What is up with that?

Final Conclusion:
I am really looking for a slide show product whose output is MPEG2 not a final DVD. I like what ProShow offers, but the output quality will have to improve. Both ProShow and Memories picture quality was not high enough for me to go forward yet. I am still looking for a solution so I can use any DVD authoring product to produce the DVD.

Any suggestions are most welcome. I am thinking about moving to MyDVD 5 when it becomes available for 2000, but I would rather not have a solution that ties me to a DVD authoring package. Also, I am going to create a MPEG slide show with Adobe to compare against.

THat is my take.... I will update it if my opinion changes.

[DaveS]

I have used MOT and liked it alot. Your profile is blank so it's hard to know what your configuration is which you ref. Mpeg encoder in MOT seemed to work well for me - nice and sharp. You can turn off ken burns effect it you don't like it (unselect from the list) and can customize the panning for each shot if you like. MOT gives mpeg2 stream which you can author yourself in your package du jour. If you have licensed tmpgenc encoder, MOT can use that.

[maa]

Maybe you could test "Movie Maker Pro" from www.Magix.com
May be less well known but its an amazing package for so little $$

I know it can make mpeg stills - and DVDs - has stacks of other features!

[WeeJavaDude]

I have used MOT and liked it alot. Your profile is blank so it's hard to know what your configuration is which you ref. Mpeg encoder in MOT seemed to work well for me - nice and sharp. You can turn off ken burns effect it you don't like it (unselect from the list) and can customize the panning for each shot if you like. MOT gives mpeg2 stream which you can author yourself in your package du jour. If you have licensed tmpgenc encoder, MOT can use that.

I have a AMD 1GHZ machine with 512MB
Matrox RT2000 Card
Windows 2000 SP4 with Various software installed.

MOT is aware of the problem. They have a few reports. I got a reply to try a pre-release version to check to see if it works.

To give far weight to the picture quality, I am going to turn off the Ken effects and see if quality improves.

Like I said, I am using a 60" Grand Wega II LCD TV so softness really is apparent. This might not be the case on a 36" or 42" TV.

[WeeJavaDude]

I did another test and created a slide show with Vegas 3.0 to compare. This would be the same process as what MOT and ProShow does. I have come to believe that MyDVD output is in DVD Slideshow format. After this test and removing the Ken Burn effect on MOT I found that MOT was compariable to the output produced by Vegas 3.0. In my opinion it is still below MyDVD in picture quality but not by much.

[Lula1]

Hi,

I am also searching for the best application to make a slideshow that will come from about 1000 slides, that will have to be scanned through a HP Scanjet 3670.

I want to add background music for each group of slides and maybe also transitions.

I will make a menu with thumbnails linking to each group of slides.

Did you consider or test Ulead DVD PictureShow 2 and DVDLab ?

In any case, what are the best dimensions of images for a slideshow, when scanning the slides ? 800x600 ?

Thank's for any help.

[WeeJavaDude]

The slides where from mainly a 4 megapixel camera at highest resolution. I used the pictures as a test. Actually because of some issue with MyDVD, I did have PictureShow around and tried that as a test. If quality is your final goal, I would not suggest pictureshow 2. It is very nice and feature rich in terms of greating a fast DVD, but the quality is not there in the final slide. I saw a lot of jaggy edges. If they have a trial, I suggest you download and give it a spin.

I did not try DVDLab. I was mainly looking for a product that produced an MPEG2 file from pictures. I have adobe priemiere and I am going to give that a try along with CCE encoder to see how that fairs. Like I said.. MOT did a pretty good job with quality and so far that is the one I would recommend. Still waiting to hear from ProShow... I am interested in the 2.0 version to see if things have improved.

[ghosty6]

I use proshow gold and it is the best....for best quality turn off the anti flicker filter..that is what is causing your quality issues..

[mem_user]

I use Proshow Gold mpeg2 files with Movie Factory2, Ulead DVD Workshop and MyDVD 5 without having to re-encode. Also, get ready for the new version of Proshow Gold. Its coming soon. Lots of new features such as ability to import video, pan/zoom, DVD authoring, web shows and many more features and enhancements.

Jason

[WeeJavaDude]

Thanks for the suggestion ghosty. I will give it a try.

I use proshow gold and it is the best....for best quality turn off the anti flicker filter..that is what is causing your quality issues..

[WeeJavaDude]

Thanks for the suggestion ghosty. I will give it a try.

I use proshow gold and it is the best....for best quality turn off the anti flicker filter..that is what is causing your quality issues..

[noki]

WeeJavaDude
if video (ie Photo) quality is your priority, i would not do a movie slideshow. do a VCD Still (as opposed to VCD Mpeg) and the res should be 706 x 560, or something like that. no transitions, though. that would make it a movie (mpeg). and it would be on a cheap CDR playable on almost if not all DVD settops. think a 700M disc can hold...1,900+ photos if you must have mpeg2 (SVCD) res is only 480 x 480. big price to pay just for transitions. didn't you say quality was priority 1? i only have a 31" tv but the quality is very discernable. BTW my originals are tiff but convert to 800 x 600 jpegs for VCD Still.

