Making a Sr Class DVD slideshow.

[ingeborgdot]

I am going to make a Sr. Class DVD music video/slideshow of the pictures that were given to me by the Senior parents. I want this to be something that they can really remember. I am doing it for free. I was wondering if anyone had any great ideas? I have been looking at past DVD's that have been made and they seem so boring. I don't want it to be that way. I came on here because all of you guys are the best and offer great help and advice so here I am. Offer it to me please. Thanks.

[Moontrash]

DVD slideshow GUI

[ingeborgdot]

Yeah, that looks nice. I have that plus some other programs that I am testing. What I am looking for mainly is ideas on how to make it pop!!! Something different I guess. Maybe there is only so much a person can do but I want to try. Thanks

[guns1inger]

Don't use a slideshow program if you want something that looks different. As good as some of them are, they still produce something that looks template driven and just like the last the slideshow you saw.

As with all these projects, planning is the key.

1. Work out what sort of feel you want to go for - soft and languid, or Tony Scott in Pelham123/Man on Fire mode, or something in between.

2. Pick your music so you have something to work to.

3. If necessary, create any other assets you require. These could be video clips, frames, cropping photos in photoshop etc.

4. Assemble everything in a video editor. This gives you far more options and control than a slideshow maker.

Of course this all takes time, which you may not have or wish to spend. You could just spend some time working your photos in photoshop/gimp etc to give them a unique look or feel, then use a slideshow maker to pull it together afterwards. But you don't get something unique if you just do it the same way everybody else does. Just spend 5 minutes in youtube searching Best Slideshow videos - they all look the same, and few of them look good.

Example of something different



Or something a little more traditional, but well planned

[ingeborgdot]

What the heck did they use? This is awesome. I bet it took them more than 2 hours? How did they get it so 3D like? I am sure this is way above me. The problem is all the pictures they gave me are what they want used. I have over 1200 pictures to do something with. What a cool way though.

[guns1inger]

The first one could be done in Vegas (I suspect it was mostly done in After effect though), as it supports 3D layers. I have done similar (although not on the same scale). You start out with lots of masking and extracting in Photoshop to get the layers, then you start building in your editor or compositor.

However you don't have to go even as far as they have done. If you take a selection of photos, extract the main people from each, then composite them back over the top in your editor on a forward layer you immediately get a 3D experience that enhances your slideshow with minimal extra work. Add a slight blur to the back ground, and a little panning from left to right to bring out the 3D-ness, and you have a nice show.

And yes, I bet it took quite a bit more than 2 hours

[ingeborgdot]

Yeah, you make it sound so easy. Supper will be ready in a little while. I will set a place for you and afterward we can go work on Vegas together
How long would 1200 pictures take do you suppose?

[guns1inger]

Do you have to use all of them ?

Quick back of the envelope calculation : 1200 photos x 5 seconds per photo = 100 minutes of video. Who, in their right mind, is going to watch 100 minutes of slideshow ?

If this is just to go in the background while people mill and talk, then I wouldn't try to make it pop. I would make is smooth, slow and just let it be.

If, on the other hand, you were going to make a highlights reel that was going to be part of a presentation and had to only fill a 3 minutes slot, it is a different story.

[ingeborgdot]

I know. The other videos that have been made have been right at 95-100 minutes. All the mommies want to see every photo that is given to me. Last year, the guy that did it refused to do it again (for free mind you) because he did not get all the pics of a kid or two that were sent to him and he got his arse chewed something fierce.

Yeah, I understand. It may be too time consuming to do it the other way but I could make a 5 minute intro to get them going. Do you wanna help?

But if I do just do the smooth way what programs out there are the best and would make 1200 photos work with a little bit of interest?

[guns1inger]

DVD Slideshow GUI is the best of the free programs. Microsoft's Photostory is pretty good, but 1200 photos is pushing it's capacity. Pro Show Gold gets a good wrap around here as well.

I have just had a play in Vegas, as it has been while since I did something like this using something other than After Effects. It is possible, but it is much harder and more time consuming than AE to work with multiple 3D layers because they aren't tied to a single camera view in the same way.

But then, that was only one example. You need to come up with something that suits your slideshow, which may end up being something completely different.

[ingeborgdot]

I am willing to pay for something if it is truly better. I will use it for many things and not just this. I have tried the DVD Slideshow GUI and it is nice. How much do I have to pay for something that is better?

[guns1inger]

Slideshow tools ? USD$50 - 100. Download some demos and see what they do.

http://www.photodex.com/products/proshow/gold will get you started.

After Effects is a lot more, but will require manual work, not automated slideshows

But if you want something really unique, it will take a lot of work on your part. There is no way around that.

I understand completely why the guy who used to do it, doesn't want to do it again.

[ingeborgdot]

And why I probably won't either?

[ingeborgdot]

Who makes slideshow tools?

[greymalkin]

I hope they gave you clean/cropped digital images too and not a stack of printed photos..the scanning alone would be ridiculous.

I did a 500 picture slideshow for my grandmothers 80th birthday and all the pictures had to be scanned . I just used proshow gold and the hardest part (other than the scanning!) was really grouping them and then finding songs to go with each group. It ended up being about 30 minutes which is pretty long for a slideshow!

