What is best way to get high quality DVD slide show?

[jbaugh]

Pardon this very basic question.
I have a large collection of high resolution scanned photos that I want to convert to
DVD slide shows. What is the best way to do this so that when viewed on a TV screen
the best quality video will be preserved?
Right now I am dragging a folder of the scanned slides (99 at a time) to iDVD and burning
just as a slide show. The video when viewed on TV screen is not nearly as sharp as it is
when viewed on my 21 inch LCD display.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
John

[DanSlagle]

They never will look as sharp until you can burn an HD-DVD. Best program IMO is Photo to Movie. Best sub pixel rendering I have seen besides Final Cut Pro.

[jbaugh]

"Best sub pixel rendering I have seen besides Final Cut Pro."

Are you saying that I would get better results by inserting each of the photos into FCP, exporting to QT and then buring the QT movie in iDVD rather than dragging the files directly into iDVD? If this is the case, what about doing this with FCE HD? The software I am currently using includes FCE HD and iDVD. Thanks.
John

[NightWing]

Which version of iDVD are you running? What is the TV? Size, etc.

Did a test for a friend using 5 and look good on his 60" Samsung DLP unit.

[Wile_E]

Unfortunately, MPEG2/4 compression was not made to show still pictures, only moving. I've tried DVD slideshows too, but I always saw artifacts in the pictures and poor quality pictures. The transitions between pictures always looked fine, but the pictures themselves would have random jiggling/shaking spots in them.

A better way to show a slideshow of still images, is to get a DVD player that can read JPG files. I bought a Panasonic DVD-S47. I put all my JPG's on the disc, plus a few MP3 files for the music. This DVD player allows you to start the music, then show each JPG in a slideshow. The only problem is the picture resolution has to be no more than about 1024x768, or it takes too long for the player to show each picture.

[jbaugh]

Which version of iDVD are you running? What is the TV? Size, etc.

Did a test for a friend using 5 and look good on his 60" Samsung DLP unit.

I'm using iDVD 4.01 at the moment, until I purchase my new destop PM.
I have a 28 -30 inch JVC TV. But since I want to share the DVDs with other family members, I can't control the display device.

The output quality is not terrible. It is just not nearly as sharp and fine details are not seen on the TV compared to my LCD flat screen monitor. For example, objects with text are clearly readable on my monitor but vague and unreadable when output to TV from DVD.

Most of the images are between 800 Kb and 1.5 Mb in size.
Will I get better final image display if I process these still images through FCE or some other program (Photo to Movie was mentioned) before processing with iDVD. And would there be advantage in final image quality if I switched to DVD Studio Pro for making slide shows?
John

[NightWing]

I used 5. I am not at all knowledgable with 4 but 5 looks like it does its stills with "menus backgrounds" And for transition then switches over to video.

His photos were about that size...

Just for giggle have you tried your test disk on a different set top player. Have often over the years notist different quality playback of still immages on different units.

[Frobozz]

I suggest resampling the photos to 640 X 480 resolution before dragging them to make an iDVD slide show. As it is, iDVD is doing the resampling and it's my belief that a photo editing application will do this at better quality.

I've made DVD slide shows with Toast 6 from medium-resolution images and think they look very good. The complaints I typically read are from people using high resolution originals. That's why I think the resampling is the source of the quality problem.

The DVD slide show you are making is higher quality than making a slide show movie. So you're on the right track.

[terryj]

Most of the images are between 800 Kb and 1.5 Mb in size.
Will I get better final image display if I process these still images through FCE or some other program (Photo to Movie was mentioned) before processing with iDVD. And would there be advantage in final image quality if I switched to DVD Studio Pro for making slide shows?
John

Man...we're kinda getting away from one small thing here:
These images are being displayed on TV. The norm for analog TV is 72dpi.
Anymore dpi than that is just wasteful and gets tossed out.
( DVDSP3 VQS,Martin Sitter, p.73, among others).
At 1.5mb files, I'm guessing you either have higher in your dpi
than you need to be, or your size of your images is greater than 4:3.

The optimum you want to shoot for is 720 x 480 ( NTSC DV or 4:3)
with a dpi of 72. Once your photos are set to that, the DVD player will,
like Frobozz said, do any resampling necessary to get it to fit to yor tv.
The closer you work to 4:3 will cause you the least re-sampling.
At 720 x 480, on a computer's dvd player, ( ie. a mac) for example,
would re-sample to 640 x 480, but you would be ok because the
"universal law of dpi" would apply ( you can subtract to make smaller,
but never add to make larger).


On a recent project I worked on, I had 30 pics, all digitally taken at
HQ ( about 300 dpi) at 7 x 9 portrait. I created a PS document
of 720 x 480, centered the photos over the area,
filled the background black, and sized the photos to
give equal sides of black border, top and bottom.
Flattened the image, saved as .tiff, rinse and repeat.
Then imported the photos into DVDSP3, added audio,
set slide duration to the audio, and burned the project.

