DVD slideshow GUI - development thread.

[tin2tin]

@ Frovingslosh

Could you upload those images in question and one of the videoclips? So I can try to reproduce what you're doing here.

Working with negative transition durations, is quite simple, just type in a negative value.

When the transition value is positive the last and first frame of the slides cole to the transition will freeze during the transition. When the values are negative the slides will overlap and not freeze during the transition. Try with a negative duration transition between two of your videoclips.

Take a look at this tutorial here around the 8 minute. Make it full screen to watch it better.

[Frovingslosh]

@ Frovingslosh

Could you upload those images in question and one of the videoclips? So I can try to reproduce what you're doing here.

I've compressed all of the sources into a RAR file. Even compressed it is going to take me a while to upload on my crippled AT&T DSL system. I'll post back the link when it is ready. Looking like it will be close to 3 hours.

The archive will include the 5 jpg images that seem to work OK when by themselves, at least the transistions were OK in limited testing. It also includes the 5 bmp files that I made from the jpgs, they load into VD slideshow GUI but there is an AVIsynth error on export or previewing. The two original videos (mjpeg) are there, No reason to think there is a problem with them, as they always render fine, although when they are in the project the transitions between some of the stills fails. And there are also two videos made from the mjpegs into xvids (these are the two smaller videos with an x at the end of their name), the project with the 5 jpgs and then the 2 xvids still fails on a transition, moving in a black page. Also, just for completeness, is the black.jpg file that I've been finishing on.

I rather expect that you will not duplicate the problem. But if you do it will certainly tell us something. If you can't I'm not sure what steps to try next. Perhaps I should just focus on using this tool for slideshows and leave out the videos, it seems to work OK for me that way.

[tin2tin]

Hang on I don't need all that - only the original files. (The 5 jpg images and the two original videos(one would also be fine)).

[Frovingslosh]

Hang on I don't need all that - only the original files. (The 5 jpg images and the two original videos(one would also be fine)).

OK, I've aborted that upload and am making a new one. the BMPs were taking a lot of space and are now out. The original jpgs are there. As you suggested I killed one of the two original mjpeg videos, the larger one. But since I only see the problem with the videos in the mix and see it even with the xvid versions of the two videos, I included the two smaller size xvid videos, as you may need both to duplicate the problem, if you are going to be able to duplicate it at all.

The resulting file is a little over a third of the size, but will still take some time to upload, will post back when it is ready.

[Frovingslosh]

The source files are now up, the file should be

http://www.toebes.com/harry/2011_03_30.rar

But there is more, although first I should respond to this

... a bug in one of the images missing or maybe you set the Animation quality too high? ....

The animation quality isn't being set too high, as I lower it to 0 for testing when I saw how long the top "75" setting took to render. However, I was absolutely planning on doing final renders at 75 after I resolved my issue. Should I really expect that high quality rendering might not work?

And things just keep getting strtanger. I went into the project setting and made the pixels 1:1 again, and set a 20x20 "safe zone" and enabled the border and added the greenish background. In the first few previews the audio was out of sync, with the audio from the videos starting during the third photo. But it didn't stop there.

Working with negative transition durations, is quite simple, just type in a negative value.

So I took your suggestion and added a negative transition between the videos and between the last photo and the first video. Did an export. The highlights from the video are:

No more Black screen swinging in on the transistions! (this with the original jpegs and the xvids, I'll go back and try it with the original mjpegs later but the bug was previously seen with the xvids too). No idea where the bug went, or if is is just sleeping.

I'm not seeing a border around the photos. I am around the videos. I am seeing some video tearing, particularly at the bottom edge of the pictures.

The bars are back on the animations, although they are now white, not black. I've gone back and triple checked and the animations for all of the photos show only photos and nothing beyond the edges of the photos in the animation controls at all stops.

The transitions are indeed different with the negative transition setting. Now a black, or even a dark area, is replaced with the green background during the transition. As far as I know I don't have any chroma-key option enabled although it is behaving like that.

