Web screenshots to DVD

[richgb]

Hi

I am having problems when authoring my website as screenshots and produced as a slideshow on DVD. The text is always blurred and unreadable. I want to display the website using a DVD player hooked up to a large 50" plasma at an exhibition. I have clear and readable high quality screens shots at 1366 x 768 (which is the tv pixel ratio) and
have authored using both Premier 1.5 and Power Director but once encoded to DVD the quality is unacceptably poor.

Any advice would be appreciated. (I know the best thing would be to use my laptop to run the slideshow, but I need a low tech alternative and the dvd disc and player seemed a quick and easy solution!)

[tinker]

I do not know Power Director, but Premier has lousy Mpeg encoder. I use TMPGEnc Xpress to encode Mpeg2 DVD compliant file and than DVD authoring software to produce DVD.

[thecoalman]

DVD resolution (720x480 NTSC) is much lower than that of even a monitor using 800x600.

You really have two choices for DVD, either increase the font size on the web page for taking sreeenshots. Not an easy task if you aren't specifying fonts in realative sizes like em. Downside is the text is going to be abnomally large compared to the real thing.

Or you have to get creative and zoom in on material, pan around or use "pop-ups" to emphasize parts of the page.

On a side note Ulead's photoimpact has feature for opening entire web pages as images, might be quite useful for you because you get the whole page as opposed to what is just viewable.

[lordsmurf]

I do not know Power Director, but Premier has lousy Mpeg encoder. I use TMPGEnc Xpress to encode Mpeg2 DVD compliant file and than DVD authoring software to produce DVD.

I think you're mistaken.

MainConcept is a far better encoder than TMPGEnc could ever hope to be, at this point in time.

Usually when somebody has a problem with MainConcept, it's from not knowing how to make any manual changes. Don't use the lousy default 720x480 bottom-field @ 4.0Mb/s setting. Get in there an change it to something good that suit your needs.

TMPGEnc has lousy defaults too, but it requires zero skills to encode in it.

MainConcept is far more compliant than TMPGEnc is, too, FYI.

TMPGEnc Plus is a great encoder when you want to filter video, but that's about it.

The real issue here is that max-res DVD MPEG-2 is still a medium resolution, in terms of still images. Even HDTV is a medium resolution, in terms of still images, although better to read on screen.

[richgb]

Thanks Guys

Food for thought. I have just produced a nice clear HD mpeg2 in Power Director 1920 x 1080 which plays superb on my computer but the DVD encoding still kills it for the tv. Coalman, I will have a look at the Ulead option - sounds interesting...

I created my screenshots by printing each page to PDF and opening them in Photoshop at 300res which gives a sharp text image of 3125 x 1674, but it's all a waste of time once it gets reprocessed down to 720x 576 as all the definition is lost.

[thecoalman]

One thing to note, I just realized I used the term "pop-ups". I didn't mean on the web page itself but video pop-ups, like those balloons you see on some programs...