Super High Quality Slideshows with Premiere 6.5 Guide

[coldfire]

Are you talking about a slideshow like DVD-Lab creates? Basically a series of image menus.

Probably, because still frame was basically intended for things like VCD menus. Such frames are used by all the slideshow authoring softwares i've used so far, like VCD Easy or Ulead CD/DVD Pictureshow (when not using effects) even Nero..., they are not necessarily progressive (but they can be...) DVD-Lab unfortunately does quite ugly still menu pictures, IMHO... Very good authoring tool though, i use it because it's one of the only that will allow me using my DVB video files, among other cool things... I don't know if it would be useful that i write a guide just about using a slideshow software, since they really are so simple (maybe too simple for the Ulead

[soma104]

RacerX, thank you so much for posting such a helpful guide. This is my first time trying to build a slide show, and your instructions were wonderful.

However....

I do have a few questions, because my show is not exactly turning out the way I want it to.

First of all I do understand the logic behind resizing the images prior to using them; what I don't understand is why they have to be reduce to 100 dpi. My images have all been scanned at 300 dpi or higher, and I find that when I reduce them to 100 dpi, I seem to lose some of the quality.

Secondly I have decided to include pans and zooms in my show. They seem to look great in Premier 6.5, They look great in dvd-lab. When I compile the DVD, and view it in PowerDVD, the images are a little hazy, and there is a slight jitter to them. Also, the images that I used on the menu are clear as can be prior to compiling, but after compiling the DVD they look terrible.

I haven't gone the last step and burned it on to a DVD yet, because the quality I want is not there.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

Soma

[Gritz]

Scanning everything at 300 dpi is going to take up an enormous amount of hard drive space: consider; an 8x10 photo scanned at 300 dpi takes 21MB of HD space ..... scanned at 96 dpi takes 2.1MB of space. I don't have that kind of extra space. Also your TV is not going to display over 96 dpi anyway (last I heard), so why scan at 300 dpi? You want the picture to fit your TV screen as best as possible, if not, you are going to chop off heads and arms when you view it on TV. The way it looks on your computer monitor is not necessarily the way it will look on your TV. I am doing a large slideshow in Premiere 7 at the moment and from trial and error have come to this conclusion. If you want ALL of the vertical component of the picture to be seen on your TV then scan that portion in to fit 480 dpi (that is, if that vertical part is 4" high then scan in at 120 dpi {480 divided by 4" equals 120 dpi}. Premiere says 534 but that sometimes trims the tops of peoples heads off IF their head is AT the very top of the picture. Likewise with the horizontal component: If you have a group photo and you want the people on the ends to be shown COMPLETELY, then scan for a horizonal width of 640 dpi, (if your picture is 4" wide, then scan at 160 dpi {640 divided by 4"}. Premiere says 720, but again, I have found that this can eliminate part of your photo. Now this probably works differently in Ulead's PictureShow2 and other slideshow programs which will resize your large photos down, and enlarge your small photos up (as I remember). But I have been exporting my Premiere Slideshows "modules" I call them, to Adobe Media Recorder (m2v) and then import that into my author software (SpruceUp) and the pictures come out as "what you saw, you get". Another example of scanning .... If you have an old picture that is 1" x 1" and the important part you want to be able to see is the vertical part, then scan at 480 dpi and that part will fill the screen. If you want the horizontal part to be shown then scan at 640 dpi and that part will fill the horizontal TV screen edge to edge, or close. If you already have bitmap pictures at 300 dpi then you can probably resize them down without losing quality and the extraneous data will be discarded. If you have a smaller picture and try to scale up .... then you may lose quality. If your pictures are jpg then you lose quality every time you do an edit ... and it shows. Do some experimenting with a DVD-RW before you commit though .... Hope this helps.

[racer-x]

Hey Gritz,

Wow! You really have learned a lot in a short time.

Your average person looks at a video that you create and thinks, "nice, but I'm sure the computer did all the work". How little they know that video editing is hard work.

