Microsoft Photo Story 3 ?

[Mike99]

Has anyone used Microsoft Photo Story 3 to make a DVD slide show?

It appears there is a Sonic plugin which lets you burn a DVD. Trying to sort through some stuff, it seems you might be able to use other burning software because Photo Story 3 saves in wmv file format. However I read that wmv is more compressed than mpeg2 which is used for DVDs. And from what I can tell Photo Story 3 uses 640x480 and cannot do 16:9.

This info may be out of date since some of my searching took me to info that was a few years old and may have changed by now.

Can Photo Story 3 output in 720x480 mpg2 in order to author a DVD?

If the Sonic plugin is used, does it convert wmv to mpg2, or does it somehow have direct access to a mpg2 file format?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[guns1inger]

Go to Papa John's site : http://www.papajohn.org/ and download the template he has for doing higher quality output. It can't do true 16:9, but you can work around this by resizing your images first. Papa John goes through most of this. Yes, it is limited to WMV output, but with the right templates you can get pretty good quality. I don't know about the Sonic plugin and what it might offer. Most of the info won't have changed because Photostory hasn't been upgraded in some time, and has now been deprecated. It isn't officially supported under Vista (although it runs) or Windows 7 (there is a demo version of something that does allow Photostory to run under W7, but it expires after a couple of months). Most of the Photostory functionality can be found in Live Movie Maker and the Auto Movie function.

[Mike99]

Thanks for the info. I've tried a few slideshow programs but never Photo Story 3. However I don't recall why not. I did look at Movie Maker but it states will not run on Windows XP, which I have. I will check out Papa John's web site.

Thanks again.

[Mike99]

Upon further investigation it appears that Windows Movie Maker 5.1 for XP does exist on my PC. I played with it a bit and it does work, however it saves in the wmv format. I don't know if this really is a bad thing, just that I read mpg2 was better.

I know that some programs save the original jpg images along with the slideshow, which seems like a nice idea. If you want to print a photo than you have easy access to the jpg. And if you ever wanted to make a Hi Def Blu-ray disc then you would not have to search out & sort all the photos again because they would be right there.

At the moment I'm favoring MemoriesOnTV.

[yoda313]

I don't know if this really is a bad thing, just that I read mpg2 was better.

Wmv is not better or worse than mpg. It depends on your end use.

You do need mpeg2 for regular dvd creation. If you just want to use it on a pc or a device that can play wmv than wmv is just fine.

[Mike99]

I don't know if this really is a bad thing, just that I read mpg2 was better.

Wmv is not better or worse than mpg. It depends on your end use.

You do need mpeg2 for regular dvd creation. If you just want to use it on a pc or a device that can play wmv than wmv is just fine.

I do want to create a regular DVD. Even if wmv and mpeg2 are equal in quality, I would still have to convert wmv to mpeg2. Would it be better to just have the slideshow created in meg2 to begin with?

[yoda313]

Would it be better to just have the slideshow created in meg2 to begin with?

Probably yes. The less conversions you make the better.

An alternative approach if you are set on using wmm is to output to dv-avi. Then you can convert to mpeg2 from there. The bonus being you can freely edit dv-avi anyway you want whereas mpeg2 isn't quite as editable as dv-avi - at least for frame accurate junkies.

Have you checked the tools sections for other dvd slideshow creators? I'm sure there are some freebies out there that would create a dvd in one shot without conversions. You may have to pay for some though but I imagine those wouldn't be terribly pricey.

[guns1inger]

WMM on XP also allows you to output as DV AVI. The files will likely be bigger - 13GB per hour of footage - but the compression will be less, and will possibly handle the conversion to mpeg-2 better.

I have used memories on TV and while it is not a bad product, it didn't really offer anything more than the free tools other than a more integrated environment.