[WeeJavaDude]

WeeJavaDude
if video (ie Photo) quality is your priority, i would not do a movie slideshow. do a VCD Still (as opposed to VCD Mpeg) and the res should be 706 x 560, or something like that. no transitions, though. that would make it a movie (mpeg). and it would be on a cheap CDR playable on almost if not all DVD settops. think a 700M disc can hold...1,900+ photos if you must have mpeg2 (SVCD) res is only 480 x 480. big price to pay just for transitions. didn't you say quality was priority 1? i only have a 31" tv but the quality is very discernable. BTW my originals are tiff but convert to 800 x 600 jpegs for VCD Still.

Well actually I put them on DVD so they are 720x480. Quality is a priority along with sound and effect. Want the presentation to look good. I am going to try the aniflicker change to see if that improves things. I have compared it to the DVD slide show format and MOT is pretty close. Hope when I change ProShow it will be close too.

[noki]

oh, i have music (mp3) on mine; just no effects. believe me when i compile the shows and give to my friends/relatives it a lot cheaper with CDR ($0.05 ea) than DVD ($1.50 ea). think i save about $50 per compilation after 2 comps i've saved enough for a new burner
quick math...
40 CDR copies....$2.00
40 DVD copies....$60.00

[WeeJavaDude]

oh, i have music (mp3) on mine; just no effects. believe me when i compile the shows and give to my friends/relatives it a lot cheaper with CDR ($0.05 ea) than DVD ($1.50 ea). think i save about $50 per compilation after 2 comps i've saved enough for a new burner
quick math...
40 CDR copies....$2.00
40 DVD copies....$60.00

I have done VCD slide shows and use Ulead PictureShow to do it.... I dont have that many copies I send out and I do like the fact that a DVDR will be more compatible than a VCD for my family. You are right.. a VCD slide show looks pretty darn good. Also, I like to include video and video on a VCD is not acceptable.

Does ProShow create a VCD in VCD format? I have mainly being testing the DVD (MPEG2) capabilities.

[WeeJavaDude]

ProShow
turned off the Antiflicker setting and the quality is much better. Going to run one more test tonight. Both MOT and ProShow are excellent after I got around some defaults.

MOT
I got a copy of a pre 2.09 release and it fixed my start up problem. Very nice product.

Post final results tomorrow

[WeeJavaDude]

Here are my final thoughts on both of these programs. I still have a few issues. But in general the products work as advertised.

ProShow
Once I turned off the antiflicker option, the quality was what I expected based on the reviews I have read. I did see some flickering now on pictures that have a lot of dark and light interaction, but I can leave with that. The ablity to streach the slide show to match the picture is very nice. I still have the problem where MyDVD seems to feel it should transcode the file when I have a long verison of the slides. I also am unable to import the results into DVDComplete. I hope this is fixed with the 2.0. The user interface is very snappy and I like the encoding speed.

MOT
Also a nice product. The UI is not has flashy but it does do the job. The output quality is on par with ProShow from what I could see. The encoding time compared to ProShow on my one sample project was much longer. Not sure why, but could be related to the encoding engine included in the products or maybe I accedently included some additonal pics into MOT. The lastest version they provided me did resolve my startup issue.

Overall Both products are good. I think I am going to wait until I can test ProShow 2.0 to see if the problem are gone. I really would like to use this product with DVDComplete so I hope I can. They definitely save some time if slide shows are your thing. I liked ProShow over MOT mainly for the encoding time and the UI. Both products would be a welcome tool in my bag of tricks.

[Lula1]

Both MOT and ProShow are excellent after I got around some defaults.

Can you detail, in the case of MOT, what default settings you have changed ?

[WeeJavaDude]

Oops... I kind of left that hanging.

I was refering to the anti-aliasing flag on ProShow as someone suggested. That was the main result for the softness in the pictures and once I turn that off the output was much better. In the case of MOT, the quality got better after disabling the pan and scan feature. Was no biggie for me because I found that feature rather annoying.

Both MOT and ProShow are excellent after I got around some defaults.

Can you detail, in the case of MOT, what default settings you have changed ?

[Lula1]

Hi guys,

Any updates on your experiences using MemoriesOnTV ( which now has a new version 2.1.0 with possibility to using your own TmpgEnc template ) and Proshow Gold ( don't think the new version came out yet) or any other good product to produce slideshows ?

[Lula1]

Hi again,

Proshow Gold version 2 is out.
Anyone used it ?
New features like Ken Burns effects ( panning and zoom ) are included.
Also ability to directly burn a DVD with simple menus.

I am particularly interested on your experiences with the new ( ??) enocder or encoding quality, which is said to be better than on previous versions.

[racer-x]

WeeJavaDude,

You said you have Premiere? You can't make a better slideshow with anything else. Read my guide and use Premiere. Make sure you encode the Mpegs in Progressive Format. It will give the best picture quality, especially when you hit the pause button. Images should be 720 x 540 (NTSC).

If MyDVD tries to render the files, get rid of it. Use DVD-Lab instead. Much better anyway.