I've been playing around with Premiere Pro 7 lately. One thing that is different is the way Premiere Pro 7 handles images. It doesn't auto resize them to 720 x 480 like Premiere 6.5 does. You can actually import am image at say 4000 x 3000. If you have the view @ 100%, you will only see through a 640 x 480 window. That makes it great for panning but is a major pain when re-importing extracted video frames.

soma104,

Do as Gritz sugested and burn to a DVDRW. You will find that the video on your TV will look much different than the one on PowerDVD.

[Gritz]

racer-x,

Wow! You really have learned a lot in a short time.

Thanks a lot racer-x ... because of your guide, and your helpful comments I really dug into it and started to put it to actual use, which speeds up the learning process. I do appreciate your help!
That's interesting about the differences between Premiere 6.5 and 7.0. I was using 6.0 before and also investigating the tutorials at www.wrigley.com and then I switched to 7.0. Whoaa! Something was different here! Or, now it was ALL different (it seemed to me) ....&%$$#@ Things were in different places, the "Automate to Timeline" was different ... so I had to relearn a few things! I like the more precise control that creating a slideshow in Premiere gives you over the "canned" software ... plus I'm having a lot of fun at the same time! Now if I could just make money doing this!!

[eric21]

Thanks racer-x .... this is still video class 101 for me! So .... IF I have a group of individuals in a photo that is scanned at 534 x 720 and the tops of their heads touch the highest point in the photo, and the people on each outside of the photo are touching the outside of the photo and the vertical component of 534 is shrunk down to 480 (and the aspect ratio is still kept intact) and the horizontal stays at 720 .... won't I see black bars on the sides if the 720 is maintained? I keep wondering why they don't say " Just scan everything in at 720 x 480". I know ... it works, but I don't think I'll figure out why.

hi, i've been looking at all posts and there's a fact that may clearify some of your doubts about the "shrinking vertical part". There is not shrinking at all. The thing is that most of all graphic applications (including AfterFX for video, etc) the pixel aspect ratio that you VISUALIZE is square pixels 1.0, BUT when authoring for a DVD, the format required is DV NTSC 0.9, this is, you need an image in 720x480 DV NTSC, so that's why Premiere recommends 534 for vertical size. Let me explain this a little bit more, you need 720x480 at 0.9, and you need to prepare images at 1.0
Remember algebra?


if you divide 480/0.9 you get 534
or the same if you go backwards, (534)*(0.9) = 480

in other point of view:

a pixel ratio is X/Y
0.9 is the same as [0.9/1.00]
you have

[534/720] at [1.00/1.00] = [534*1.00]/[720*1.00] --> 534/720 in X/Y format
but you need it at 0.9, so:

[534/720] at [0.9/1.00] = [534*0.9]/[720*1.00] --> 480/720 in X/Y format



thats why when you use 540 it gets distorsion cause 540 @ 1.0 is actually 486 @ 0.9, and not the 480 that we need

in short words
720x534 at 1.0 square pixels = 720x480 in 0.9 DV NTSC

And there's not shrinking at all!


i hope this will solve some doubts about you guys

eric

[akumar]

Races-x,
Went through guides and it is really excellent.
Well Can Adobe Prem. be used for MAKING Still photographs with high quality result witn good number of transition effects and sound.

[akumar]

racer-x,

Your Guide is simply great and that too for new comers.
I really could hang on to your guide but for a few of the following problem.

Your idea of increasing the quality by increasing the bitrate to 9000,6000,and 4000 gives error inspite of increasing the quality to 50.
Kindly guide.

arvind

[F@t0n3s]

Great tutorial!!! I have had alot of success doing this. I have one question though. Can you crop a whole list of files at the same time, or do I need to crop them 1 by 1. The problem I am having is that I have 1000's of pictures that I need to crop, but I don't want to have to do them one by one in photoshop 8. Any ideas?

[eric21]

Great tutorial!!! I have had alot of success doing this. I have one question though. Can you crop a whole list of files at the same time, or do I need to crop them 1 by 1. The problem I am having is that I have 1000's of pictures that I need to crop, but I don't want to have to do them one by one in photoshop 8. Any ideas?