I expected that you might want to see this. Rather than upload the resulting mpeg2 file I made a much smaller xvid conversion. It is here:

http://www.toebes.com/harry/negXistion.avi

Not sure that any of this will be of any help, but maybe enough strange errors might all add up to some obvious problem.

[Frovingslosh]

For whatever it might be worth, a rendering done with the original mjpg videos rather than the xvids looks about the same, no black pages sliding into view on the transistions, the same green instead of black as the videos slide into place, and, of course, tearing at the bottom of the still pictures as they are animated, no boarders on the stills, and while edges past the photos during animations that are not in the animation settings.

[tin2tin]

The source files are now up, the file should be

http://www.toebes.com/harry/2011_03_30.rar

But there is more, although first I should respond to this

... a bug in one of the images missing or maybe you set the Animation quality too high? ....

The animation quality isn't being set too high, as I lower it to 0 for testing when I saw how long the top "75" setting took to render. However, I was absolutely planning on doing final renders at 75 after I resolved my issue. Should I really expect that high quality rendering might not work?

It will eat a lot of RAM for sure and unless you need very deep zooms it isn't needed - you simply won't see a difference.

And things just keep getting strtanger. I went into the project setting and made the pixels 1:1 again, and set a 20x20 "safe zone" and enabled the border and added the greenish background. In the first few previews the audio was out of sync, with the audio from the videos starting during the third photo. But it didn't stop there.

Working with negative transition durations, is quite simple, just type in a negative value.

So I took your suggestion and added a negative transition between the videos and between the last photo and the first video. Did an export. The highlights from the video are:

No more Black screen swinging in on the transistions! (this with the original jpegs and the xvids, I'll go back and try it with the original mjpegs later but the bug was previously seen with the xvids too). No idea where the bug went, or if is is just sleeping.

I'm not seeing a border around the photos. I am around the videos. I am seeing some video tearing, particularly at the bottom edge of the pictures.

The bars are back on the animations, although they are now white, not black. I've gone back and triple checked and the animations for all of the photos show only photos and nothing beyond the edges of the photos in the animation controls at all stops.

The transitions are indeed different with the negative transition setting. Now a black, or even a dark area, is replaced with the green background during the transition. As far as I know I don't have any chroma-key option enabled although it is behaving like that.

I expected that you might want to see this. Rather than upload the resulting mpeg2 file I made a much smaller xvid conversion. It is here:

http://www.toebes.com/harry/negXistion.avi

Not sure that any of this will be of any help, but maybe enough strange errors might all add up to some obvious problem.

When using an animated/video background the background of the slideshow is keyed out and background is overlayed. That's why you may experience some bad keying, especially in the transitions as stated in the popup when selecting an avs or avi background. Greenish is an Avisynth script. Still images(jpg, png and bmp) as background are not keyed in. The transition you're using is coded is an Avisynth plugin, and not coded by me, so I'm not really sure why the colorspace is affected in a way that will give you that bad a keying. Try a different transition, or use the animation to move the slide into the frame.

I've rendered your original slideshow here with the original files and it works fine. I don't see the black bars or errors. So this is quite strange, and sort of states the frustrating fact once again that two PC are not the same.

Take a look at the rendering here:
http://download.videohelp.com/tin2tin/Dogs.avi

The reason for the audio beeing out of sync is that the slideshow runs with 29.97 frames pr. sec. and your videofiles specs are:

Video: MJPG 640x480 20.00fps 9959Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: PCM 11024Hz mono 88Kbps [Audio 1]

Meaning that your video plays with 20 frames pr. sec.

Changing the framerate and ajusting the audio accordingly is a complicated matter, and not handled by DSG. The project playback rate is forced on the the imported files resuling in out of sync audio and slowed or faster motion in the image.

[Frovingslosh]

In no particular order:

The problem wasn't just an issue of the video being a strange frame rate, the video audio was starting in the middle of the still pictures that came before the video. No matter what the framerate I don't see why that would happen. And then just as strange, the audio started playing at the correct point. I certainly can re-encode the videos to run at 29.97 or 30 fps and keep the audio in sync, as the video that you made from my source material was also at 29.97.