Even with an hour's worth of foootage on the main track,
the photos still displayed great, without any artifacting.
I haven't done more than 30 pictures a disc, so that
may have made for better quality MPEG-2 stream once
the disc was created.

I'm sure the more stills ( even rendered at 2 pass CBR) you have,
the less quality the MPEG-2 will have on the finalized disc, but
I can't personally vouch for that.
*shrugs*

[jbaugh]

First of all I want to thank everyone for the excellent responses to my question.

Terryj: I found your suggestions very interesting because I had been thinking along the same lines that you mention. I was planning on making a 720 x 480 background in PSE for my photos and resizing the photos to the fill the background, leaving black margins on the sides for the portrait photos and non-standard sized photos that have resulted from cropping. Then I will copy the photos to iDVD to make the slide show (I have not yet made the plunge into DVDSP). If I understand things correctly, I really have no control over the quality of the video output with iDVD. Is that also true for DVDSP?

The only problem with doing it this way is that the DVDs will not contain the high resolution originals in the event that someone wanted to make a high quality hard copy photograph from one of the images. If I understand it correctly, in iDVD you have an option to include the original high quality photo on the DVD for just this purpose. But, I suppose the high quality originals could be placed in the ROM section of the DVD?

When I run a slide show of the original photos on my computer using GraphicConverter's "show slide show", the slides are sharp and it results in a dramatic slide show. I was hoping for something similar when displayed on a TV screen from a DVD. I guess I am asking for too much from a low resolution output device such as a standard TV. I'll just have to wait until I can burn HD DVD and until HD TVs are in a higher percentage of homes to take advantage of the technology.
John

[terryj]

First of all I want to thank everyone for the excellent responses to my question.

Terryj: I found your suggestions very interesting because I had been thinking along the same lines that you mention. I was planning on making a 720 x 480 background in PSE for my photos and resizing the photos to the fill the background, leaving black margins on the sides for the portrait photos and non-standard sized photos that have resulted from cropping. Then I will copy the photos to iDVD to make the slide show (I have not yet made the plunge into DVDSP). If I understand things correctly, I really have no control over the quality of the video output with iDVD. Is that also true for DVDSP?

Pretty much, yes you are correct. You can control how the final MPEG-2
is going to be muxed, either through 1 pass or 2 pass CBR ( VBR
is very wasteful on static still images), which depending on how many images you have to disc ( rom content included, because that is
also actual disc space you have to consider) can affect it slightly
overall.

The only problem with doing it this way is that the DVDs will not contain the high resolution originals in the event that someone wanted to make a high quality hard copy photograph from one of the images. If I understand it correctly, in iDVD you have an option to include the original high quality photo on the DVD for just this purpose. But, I suppose the high quality originals could be placed in the ROM section of the DVD?

Yes, by all means place your HQ originals in the Rom Content folder for
access via PC/Mac, and make a menu explaining that the HQ Originals are there for printing/standalone viewing.

When I run a slide show of the original photos on my computer using GraphicConverter's "show slide show", the slides are sharp and it results in a dramatic slide show. I was hoping for something similar when displayed on a TV screen from a DVD. I guess I am asking for too much from a low resolution output device such as a standard TV. I'll just have to wait until I can burn HD DVD and until HD TVs are in a higher percentage of homes to take advantage of the technology.
John

GC's slide Show feature is cool, I often use it myself.
But you are actually talking about the diffrences between
INTERPOLATION and RESAMPLING.

GC, on a computer, no matter the size or flavor ( CRT vs FLAT LCD)
of the monitor, will INTERPOLATE an image of say 300 dpi to
display at a "faux" 300dpi at the image size you tell it to.
How can you test this...easy.
Set GC's slideshow to full screen, and run the images.
Get to the first one, pause.
Now preform a cmd-option -4 ( screen capture).
Cursor over the image and take a picture.

Close GC.
Now go open Preview, and open the screen capture ( Picture 1)
you just took. Looks great doesn't it?
Now open the same image in either GC or Photoshop.
Take a look at the Image size and DPI, it is 72dpi.

A Computer interpolates data so that it will "faux" display HQ,
but the maximum resolution of any monitor is 96dpi.
It's why your taught that when building web images for display to
not exceed 96dpi, because everything higher than that just wastes
bandwidth, and the montior will only INTERPOLATE a "faux" HQ
to its max dpi anyway.

With analog TV, the TV signal has to resample the data sent to it,
to enable it to fit within so many lines of resolution.
So no matter how high the dpi of your photos, on analog TV,
it doesn't handle
SQUARE PIXELS like a computer monitor ( and thus is somewhat
subject to the rules of DPI), but LINES of RESOLUTION and
doesn't care about how many dpi there are, because they have to be
re-sampled ( or in some cases over sampled) to fill so many lines
depending on size of the tv.

And you are correct in your assumption that HD-DVD,
played back on a true HD-DVD player to an HD TV
will give you greater lines of resolution throughout:

From Sinclair DV: Q: Features of HDTV?