There are a lot of ways to automate, the way i do so is:

1) open all your files in Photoshop

2) you need to create a Macro "Action" . In your history palette, there is another section called Actions (you can reach it also from the Window menu, or Alt-F9 if you are in PC). There are 6 little icons at the bottom of the window, click on the 5th one, from left to right, to create a new action, name it as you want, and click RECORD, you'll notice that the record button is already pressed, so now DO with one file, the whole thing that you want to do, crop, change image size, canvas, whatever you are doing to all the files, and save it, and close it. Now click on the STOP button. There you have your Macro.

3) Now let's use it! From the file menu, go to Automate then Batch... & you will get up a dialog. On the top there is the action set (if it is your first time, it wuold be Default Actions.atn) then the action you have just created. The important part is below, in the Source, you must choose "Opened Files" (with more practice you can use a Folder, etc) and in Destination you don't need to put anuthing, leave it None, cause in your action you already specify what to do with the modified file. So there's nothing to do but click OK

4) Grab yourself a cup of and enjoy the magic

[F@t0n3s]

Thanks eric21! That works great. You just saved me a few weeks of resizing. I have another question now. I understand that if the picture is in 4:3 format, I can resize it to 720 x 534, but what if the picture is in 3:4 format. What would I resize it to then? 480 X 800 ? Or is there a way to resize it to 720 x 534, without it looking all weird?

UPDATE: Nevermind. I messed around with it for a bit, and got it looking right. Thanks again for the help, and the superfast reply.

[joecav]

Great tutorial!!! I have had alot of success doing this. I have one question though. Can you crop a whole list of files at the same time, or do I need to crop them 1 by 1. The problem I am having is that I have 1000's of pictures that I need to crop, but I don't want to have to do them one by one in photoshop 8. Any ideas?

There are a lot of ways to automate, the way i do so is:

1) open all your files in Photoshop

2) you need to create a Macro "Action" . In your history palette, there is another section called Actions (you can reach it also from the Window menu, or Alt-F9 if you are in PC). There are 6 little icons at the bottom of the window, click on the 5th one, from left to right, to create a new action, name it as you want, and click RECORD, you'll notice that the record button is already pressed, so now DO with one file, the whole thing that you want to do, crop, change image size, canvas, whatever you are doing to all the files, and save it, and close it. Now click on the STOP button. There you have your Macro.

3) Now let's use it! From the file menu, go to Automate then Batch... & you will get up a dialog. On the top there is the action set (if it is your first time, it wuold be Default Actions.atn) then the action you have just created. The important part is below, in the Source, you must choose "Opened Files" (with more practice you can use a Folder, etc) and in Destination you don't need to put anuthing, leave it None, cause in your action you already specify what to do with the modified file. So there's nothing to do but click OK

4) Grab yourself a cup of and enjoy the magic

Eric - tahnk you vm for this little tid bit of info. You just saved me hours of work and clickety-clicking!!! I figured there was an easier way than doing individual files, but I'm too stubborn (read:lazy) to figure it out on my own. You da MAN!

[mrhata]

This is just what I needed. I made slideshows with Ulead DVD Workshop and Disc Creator 3 and they dont match the length of the accompanying audio. Even though I click "match to audio".
So I went to try it on Premiere 6.5 and now I just cant import the jpgs.
I can import about 50 then it crashes.

Is there a way to change the 100s of jpgs to bmp files using the Macro feature of Photoshop just mentioned?

[mrhata]

Never mind.
I found a batch encoder and changed them all to bitmaps and I can import in a snap.

But now, even though I follow every instruction on this tutorial, I get jagged or rough final products. The preview in Premiere 6.5 actually shows a better slideshow than when I burn the final project to DVD.
By the way, I get errors with my final m2v files when I use IFOEdit, saying too many dropped frames. So I just use Ulead DVD Workshop and the final DVD looks choppy or some fine lines are jagged now.