Yea, the video is pretty much as I expected. You did manage a full size screen without the border, videos, and the transition without swinging in any black pages, I have not accomplished that yet. There is a black bar on top of picture 4, but without seeing the animation settings you made I can't say if that is unexpected or not. Just another reason that it might be nice to have one of your projects all zipped up with the project file in a directory directly under the C root (or for that matter the D or E partitions, although C should serve everyone). If I or another user can't get your project to render right we can save a lot of frustration in trying to figure out what we are doing wrong to get out own projects to render.

I can certainly change the transitions, as I indicated this was just a learning exercise to see how to use the tool. I do need to do some more experimenting to see if the green bleed through occurs only with video or also happens when negative transitions are used with stills. And I guess I'm just dense, I think I understand what you are saying and showing in the tutorial about the video starting as the transition starts when using a negative setting, but I don't yet see what that has to do with the background moving with the picture when the transition is positive but staying in place when it is negative.

Overall I'm still blown away by the demos on your website, but at least for the most part they are slides, not video. At this point it looks like I can use DVD slideshow GUI for still images pretty well, the problems that I see (other than precise control of the animations to avoid the bars) all happen so far only when I have video in the mix. So I'm hoping to use it on my next project, which will be photos and audio only, but think that I'm going to have to limit its use in the current project. I really like the GUI control over the animation effect. I've been using a different tool to make stills into video and it supposedly has animation capability as well, but it is useless to me with just a "fill in the numbers" type of interface.

Thanks for all of your efforts. I'm not giving up, but currently need to recognize that my system isn't giving me the results that I expect. When I have some time I'll have to try this on another computer. Currently I'm on my fastest system, and by far with the most disk space, but at least rendering speed isn't as important to me as quality and getting the software working right.

[tin2tin]

Don't want to get late for work again. Just to clarify. I did not change any of your settings in your file. I've just corrected the paths and rendered it. Meaning that it is somehow related the the differences between our computers. You could try to install to c:/program files/.

[golem14]

I recorded small screencast how to make static background from jpg file.

Watch it on screncast dot com

Very important thing: background image height MUST be multiple of 2

Note:
AvpS saving files in DVD slideshow GUI user folder ("C:\users\USER\.DVDslideshowGUI\" in Windows 7).

You can keep it in this place or move in to your background folder, as I did (Wytnij = Cut; Wklej = Paste).

[tin2tin]

@ golem14 - Very nice!

[chowmein]

If the Youtube uploader craps out, do you have to convert from scratch again? (This has only happened once I might add. I didn't know how to restart the uploader without starting the whole conversion again? The uploader is a great feature tho', it normally works flawlessly! I think it was my internet connection that crapped out).

[tin2tin]

Do a search on you computer for a file called: DVDsGUIYouTube.mp4

It is located in 'C:\Users\your username\.DVDslideshowGUI\DVDsGUIYouTube.mp4'

[chowmein]

Thank you tin2tin! I'm still loving your nifty little app!

[argusvidicon]

"I keep a shortcut to ".DVDslideshowGUI"on my desktop next to the DSG shortcut for many such reasons. As well as a copy of the YouTube Uploader on my Desktop. It's been a long time since I've been logged onto YouTube to upload a video. At least as long as I've had this YouTube Uploader. Yea thanks tin2tin for a lot of things."
Sometimes I let the DSG create the MP4 and steal it form this folder without even sending it To YouTube. A while back I receive this from tin2tin and I run an .avs command line conversion to create awesome MP4 Files, even when outside of the DSG. Yea what a guy!

ffmpeg -i "your file path\yourfile.avs" -f mp4 -vcodec libx264 -level 41 -refs 2 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -coder 1 -subq 6 -me_range 21 -r "29.970" -b 5120k -bt 8192k -bufsize 15000k -maxrate 16000k -g 300 -threads 8 -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k "outputfile path\yournewfile.mp4"

By the way that information might be wrong, because I don't know enough to quote like that. I do know I use it all the time and it works, whatever I'm doing. These people here have changes the way I do many things.