As the technology implies, HDTV gives better screen resolution. The obvious feature of a true HDTV is the physical wide screen. Like your computer monitor, a HDTV screen is measured in dot pitch. A HDTV screen has more vertical and horizontal lines than an analog TV, giving it a much finer and crisper display. The standard is 720 (progressive) or 1080 (interlace) horizontal lines of resolution,
compared to analog's 480 lines of resolution. Because the screen format is wide, it can display a wider picture similar to that of a movie theater's screen. In addition, HDTV broadcasts may be in the Dolby surround digital format that further enhances the TV viewing experiences.

see also:
http://www.projectorcentral.com/video_signals.htm

so if that is your goal, you might be best to wait.

[havema-1]

Too sharp still images often have interlace flicker or moire in their fine patterns when viewed on an interlaced TV.

http://www.lurkertech.com/lg/fields/fields.html

I have had good results by using Photo To Movie's high quality setting which apparently slightly blurs the image.

Another good method is to apply a 90° (vertical) Motion Blur to the input image. The idea is to cut down on vertical resolution (excess of which causes interlace flicker on an interlaced TV) without compromising horizontal resolution:

1 pixel 90° (vertical) Motion Blur value applies to PAL/NTSC 576/480 vertical resolutions and if the vertical resolution of the input still is larger I have increased the filter's pixel value accordingly. For example: if the input still is 2048 x 1536, I use 3 pixel value in the filter because 1536/576=2.7).

I'll have to test whether just resampling the image to some low-res value does the same. Hmm... what resampling methode should I use? Bicubic, bicubic smoother, or some coarser resampling algorithm so that there will be no thin vertical lines?

iDVD prefers 4:3 images so I guess PAL 768x576 should be fine. 720x540 is another 4:3 alternative but that requires vertical upsampling. Or is upsampling in fact a good thing for this purpose? FWIW, NTSC 640x480 stills require horizontal upsampling to 720x480 video.

[lordsmurf]

THREE STEPS:
1- Photoshop to 640x480
2- FCP an MPEG movie from them
3- DVD Studio Pro to author DVD

And as a bonus, you can do two audio tracks, one as commentary so you know what the pictures are for. And a generic easy listening music track in case you ever want to watch it sans yapping.

Insert chapter marks every minute or so. Or theme groups of images as a chapter.

I've worked with a good bit of stuff like this, always a nice end product.

[havema-1]

OK, an empirical test seems to prove that moderate upsampling may be beneficial in DVD slideshows:

I burned iDVD 5 PAL slideshows with 2048x1536, 768x576, 640x480 resolutions (the latter images bicubically downsampled), as well as 2048x1536 with either 3 pixel 90° (vertical) Motion Blur or 1 pixel Gaussian Blur:

2048x1536 and 768x576's fine details flickered on a TV.

Plain 640x480, and 2048x1536 with Motion Blur or Gaussian Blur were much the same quality with virtually no flicker.

Update:

I now also made an iMovie HD 5.0.2 "slideshow" (IMO this isn't a slideshow but still images rendered into video) with the 2048x1536 images with Ken Burns off and Ken Burns on with 100% zoom. I also rendered a .dv file from the 2048x1536 images with Photo to Movie 3.2.2's Highest Quality setting.

iMovie's slideshows flickered with Ken Burns off and, surprisingly, even more with Ken Burns on.

Photo to Movie slideshow didn't flicker and the quality was good.

[jbaugh]

Let me post a brief followup. I started this thread asking for suggestions to obtain best quality slide shows. I received many good suggestions, many of which can be used in other areas of graphics work and are most helpful.

I have tried several suggestions. I resized my original photos and placed them on black backgrounds sized at 720 X 480 and centered my resized photos on the background. I used FCE to add a music track and do timing and transitions. This was transfered to IDVD and then burned to disc. The results were quite good, certainly better than my previous attempt at simply making a slide show in iDVD by dragging photos into the application. But for some reason, most of the photos didn't fill the maximum space available on the TV screen-- there were black borders around all of the edges of the image, including the top and bottom of portrait oriented photos. Image quality, however, was quite acceptable.

My best results by far, however, (and with the least amount of work) came from following the suggestions from several posters to use Photo to Movie. I found that by simply dragging photos of varying resolutions into Photo to Movie, the resizing was done automatically and with high preservation of photo quality. The Ken Burns effect is almost too easy to apply. Finish up by dropping some background music into the program and add a title and you have a very nice finished product. The photos were automatically resized to fit the maximum space on my TV screen and the resolution was better than I was able to obtain with any other method I used. I was so impressed that I immediately shelled out the $49 for the software.

I'm sure there are more ways than one to skin this cat. But for me the high quality output and time savings was worth the 50 bucks I paid. Particularly since I have more than a thousand old 35 mm slides I plan to scan and convert to canned slide shows. I need something quick and simple.
John

[terryj]

I'm glad you found a solution that works for you.
in an instance were I might have more than 30 photos, I would be inclined based on your suggestions to give
Photo to iMovie a try.

Glad we could be of help!