Interactive photo DVD ?

[txl]

Hello

I got married this summer and i'd like to put all the photos from the wedding on a DVD to send to everybody.

I'd like to have an interactive thing using menus like "friends", "meal", "party", "family" and so on but not really a slideshow where the user can only sit and watch.

I might want to add a slideshow later on but I'd still like to be able to reach every picture based on it's type.

Thanks for all the tips.

[beartums]

I'm assuming that under each category ("friends", "meal", etc) you'll have multiple pictures. Will those be shown in slideshow format? Or do you want to advance from picture to picture using remote control?

What DVD authoring tool do you have/want to use?

congrats.

[txl]

Yes there'll be many pictures under each section.

I'd like to leave the "slideshow" option open, meaning maybe I'll ad one later but for now the priority is the finding of files.

About the software I have dvdmaster and I can access a compuyer at work with premiere 7 (or CS or what's it called) and photoshop.

Thanks for the help

[beartums]

I don't know DVDMaster or Premiere 7 (I Have it, but haven't used it). I'm sure that Premiere has some slideshow capability.

Individual slideshows for each section would be easiest. The controls to advance back and forth by pressing a button on the remote are a little more complicated and program-specific (I know how to do t in DVD Maestro and DVDLab, but not Premiere).

I would suggest you get ProShowGold (My favorite) or MemoriesOnTV and create individual slideshows for each category. You can also create slideshows using any video editing program - pull the pictures onto the timeline and then create the MPG or AVI files from that -- but ProShow is a nice package and not expensive.

For the manual-advance option, you could make each picture a menu, which would make it easy, but then you'd be limited to 99 menus, I believe. Or maybe that's 99 per VTS. I'm not really sure, but you can search this site to find out.

Have you made DVDs before? How familiar are you with the software?

[txl]

Hello again,

Sorry for the mistake i'll be using dvd maestro (and not master), i've authored a couple of DVD movies but nothign really "fancy" so if you could help me with this it'd be really nice.

Thanks

[guns1inger]

It's 99 per VTS, so you could put a fairly hefty slideshow together. I would suggest keeping it simple. I'm not familiar with DVD Maestro (I use DVD Lab Pro), but a simple set of Photoshop templates (Space for photo, previous, main and next buttons, plus simple main menu/category selection) would be the way to go. If you want to be able to jump straight to a photo, then you may need to design thumb-nail sheets (a'la LOTR-TTT special edition gallery of production art)

[beartums]

Here's a good thread for creating slideshow with manual-advance capability in DVD maestro:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1009377&highlight=dvd+maestro+slideshow#1009377

Laste entry in the thread: Pay particular note to the warning that it still not play properly is some DVD players.

The menu route might be a better way to go, although neither option provides satisfactory audio options (the menu route you can have audio, but the audio file will start at the beginning for each picture; the DVD Maestro slideshow option does not allow audio, according to the poster in the linked thread).

DVD Maestro also allows you to create an automatic slideshow by simply dragging the photos onto the movie timeline. This method does NOT allow the user to advance the photos, but you could put chapter breaks before each picture and use the next and previous buttons. Also, I believe this method allows you to use audio.

I still suggest that ProShowGold is a good way to go. It's a great package, easy to use, inexpensive, and very professional. It creates mpg2 video with audio that will work great in any dvd authoring program.

Good luck.