quicktime movie quality problem

[photofun]

I'm burning a quicktime movie (comprised mostly of photos) to dvd and the dvd copy is fuzzy. I've tried using "best" burn quality and selecting 16x burn; I've used the internal dvd burn and an external disc burner but every time the dvd fails to have quality resolution. When I put the quicktime movie on a jump drive and play it on other computers it looks great but how can I keep that same quality when it's converted to a dvd?

[Case]

The resolution of quicktime movies from photos (as good as the monitor resolution) can be much higher than the resolution of DVDs (720x480), which is targeted at SD tv resolution. "Best" burn quality or burn speed will not improve that.
If the DVD resolution doesn't provide enough detail for you, then DVD isn't the right medium.

[photofun]

My goal is to share photos from a family event. Rather thant just copying the photos onto a disc, I want to present them as a mini-slideshow with music. What is the best format for that project, if not a dvd?

[terryj]

can you not run video out of your Mac?
If your mac has a DVI (or mini -dvi if a laptop),
get the $19 DVI to SVHS adapter, ( or mini DVI to SVHS)
and output your Mac's video to your DVD Player's SVHS port.
Then you can use iPhoto natively to run a slideshow in high quality.

[Case]

to SVHS adapter

Wouldn't that still give you the same SD resolution as a DVD would give?

[tomlee59]

Photofun -- I have a question related to Case's. I assume that you are planning to display the slideshow on a TV, yes? If that is so, then you can't expect any better resolution than a DVD + TV is capable of displaying. Instead of evaluating the original slideshow on a computer screen, do it on a TV, using, e.g., the method that terryj described. If you view the original through that setup, you will see that the resolution drops. In fact, you will see it drop to pretty much the same resolution as that of the DVDs you burned. As Case said, if a DVD isn't good enough for you, then you can't use a DVD.

If you want to preserve the high resolution of your original, then you have no practical alternative other than to hook up your computer directly to a computer monitor-quality display and run your original slideshow. [I suppose you could make a Blu-Ray slideshow, but I don't have any experience/software/hardware for doing so. You'd still be limited by the TV's resolution, however, so that doesn't seem like a way around your problem.]

In short, a TV is not a computer, so you can't expect the former to produce the resolution of the latter.

And fyi, burn speed has zero effect on resolution. Not just small; it's actually zero. Burn speed only affects the reliability of the burn. That's a different thing altogether.

[photofun]

First, thanks for all the good info you've both given. Second, when I said I wanted to share the quicktime movie, I didn't mean I want to sit folks in front of a tv and show the photos. I want to snail-mail the movie to them (via some kind of disc) so they can view it on their own computers.

When I save the movie on a jump drive and play it on my PC, it automatically opens a realtime player and the movie looks great. But jump drives are cumbersome to mail and more expensive than discs. So I'd like to use discs if possible.

The question now is whether it's even possible to put a high-res movie onto disc without some fancy equipment?

[tomlee59]

What you want to do is simply burn a data disc. Whatever file you have on your flash stick is the same file you want to burn on a blank dvd, but as a DATA disc, not DVD format. In fact, if the file is smaller than 700MB, which is likely for any slideshow I'd care to sit through, you could also just burn it as a data CD.

Then you mail the disc, with instructions on how to play it. That's it. No conversion of files, no complex authoring, and no loss in resolution.

Can't beat that!

[photofun]

Thanks, TomLee! That simple solution saved the day and gave me the results I wanted!

Because I'd created a quicktime movie I thought I needed to burn it as a dvd. But that's not the case!

In burning a data disc I was able to present my 1.5 minute pony show (the quicktime movie) and include a separate folder with all the photos so folks can have copies of their favorite pictures.

Thanks also to everyone who shed some light on my dvd burning challenge. I've learned a lot!

[tomlee59]

Glad that it worked for you. Happy holidays to you and yours!

[newrigel]

Flash works really good too... Just convert the video to an .flv (if you have Flash...)
I make up an HTML page and put the SWF file in it and have them open up the page with whatever browser they use and the quality is pretty good actually...
Don't have to worry about formats either...