Photo DVD strategy

[indijay]

Hello All,

I am a newbie in this process and trying to get this thing done in Adobe premiere pro and Adobe encore.

My ultimate goal is to make Photo Slideshow that can be played on stand alone DVD player with switchable subtitles. I tried to make the slideshow in Adobe encore (trial version if that makes any difference) but the output didn't really look like a movie, without transitions (Sorry can't explain more here)
So I thought of making video out of pictures first and then feed this video to Premiere pro, edit with audio and then export it to encore to add subtitles and burn a DVD.
I made wmv out of pictures using Photostory (PapaJohn PAL DVD Profile) which gave me wmv at about 180kbps VBR. I imported that wmv into Premiere pro and now have played around with the audio. Now, I am ready to transcode to mpeg to be exported to encore.

I would like to know if this strategy makes sense as I am transcoding ~180 kbps VBR wmv to 4mbps VBR mpeg.. Is there any alternative strategy that is smarter and will result in good picture quality??

Many thanks

[guns1inger]

I don't use Encore, so I can't comment on it's slideshow functionality, however I have used both photostory and Vegas to create slideshows. While photostory is simple and effective, and capable of some pretty nice results very quickly, I do all mine slideshows in Vegas. It takes a little longer, but gives me more control and extra tools to work with. It also remove the need for that extra encode, and Photostory's soft output (I haven't tried Papa John's templates yet, but I will do so soon).

Premiere Pro has all the tools you need to replicate and go beyond what Photostory can do for you, and will give you much better image quality. It has been a while since I used Premiere, so I can't recall the exact terminology it uses, but basically you are looking for motion paths or similar (in Vegas it is called Track Motion and Event Pan/Crop)

[indijay]

Totally agreed but if I have slideshow to make out of say 500 images then using Premiere Pro to make slideshow will take painfully long time, unless I prefer slideshow without any effect.

Is there any way to export photos as avi or something like that maintaining image quality?

[jsmithepa]

Just curious. Why put photos on DVD when a website will do? and a website is always fresh and your audience don't have to have a physical disc. I imagine a disc would be good if the disc is taken to many remote locations etc. and an Internet connection may not be always readily available. A website would have higher compatibility than an older player that may not read your DVD+Rs.

[indijay]

True but my parents freak out at computers and my try for last 5 years to get them in front of computer has failed so the only option I have is to send them a DVD and hence so much of head wreaking..