[harlanhml]

Running version 0.9.4.1. Been using on a project for over a week, no problem. Today I made a couple of editing changes (added and removed .avi files) and tried to do a Save Project. Program crashed and I lost the .dsg file. Completely gone off the system. Recovery s/w has not been able to find any trace if it yet.

Sooo...

Perhaps an enhancement would be to create a .bak of the .dsg file each time it is saved. Just in case.

[tin2tin]

@harlanhml - sorry to hear about that. Never heard of crashes when saving before. Sounds strange.

I'm testing the new FLuaG OpenGL plugin for Avisynth:

By Youka.
http://youka.xobor.de/t98f13-Tutorials.html

[argusvidicon]

@ harlanhml I also am sorry to hear about your crash. I have a habit of torturing software and live a life of crashes. I have however not heard of losing the actual project file in any software. That would flip me out. Ctrl+S is faded on all my computers, but if the project file disappeared in any software that would be very strange. Best of luck to you that it doesn't reoccur. WoW!

[harlanhml]

A (painful) lesson learned on my part. I should make backups more often of files used during development of a project. To be honest I never really paid a whole lot of attention to what file(s) were actually being used to create a project other than my data (jpg, mp3, avi) files.

Having the program automatically create a backup (or versions of backup _1, _2..._5 would be a great asset in case of a crash or the user just wanting to revert back to a version prior to any changes. Sort of a Undo. The .dsg files are, in my case, pretty small.

Another thing I noticed is that I created a DVD with the include source files option. Glad I did because at least I have all the files that were used in the creation of the DVD before the .dsg file vaporized. BUT, the .MP3 files, which I consider to be source files, are not included in the folder. I think ALL files used in the creation should be included.

Thanks for listening. I have a lot to learn about Video/DVD creation.

[argusvidicon]

Yea, I might someday like to have the .bak project file too. I've use the ones that Corel Draw creates when I had lost work there before. But for thew most part I wear out Ctrl+S on every keyboard I own. I had lost some serious work before I developed that habit. I think I do it like a nervous twitch. Auto .bak project file is a nice suggestion.

[tin2tin]

Photos by Thomas Haywood in a photofilm done with DVD slideshow GUI.

Version in 720p:

[Frovingslosh]

I'm now working on a "photos only" project (no video sources, which seemed to be a source of problems in my last effort). I've quickly hit a couple of problems.

I'm targeting NTSC 16x9 format. Also, I want to use DVD Slideshow GUI to produce the video complete with some Ken Burns effects, but I'll be building the actual DVD in a different program, currently DVD Flick but likely to become DVD Styler before the project is done.

So I noticed that the default pixel aspect ratio just didn't look right. That makes some sense since I'm going to use a different program to built the final DVD and that likely expects 1-to-1 pixels on its input. But I also noticed that as I build the animations they look as I intend them in the animation creation screen, but in the final result or in the preview that the images will be positioned improperly. That is, if I am zooming in to something near the top of the picture, the zoom will actually come too far down and leave a band of background showing above the image, even though it looked right when I was in the animation tool. Zooming into the center of a picture isn't a noticeable problem, but zooming toward an edge and trying to keep the image on screen with no background encroachment is a problem.

To confirm for myself that I was getting a proper aspect ratio, I built a couple of slides of the same size as my subject photos, with perfect squares and circles (in the sense that the pixel count up and down is the same as the pixel count across). The results of that test are looking pretty good for getting the aspect ratio right. I'm not sure I have it perfect yet but if not I'm pretty close. But this test really demonstrates my problem with the image placement when animating is involved. To confirm the aspect ratio I animated the last image (and only the last image in this test), rotating it through 810 degrees so I could see if there was any distortion of the circle that was rotating. The aspect ratio of the rotation looks good, but there is a very obvious placement problem with the final image. The only differences between the first image in the test and the last image are the duration that each is displayed (the last is longer to allow time for the rotation) and the animation itself, which is ONLY a rotation, the position of the image should not change and should start in exactly the same position as the non-rotated image, and there is no zoom in or out. Yet it is reduced in size and offset so that it is no longer in the center of the frame. The same thing, of course, is happening with other images, but using these Photoshopped test images makes the problem very easy to spot. Allowing the animation to loop on playback further emphasizes the problem, as the final image is followed by the exact same static non-animated image as it should be seen, with only a brief view of the background between the two.

