Alternative to ProShow Gold

[c_hernandez32]

I had been helping my father in law make DVD slideshows of the 5000+ pictures he had scanned. They are all high resolution Adobe Photoshop files *.psd (10MB or greater each). We had used ProShow Gold and TMPGEnc DVD Author for making the DVDs. But we had problems. Pictures/MP3s would not import and crash the program. This happened randomly and without cause. They only way to fix it was to reformat the PC. The PC is Gateway 3.0 GHZ, 512MB, WinXP SP2, 300GB HD, 150GB External HD, and a 200GB External HD.

We haven't been able to use Proshow for some time, and the support for Proshow is insulting (uninstall and reinstall). Is there a program that can handle high quality *.PSD files without taking forever or crashing. I haven't tried Ulead or MemoriesonTV but would like to get some info before downloading it. DVD burning could be done with author, but I need one that can convert to mpeg on the fly so I don't need to introduce another step.

[Bronx]

I have used Proshow Gold and TMPGEnc DVD Author to do the same and never had a problem.

How many pictures did you per slideshow?
What output did you select with Proshow?

[byteguy]

What version of ProShow are you using? There was at least one release that had trouble with large graphic files. Check with support and make sure you have a "good" release.

You might also want to run your graphics through a batch-convert (like IrfanView has) to make them smaller and turn them into JPGs. Unless you are zooming WAY in, 10MBs a picture is really much too big to be working with. Your computer is spending most of its time just moving data around and that can cause all sorts of problems.

[BJ_M]

never had a problem with it -- like mentioned , convert to jpeg or targa files with xnview or infraview and resize

[c_hernandez32]

Well the slide shows were limited to around 10 to 20 photos. And about 5 minutes of music each, just to be on the safe side. I wanted to keep the high quality images for future editing and cropping. I heard JPEG is a lossy compression and could result in quality loss. Sure I could resize and change them, but I wanted to avoid increasing the amount of photos, plus he has trouble remembering the steps.

I am using the latest one. Plus the program crashes with everything audio and photos. When I import into the timeline, the status bar will read 100%, but will never change. And if you try doing captions or deleting the song/picture Proshow will crash. I thought that it was spy/adware slowing things down, but have found nothing. He rarely downloads any thing on to his computer so I doubt it is a corrupt file or virus.

[budz]

I've used Pro Show Gold without any problems. I did a slideshow of my family with 265 photos with 7 different songs. All my images were scanned to JPEG format & I used Paint Shop Pro to resize the images. I've also used MemoriesonTV but had problems with getting the music to be in sequence with the pictures so I ended up using Pro Show Gold.

[BJ_M]

jpeg with a lossy format - but if you use lossless version or little compression - jpeg is very good ..

[ryan woo]

It is worth bearing in mind that if you are going to show this DVD slide show on a TV then you will never see the quality you would on a CRT Monitor as the resolution is much lower, so a 10 MB file is a waste of time in my opinion. If you drop the image sixe to about 700K or even 1MB if you prefer then this is perfectly fine for viewing on a TV.

My two pennies worth!

[kisrum]

I've used Memories on TV with modest success. The free trial will have a big logo in the middle of the image like proshow. Interface is a bit confusing. You CAN alter the display time of each picture although it takes some work figuring out exactly how. There was a post a few weeks ago about how it doesn't like pure black captions/titles. Crummy selection of menu templates but you can do that in TDA.

I haven't experienced the music sequencing problems but haven't pushed it very hard either. I usually drop the music in later after I've opened the vob from MOTV with mpeg video wizard. Get the mpg2 plugin, of course, which I think is $14.00 (US) more. Probably $53.00 for the whole package.

I think .jpg is fine for TV display.

[tdan]

It is worth bearing in mind that if you are going to show this DVD slide show on a TV then you will never see the quality you would on a CRT Monitor as the resolution is much lower, so a 10 MB file is a waste of time in my opinion.

Proshow actually encodes your photos down to DVD resolution when it creates the show. There is a checkbox (not near it now) somewhere that tells Proshow to additionally copy the original photo files to a separate data folder on the DVD in case you want to make prints, etc.

[byteguy]

Does it work if you just do the pictures and no audio?

What about if you just bring in one picture and some audio?

I always work with pictures only and add the audio later in my NLE. I did notice that Proshow has to convert MP3s in the background. It is SLOW doing it and gets upset if I push it.

Simplify the problem first. Try it with just the big pictures. If that doesn't work, try it with converted pictures. Your TV can't display that much information so you won't notice a loss of quality. I regularly use pictures that are only 1092x819 (less than 200K) and can pan and zoom them beautifuly.

[c_hernandez32]

I might have to reformat after all. Probably something is plaguing this computer. Though I've had this before. From everyones suggestions, I will have to convert them to JPEG and keep the originals in a seperate folders. As for the audio, the mp3's are 44.1 khz or 48 khz (would change back and forth). Most are mono and were recorded with Adobe Audition.

Proshow Gold freezes with any audio or pictures. Just adding one of either will cause the status bar to stay at 100% and never change after that. Before it was working perfectly, but now it will do nothing. I guess I will have to restore, install all necessary programs and burn a HD image onto DVD.

[yokey]

See if Photo2DVD will do what you want. It has a nice DVD slideshow function build in.

[terrypin]

[snip] I haven't tried Ulead or MemoriesonTV but would like to get some info before downloading it.

I have been using MemoriesOnTV, but be warned: the recently released update (version 2.2) not only retains the irritating bugs of its predecessor but has a very unstable burning program. Very much a backward step. And so far appallingly poor response from CodeJam.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

[BJ_M]

i tried out recently XATSHOW as an alternative to proshow ..

nice program -- not proshow in terms of effects, but some nice features ...

[Bjs]

Ulead picture show is great and dosent fool about with resizing the photos , and on a single dvd , I manage 5000+ pictures on (1) dvd .

Though why you are using the psd format might be half the answer , as I use only tiff , or jpeg images .

A freeware sollution is easyphototools

http://easyphototools.free.fr/

Has the same hangups as most products , so only import 20 or 30 pictures at a time into the project , or it too will lockup , but for the best part it dose a great job .