Any ideas?
Is it my PC?
Its only 1.1ghz Celeron 512mb sdram.

[Spotnik]

I was all excited when I found this tutorial, until I fired up my Premiere Pro 1.0 and found that there is no Storyboard feature. So, how do I translate these steps to a later version of Premiere? There's some information in the user guide about importing still images, but no real information beyond that about applying transitions, panning, zooming etc.

Just curious.

[sagaci0us]

One problem that reappears occasionally: After exporting my timeline to a movie (avi as I don't have the Adobe MPEG Encoder yet) and I play back the results I find that an occasional picture is exported as a totally black frame ... no picture. It's happened in the past also and I finally ended up just removing that particular picture. Going back to the timeline the pictures is there and plays back in the preview mode ... but after exporting the result is a black picture. Maybe 1 pic in every 40 ... any ideas?

I'm having this exact problem, although, I AM using the built in Adobe MPEG Encoder that comes with 7.0. I've read through the entire thread, but can not seem to find a solution. Just as Gritz stated, I am able to view the pictures in Premire fine, but when exporting, some pictures are gone and all that appears is the black background that the tutorial has me insert.



I have tried many exporting features such as progressive, different bitrates (trying wmv right now but don't want loss of quality). I have a pentium m and it's taking forever, but hey, I'm saving electricity right



I finally figured out how to export only parts of the timeline by changing to 'work (something) only' on the export dialog box. This will save time between encodes. But does someone have an answer? I'm willing to use the Batch Automate that was mentioned in photoshop. (2000 picturs)

update: I used the batch automate to resave all the images in photoshop and unfortunately it did not make a difference. I wonder if someone here has the skill to figure out the problem with the jpg if I post some of them to the forum. It seems like a bug.


Any suggestions? thanks.

[bpll]

Hello everyone,

Can any of you tell me which program does all of the following:

The musts:

1. Dissolves (with controllable rate of dissolve)
2. Fade to/fro Black (with controllable rate of fade)
3. The Ken Burns effect (known as The Ken Burns Effect, zoom, or ease-in)
4. A program that does not have to render every transition, video, change of any kind (i.e. Premiere 7.0, but can do it on the fly i.e. Moviemaker - which is madenning)
5. DVD authoring capabilities
6. Good encoder resulting in good looking finished DVD
7. Audio options such as unlinking audio from video, controllable fades, mixer, etc.
8. Menu creation (nothing earth-shattering, but nothing cheesey, perhaps just a black bkgrnd in which I can centre a photo of choice with some text underneathe stating the name of the tributee)

The optionals:
1. Controllable pan and zoom (Ken Burns)

If any of you are willing to read on, this is why I need new software:

- Despite Movie Maker being freeware, and seriously limited, I've managed to create great videos utilizing classic fade from/to black, ease in (the Ken Burns effect), slow motion, dissolve, but my problem has been this: Movie Maker has no DVD authoring option. I thus import into Premiere, render, then render to DVD. However, the photos that I apply the Ken Burns effect to warp as they are zoomed in upon, as in a funhouse mirror. It's a dynamic warp in which the pic bends this way and that as the zoom progresses. I've tried everything to remedy - no dice. I have taken all photos in to Photoshop, resized them to 720x480 (for most of the photos are 60 years old, and scanned at 300 dpi), and imported them back in to Movie Maker - then to Premiere - same result. Hint: the bigger the television the lesser the dynamic bend.

I tried Memories on TV3 trial version upon recommendations read here. This program almost does what I'm looking for, only the Ken Burns effect is always random, and I cannot have this. I don't think it has customizable audio fades either. Also, as I only have the trial version I don't know what the final video looks like. I doubt it will be as good as Premiere, but right now...Premiere is useless to me aside from burning DVDs - and they're warped.

I hear that Premiere 2.0 Pro is the bomb, however unless you have a Matrox card and can render in real time it's pretty useless for this purpose, no?