I expect that you'll want to see what I'm talking about, so a test AVI file, about 18 meg in size, is at
http://www.toebes.com/harry/Aspect.avi

And if you want the source material it is RARed up to a 45 meg file and at
http://www.toebes.com/harry/Aspect.rar
It is built as a directory that lives under the C:\ root and I've changed all of the links so that the needed files are all in the directory. Note that my copy of DVD Slideshow GUI is still on H:\ and there are some references to that and other external programs in the .dsg project file, but it should be easy enough to edit them to reflect your own locations, or even just fix the line near the top and then replace the bottom of the .dsg file with the contents of one of your own project files.

Both files will be taken down after I know that you have what you want to make space for other things.

I'm hoping that there will be some simple fix, such as animation in the current version being designed for PAL and not taking into account the NTSC screen size when the project is set to NTSC.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice that you can offer.

[tin2tin]

Thanks for your post. I'll let you know when I have time to look into those things you mention.

[Frovingslosh]

Thanks for your post. I'll let you know when I have time to look into those things you mention.

Thanks for your response. As I said, I think the aspect ratio issue is a problem of my own making and I expect that I can deal with it. The thing that I'm really hoping for your feedback on is the animation issue. I never noticed this with NTSC 4x3 animations, although I didn't tend to zoom towards an edge in the previous animations, but the example should make it very clear that it is happening. I need to be able to zoom in on a part of the picture near the edge in this project, such as a mountaintop. I expect that it is either a NTSC issue or a 16x9 widescreen issue or perhaps both. I believe the problem is there even using the default aspect ratio of NTSC 16x9 images. I'll wait patiently for your feedback but it is good to know that you at least saw my post.

Also, for those who have mentioned that they would like to use this software for converting very large photo collections to a single slide show, I can tell you that I hit memory problems on a 4 Gig XP system with 802 photos. I also hit memory problems with the same set of photos with foto2avi. I had expected, since only one photo needs processed at a time, that a large number of photos would not be a problem as long as hard disk space was available, but I expected wrong. This isn't a big problem for me since I'll be dealing with far smaller batches at a time, but wanting to convert large numbers of photos to a single video just shouldn't be that demanding.

[tin2tin]

On the memory issues you could try one of the Avisynth 2.6 Betas here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/AviSynth_Alpha_Releases/

The Avisynth 2.6 series should have better memory handling. Alternatively you could try to free plenty of virtual memory or RAM. With 800 photos you might need something like 6 GB og RAM(just guessing).

[Frovingslosh]

By the way, I mentioned above that there were references to the location of DVD Slideshow GUI and the supporting files in the project file that I uploaded and that these may have to be changed, since I have my copy of DVD slideshow GUI and other graphics software on H rather than C. However, after I wrote that I started wondering why that information is even in the .dsg project file. I certainly didn't put it there, I just started a new project and added some pictures and saved the project. So clearly DVD Slideshow GUI already knew where the program and the support programs were and it put that information in the file. But if it already knows that information at the start of a new project, why bother to save those things in the dsg project file? That seems to me only to make the project file dependent on where the application is stored and thus less portable or problem prone if the application is ever reinstalled, with no real benefit at all.

[Frovingslosh]

On the memory issues you could try one of the Avisynth 2.6 Betas here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/AviSynth_Alpha_Releases/

The Avisynth 2.6 series should have better memory handling. Alternatively you could try to free plenty of virtual memory or RAM. With 800 photos you might need something like 6 GB og RAM(just guessing).