I wouldn't kill yourself if they are just going to turn their noses up at it, load it in proshow and set a random transition, sync to audio and be done with it. personally massaging 1200 pictures for free is insanity. Also, when the video is about them they are usually just happy to see themselves on the screen.

In the future they should really set a limit on how many pictures each person can have...noone wants to watch a 100 minute slideshow.

[ingeborgdot]

What I made them do was get them to me on cd or flash drive so I just loaded them in. Some of them I had to crop but most were good. Some are pretty low quality though.


Yeah, I don't know about the length of it. I may talk to some of the parents and see if they really need 100 minutes of slideshow. Although it means either shorter length of photos or cutting some out. Then some parents go crazy because this certain picture is not in there.

Does Proshow Gold let you do random transitions and also random picture movement? After looking at things and playing a little it is going to take weeks spending several hours a day to get this done on some programs.
What I want I think is for me to be able to select random transitions because I like some variety, and random picture movement because I like them to move in different directions. In or out or up or down or sideways or rotate etc.

The other thing like I mentioned earlier is I want it to be different and guns1inger showed me some that were awesome but too much work. I just want to give some different intro I guess that I will have to think of what to do.

[ingeborgdot]

Has anyone tried Proshow Producer?

[tin2tin]

Unless you have a very powerful computer(a lot of RAM or high virtual memory) I think DVD slideshow GUI and most slideshow apps will choke on 1200 slides. I haven't tried - so that shouldn't keep you from trying.

If you need to use that many slides in the show - you should forget about doing fancy stuff like Ken Burns animations. Just using the stills and cuts as transitions will render faster. Also I would recommend you to render it in parts (100-200 slides) and then splice them all together into one video file.

When you got the final video file mpg or m2v+ac3 you can use the free Gui for dvdauthor, DVDstyler or DVDauthor GUI to make a dvd out of the final video.

You ask:

I am willing to pay for something if it is truly better. I will use it for many things and not just this. I have tried the DVD Slideshow GUI and it is nice. How much do I have to pay for something that is better?

What do you mean by better? If you want to do advanced stuff - DVD slideshow GUI can do pretty advanced stuff... does that make it better? That's very subjective you know...

Check out the examples on the DVD slideshow GUI homepage or on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/tintwotin

What I know is that the rendered quality of a slideshow from DVD slideshow GUI is very good thanks to the free HCenc(which I didn't code). It is just as good or even better than most payware mpg-encoders.

[ingeborgdot]

I have a very powerful computer. Quad core, 4GB of memory etc. I edit a lot of video.

[ingeborgdot]

I have been organizing all the pics into folders to make it easier to work with. I have all the baby pictures that were given to me and want to know if anyone has any special ideas for this? Right now I am going to just say guess who for this part and let them have a little fun trying to figure out who is who etc. I want some funny baby music or something down that road for the baby pictures. Does anyone have any ideas for this? I have some music but none seems to fit. I am taking it one part at a time now. Thanks.

[ingeborgdot]

I can't seem to find any good baby music that sounds good.

[ingeborgdot]

I am pretty much done with the slideshow and it looks pretty good. I found some great music and synced it pretty well. I would like some help for an intro if anyone is willing to give some suggestions.
I don't want to start it out like mushy with the normal graduation song. I want to start it out with Schools out for Summer. I was wondering what type of video I could do or pictures to use. I am thinking about talking to the principal and getting all the Sr's to come running out of the front door and go a little crazy and do the song Schools out. What are your opinions of what to do that would be cool or a wow factor? Thanks.

[ingeborgdot]

But then after listening to the song it may be a little crazy for the blowing up the school part. Crap.

[ingeborgdot]

I figured it out. I am going to play Wear sunscreen by baz luhrmann. I will play that and use video of the Sr's in class throughout the the day tomorrow. It should be cool.

[V Bot]

Sounds like a good track to use, my wife can't stand it. I think it makes a lot of sense, if you really listen to the lyrics. Maybe don't blow up the school. Or of course you could blow it up and use a slow motion rewind (Rebuild effect).

[ingeborgdot]

I do have a question about quality though. When I finish the section of the slideshow I am working on ( I have divided them into age sections) the quality looks great. When I make it it also looks good. When I put it into my sony vegas pro the quality seems to dwindle and I don't like it. Can anyone explain what is going on?

[guns1inger]

Quality goes down in the preview, or after rendering ?

Preview has many settings, including some that are adaptive to try to keep the framerate up at the expense of image quality. Also, the preview doesn't do great job at resizing or deinterlacing, so if your preview window does not match your source framesize, quality may suffer (in the preview only - this does not affect final output).

What are you do in Vegas ?

[ingeborgdot]

I was taking all the pieces that I created in Proshow Producer and putting them all together with some other things I created and finishing the slide show there.

[lordsmurf]

I do mine in Premiere. I love to mix short video clips with stills, often with a start/stop freeze frame. I've been into Ken Burns a bit too, though not obnoxiously as most people seem to do. Proshow Gold would be my plan B.

[guns1inger]

If you output everything using the same settings, to a relatively uncompressed or lossless AVI format, you can join them in virtualdub without re-encoding. Unless you are outputting to DV-AVI or CBR Mpeg-2, Vegas will re-encode, Best avoided if possible unless you are also doing titling etc in Vegas at the same time.