Tutorial on creating VCDs from photo images

[homerpez]

Oh, good heaven above!

Is there really any problem with just making a picture at 740x480 that will appear properly at 4:3 aspect, and just dropping it into NERO? From what I'm gathering here, it's all you need to do (unless you have a stubborn player), and you get up to 99 pics per VCD.

The VCD Help page on this is making things even more confusing though. It's showing resolutions much higher than VCD or SVCD! Take a look here www.vcdhelp.com/nerophoto.htm. Someone explain what this means?

And what does this mean for Photoshop? Do you purposely make an image 1.something times it's real width, then squeeze it? Just a bit confused here...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: homerpez on 2001-07-11 07:17:09 ]</font>

[homerpez]

OK, one question answered. You basically make your picture look right at either 320x240 OR 640x480, then stretch the width to 110%. Magically you end up with VCD resolutions.

But how can you import odd resolutions to NERO?

[vitualis]

homerpez, I don't actually understand what you are trying to ask.

Regards.

[judicator]

try using the videopak for cequdrat software

[homerpez]

virtualis, that frenzied rant was expressing my confusion over the whole thing... I was just wondering:

1- If NERO can just drag-and-drop jpgs or bmps, why not? I can waste a CD-R trying

2- What sizes can be used? The VCD help tutorial has weird (non vcd) sized jpgs!

Thanks, and sorry...

[PopUpVideo]

I too have tried many ways to get all of my digital photos on a nice photo CD. Here's what I have learned:
1) WinOnCd3.8PE is a great product for this. If your DVD player does not support the music background (like mine doesn't) then you can still make nice photo disks with menus by simply dragging and dropping folders with hundreds of pics into the poto album. Seems to get around the stupid 99 pic limit in Nero. 99 JPEG's don't even fill 10% of an 80 minute CD-R.
2) I used ULEAD VS5 to create a SVCD movie out of stills (JPG) simply by inserting them, setting lenth, adding some music to the track, and encoding. The stills look great!
For some reason, if I didn't use a high bit rate, I wound up with fuzzy blocky pics. So, I set bit rate @ 2,200, then re-encode with Tsunami at 1250 to shrink file. Resulting music photo album is impressive. Never had to convert to .bmp or resize at all.
Also, when I use this ULEAD MPG method, the apect ratio on the photos is correct, however this may be due to all of my JPG source photos being in 640x480 format (i think that's what they are, i'll have to check).

Regards. -PUV

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: PopUpVideo on 2001-07-12 06:42:27 ]</font>

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-07-12 05:13:33, homerpez wrote:
virtualis, that frenzied rant was expressing my confusion over the whole thing... I was just wondering:

1- If NERO can just drag-and-drop jpgs or bmps, why not? I can waste a CD-R trying</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

You can. However, Nero won't correct for the aspect ratio problem I described. Thus, people on a NTSC system will look too skinny, and people on a PAL system will look too fat.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>2- What sizes can be used? The VCD help tutorial has weird (non vcd) sized jpgs!</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

They don't have to be VCD sized. Nero (and any proggy doing this worth it's salt) will resize it for you, keeping the perceived 1:1 aspect ratio.

Regards.

[vitualis]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-07-12 06:18:47, PopUpVideo wrote:
I too have tried many ways to get all of my digital photos on a nice photo CD. Here's what I have learned:
1) WinOnCd3.8PE is a great product for this.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes it is good. But I don't think that it corrects for the aspect ratio issue I originally posted about.

Consequently, in NTSC, people look too skinny and in PAL, people look too fat.
[/quote]

Regards.

[homerpez]

This is beginning to take shape in my mind here, I'm almost there!

SO what you are all saying, if I get this, is that your pictures can be whatever shape, NERO will resize them. So, if I have something rectangular (more vertical than wide), it will display it in this shape on a black matte background, vs. stretching it across the whole screen size.

BUT, I have to worry about the aspect ratio stretching. So if my picture is this shape (forgive me if this doesn't show right):

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Then I have to apply the right resizing to it for the aspect. So, for NTSC, I would just have to make THIS picture 110% of it's original width, but I don't have to make a matte that's VCD-res sized and then stretch.

Am I close?...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: homerpez on 2001-07-12 09:07:16 ]</font>

[vitualis]

I think you've got it!

Regards.

[Radioman]

Vitualis !

Thanks a lot for your tutorial !

I have struggled with this for some time but haven't had the time and knowledge to find the sollution. Your tutorial works perfectly for PAL SVCD as well. The with resize is then SVCD= (480/576)/(4/3) = 62.5%.

I have just done a really nice pictureplay with music and burned it with Nero. Stunning ! And much cheaper and easier then to have two projectors and other equipment for your old DIA positive pictures !

I used Premiere and framserved with AVISYNTH to TMPGEnc to make the final Mpeg2 file. Im really happy with my success and have seen similar responds here on this thread so I'm not alone.

Thanks again Vitualis

[jtss2001]

Very good. It is a very detail tutorial. I am looking for a similar software to create still images to AVI/MPG too. I know of a software call Colorlite by a China company does it. It take the images & audio as input and output a avi file basically slideshow images with audio just like powerpoint. But it is in chinese!

Any one know any similar software?

[boston1]

in Adobe premiere, how do I know what my frame default duration of the image should be? Im not sure what that means. does that mean the number of seconds between stills for the slideshow?

[vitualis]

"frame default duration" actually means exactly that... The length of time played by default (you can change each individually if you want) when you drag a still image (e.g., a bitmap) onto the timeline.

Thus, if you set it as 2 seconds, then by default, a bitmap will play for 2 seconds when you drag it onto the timeline.

Regards.