Thanks for the feedback. At the moment I'm shy of adding any third party beta software into the mix. Maybe after the other issues are resolved, but for now I can wait until you add it as an official part of the package and trust it. I had thought I might do a quick run of all 802 onto a DVD just to get a quick impression of how things would look on a large screen TV, but the project will really be broken down into smaller sections that DVD Slideshow GUI can handle easily. I really only mentioned this because I had seen other posts in the thread asking about converting large collections into one DVD video file, and it really doesn't seem that unreasonable or memory demanding. It is not like we are trying to do a video collage with all 802 pictures on the screen at the same time. I guess maybe Avisynth has/had a memory leak or some similar issue, although that is pruely a guess (but strengthened by foto2avi having the same problem).

[Frovingslosh]

A minor update to previous information. The animation problem is worse in NTSC 61x9 1to1 pixel mode than it is in NTSC 16x9 with the default pixel ratio mode. There are still problems with the zooming bringing in the edges too far even with the default pixel ratio, but switching to 1to1 pixels (which one uses for undistorted video for web and other uses other than directly burning to DVD) makes it nearly imposable to do a decent Ken Burns effect. Even the unzoomed image is offset to the right and down, although it looks to be centered properly in the animation window. And when zooming towards an edge the effect is that I don't get what is shown in the animation window at all. Didn't realize that taking 1to1 pixels had such a profound effect, but it does.

[tin2tin]

Yes it does look like NTSC 4:3 8:9 could use a bit of calibration.

On the stuff you experience with NTSC 16:9 1:1 - When swiching from one ratio to another - there is a pop up saying that the animations will be wrong and you'll have to remake them. I proberly should let DSG remove all of them instead of keeping them when changing ratio. Isn't this the reason?

I think it's pretty safe to use the 2.6 Avisynth beta 3 - I'm using it myself. NB DSG must be closed when installing Avisynth.

[Frovingslosh]

Yes it does look like NTSC 4:3 8:9 could use a bit of calibration.

On the stuff you experience with NTSC 16:9 1:1 - When swiching from one ratio to another - there is a pop up saying that the animations will be wrong and you'll have to remake them. I proberly should let DSG remove all of them instead of keeping them when changing ratio. Isn't this the reason?

I think it's pretty safe to use the 2.6 Avisynth beta 3 - I'm using it myself. NB DSG must be closed when installing Avisynth.

Oh, I saw the pop-up. And I did remake the animations. Even with the default 32:27 pixel ratio. But the animations were not where they show in the animation window. Closer than with a 1:1 pixel ratio, but far enough off that I had to go back several times and blindly shift things around to get the desired result.

When changing the pixel ratio from the default 32:27 that DVD Slideshow GUI uses for NTSC 16x9 to 1:1, there is no warning about remaking animations. At first I though that I could get away without remaking the animations, but that proved a wrong assumption. But the bigger problem is that even remaking all of the animations, they end up very wrong from what on sees in the animation window.

Removing the animations when video setting or pixel ratio is changed may make some sense, but I'm actually glad that you didn't do it. If the animations had just been purged automatically (and without warning), I would have been back at square 1 and have to recreate everything. As it was, I knew the animations were wrong and had to be remade, but as I opened the animation window for each slide I was able to step through the current animation. It was now wrong, but just doing this gave me a better idea of what I had wanted to do on that slide than trying to go by only memory. So I stepped through what I now had, deleted the current keys as I did so, and then slid back to the start and recreated the animation with the new settings. Unfortunately, it isn't good for NTSC 16x9 32:27 pixel ratio and is really bad for NTSC 16x9 1:1 pixel ratio, and doesn't match what one sees in the animation window. Rather than just automatically clearing the animations for a user, you might want to give them a choice, either "YES, Clear my existing animations" or "NO, Leave them alone, I'll fix them later".

If there is anything that I can do to help with this "recalibration" please let me know.

Not in any hurry about the 2.6 Avisynth beta. Don't really have any need for the entire set of slides at once, was just something I tried. Hate to change things when other things are breaking on me (animation). And since I have to manually install it I want to be very sure that I get everything linked to the right versions and don't break DSG or anything else that uses Avisynth. If there was any reason to think that this would help with the animation positioning issue then I would be all over it, but at this point there seems no urgency.