Alright, hopefully there is a program out there with these capabilities. Take it easy all,

Brad

[joy]

One problem that reappears occasionally: After exporting my timeline to a movie (avi as I don't have the Adobe MPEG Encoder yet) and I play back the results I find that an occasional picture is exported as a totally black frame ... no picture. It's happened in the past also and I finally ended up just removing that particular picture. Going back to the timeline the pictures is there and plays back in the preview mode ... but after exporting the result is a black picture. Maybe 1 pic in every 40 ... any ideas?

I'm having this exact problem, although, I AM using the built in Adobe MPEG Encoder that comes with 7.0. I've read through the entire thread, but can not seem to find a solution. Just as Gritz stated, I am able to view the pictures in Premire fine, but when exporting, some pictures are gone and all that appears is the black background that the tutorial has me insert.



I have tried many exporting features such as progressive, different bitrates (trying wmv right now but don't want loss of quality). I have a pentium m and it's taking forever, but hey, I'm saving electricity right



I finally figured out how to export only parts of the timeline by changing to 'work (something) only' on the export dialog box. This will save time between encodes. But does someone have an answer? I'm willing to use the Batch Automate that was mentioned in photoshop. (2000 picturs)

update: I used the batch automate to resave all the images in photoshop and unfortunately it did not make a difference. I wonder if someone here has the skill to figure out the problem with the jpg if I post some of them to the forum. It seems like a bug.


Any suggestions? thanks.

try saving your pics in tiff format before importing them in premiere.

Never mind.
But now, even though I follow every instruction on this tutorial, I get jagged or rough final products. The preview in Premiere 6.5 actually shows a better slideshow than when I burn the final project to DVD.

Any ideas?
Is it my PC?
Its only 1.1ghz Celeron 512mb sdram.

when creating this kind of project(slideshow) try set project settings to "no fields" and before exporting make sure you do the same setting.

[MayorQuimby2007]

Hey Sagaci0us and Gritz,

some days ago I encoded a video with Adobe Premiere Pro and
had the same problem, that sometimes some pictures are black.
I could not find out what is the reason for that. Also converting to TIFF
did not solve the problem. As a workaround I exported parts
of the video and finally put them together and burned on DVD.

I was just wondering if you had a solution in the meanwhile?

Thanks & best regards,

Mayor Quimby

===============================================
By the way: I also always had the problem that pictures included in
a movie were flickering, especially fine structures in the pictures could not be
displayed properly. I found out reducing the size of a pic to something around
640x500 leads to flicker-free movies.

[_Al_]

Use a good quality image editor like Photoshop to crop the images to 720 x 534 @ 100 DPI. You can use 720 x 540, but Adobe recommends 720 x 534

that is quote from that tutorial, not this thread,
time moves fast, hard to believe that it is something more than 10years ... ,

I think the goal was not to resize in Premiere at all, to not make it worse, at that time output was always DVD as I remember, so it was 720x480, so goal was in Photoshop using that NTSC DV anamorphic template with aspect ratio, so Premiere would not resize. In widescreen it would be even more important. This is applicable even today for 100% DVD custom menu design. Basically when you create menu in some graphic software and there is pictures that need to have correct aspect ratio (people, faces), it needs to be anamorphic, loading it into DVD authoring or NLE, composition software.

I cannot say if op software can do such a thing, he perhaps will not make 16:9 DVD, because source is 4:3, or output is not a DVD at all.

But anyway, pictures (bmp) shold have same size as project properties or export resolution.

Just heads up if making DVD, quality would go down a bit again because Premiere would resize from 640x480 to 720x480.

[_Al_]

I also always had the problem that pictures included in
a movie were flickering, especially fine structures in the pictures could not be
displayed properly. I found out reducing the size of a pic to something around
640x500 leads to flicker-free movies.

Premiere used to have some flicker removal, not sure if it used to help, if not try to blur vertically a tiny bit, not sure what filter it was, or my mind plays tricks on me an it is not possible to do that in Premiere that old .

Oh.
that previous of mine belonged to other thread , so this last input should not exist at all, sorry ...