Slideshow in VCD with thousands of stills

[guillep2k]

Hi!

I want to make a VCD with a bunch of slideshows of my family album. I have thousands of JPG stills (4000+) and I wanted them to be somewhat organized in the VCD. With my current knowledge, I had two choices:

1) Use Nero 5 to make one single slideshow in track 1.

2) Use some tool to make several MPG's of my stills and
place them as different tracks of the VCD.

These approaches have serious cons, as follows:

1) Nero's slideshow won't let me separate stills in subjects (birthdays, trips, etc.), as they will be arranged in a single, sequencial slideshow (the only thing I can control is the delay between stills). A more severe limitation with this solution is that my Sampo DVE-620 will only let me see them in order, from first to last, meaning that I must see all 2999 previous stills in order to reach #3000. Finally, as the player goes deeper in the slideshow (after #150 or so), the DVD-ROM head goes up an down (from TOC to data) for EACH still, leading the player to an excesive wear out.

2) The creation of MPG files for each collection seems to be better, as allows me more control of the playing order as well as gives me the opportunity to change the playing speed . The con is that it takes so much space (I won't be able to fit my entire album this way). Whilst each still in Nero takes about 50K, a three seconds still in MPG takes about 1MB !!!

Any ideas? Is there a third way I couldn't think of?

Thank you

[Greg12]

what do you mean up and down

[guillep2k]

Sorry... for up and down I meant in and out! (I can hear the head going in -brrrrrrrr- and out -rrrrrrrb-).

[gsashok]

guillep2k

All u need is to use a s/w like winoncd. I have small problem with my photo album VCD.
We are discussing that issue right now with members here. Once If I get solutions to the topic "WinONCD photo album audio problem", I will tell you how to make PHOTO album CD.
Making is real easy.(whatever u mentioned). Only problem is with DVD players. Some does play and some not.

[RFontenot]

Look at using the Philips Video CD 2.0 Toolkit. With VCD2TK you can group your pictures into sequences. Different sequences can have different delay times between pix. You could also organize and/or select the sequences via multi-level menus for easier playback.

[guillep2k]

So.... you say that with WinOnCD I will be able to solve all of these problems?:

1) Stills wasting innecesary space.
2) Head bouncing in and out in the player when reading 150+ images.
3) Navigation between subjects only possible by watching all previous pictures.

Thanks

[gsashok]

Yes guillep2k

[ticos2000]

As fontenot mentioned, video cd 2 Toolkit is the way to go. Winocd Photo album failed with my philips dvd player and to tell you the true I tried Toolkit and the show played flawlessly. You can create a mix of things like a movie plus a powerpoint presentation plus a pictures slide show that will play on most of dvd players. I damaged a lot of cds trying to burn with winocd and it did not work but just use GEAR to burn the images and follow the guidelines on this site and youll be done in 1 hour. The only "con" i found is that it is not possible to put bakground music on the show, you can do it with a menu but not on the show .

Another way i tried is MPEG format and you can add subtitles with softwares like adobe or video wave. The thing is that it is more time consuming since you have to resize and set up your pictures according to the resolution of the VCD, but it is great, you just generate the MPEGs at high resolution and then reencoded with TMPEG to VCD standards or SVCD standards. I have 150 pictures with great resolution on one svcd with music in the background. Takes me a lot of time but it was worthed. But after i found Toolkit last week I will go for that from now on.

Best regards from the beautiful Colombia south america

Tico

[gsashok]

guillep2k

WinonCD photo album works great. I will send you mail.

[guillep2k]

gsashok:
Yeah, I tried WinOnCD photo album yesterday and it was awesome! Light-years from authoring VCD with Nero... BUT!
But there are some cons with WinOnCD photo albums too, as I could see:

1) In my Sampo DVE-620, I cannot pause or play the stills backwards.
2) I cannot add MPG files as additional tracks. WinOnCD complains about creating the VCD structure if I mess with tracks.

You know, my photo album contains some mini-videos taken with my Mavica FD-81, and I would be in heaven if I could place them with my still photographs.

Though it was far better than Nero 5.0's still authoring, it is still one step behind my goal. I guess that I can study the files generated by WinOnCD in the VCD structure and take them as a starting point to my final VCD. Though not very straightforward, but may be it's the way to go.

What do you think?

Guille

[homerpez]

I have a couple of questions (being a pain again, as always)..

With a NERO photo album, is it necessary to correct for aspect ratio? Like, whatever input JPEG's have to be stretched 10% WIDER than normal, to compensate for TV stretching (that's for NTSC)...

Also, it would be nice to know if you can do a "Mix" in NERO, like 20 photos of your kids, followed by a video clip from a home movie...

I don't have any pictures scanned, or videos properly capped, so I can't try myself yet...

[gsashok]

You need to use extended video in winoncd.
That has facility to put still as well as video.

I believe if you use for a week u can do whatever u want.

[guillep2k]

<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 2001-08-16 09:24:41, gsashok wrote:
You need to use extended video in winoncd.
That has facility to put still as well as video.

I believe if you use for a week u can do whatever u want.

</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Hey! I'll give it a try tonight. Thanx

[RFontenot]

homeprez, guillep2k;

I don't know about Nero or WinOnCD, but you can easily mix titles, still and motion pictures using sequences with VCD2TK. Also, my pictures look fine on my TV, so I believe VCD2TK corrects the aspect ratio during the build.

RF



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RFontenot on 2001-08-16 11:32:31 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RFontenot on 2001-08-16 11:33:27 ]</font>

[vitualis]

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On 2001-08-16 11:30:26, RFontenot wrote:
Also, my pictures look fine on my TV, so I believe VCD2TK corrects the aspect ratio during the build.</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Actually I'd be very surprised if it does, and indeed, it would be the WRONG thing for it to do without telling you and giving you an option.

The non-square pixel problem is not always obvious... expecially on pictures of landscapes and such. It is usually the most obvious on large close-ups of people you know (i.e., people in NTSC look too thin and people in PAL look too fat).

There is an example of this and how to fix it on the VCDImager demo VCD. My original post on this issue was here: http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=38352&forum=1

Regards.

[guillep2k]

Well... I tried with extended video in WinOnCD and I found it powerful, though I had some issues may be you can help me on:

1) Apparently, I lost the possibility of making automated thumbnail menus, as I had in slideshow projects. Plus, I could go directly to any picture in the slideshow set from those menus... I can't figure out how to reproduce this behavior with extended video without making many one picture slideshows (exhausting!).
2) Slideshows doesn't seem to respond well to the "each slide timeout" setting (which, for instance, I have to set picture by picture). Some pictures take longer than set, and some pictures take shorter (specially the last one of each set).
3) I don't get the menu text and numbers to work (hotspots and remote control numbers work, though), as I indeed enabled them for each hotspot.
4) Automatic picture resizing aspect ratio is no longer correct (may be I should use center instead of stretch?). Sources are 1024x768 mostly.
5) When I use "Add" in the slideshow, dialog box offers me to browse "Images" and "All files". JPG files are only shown in "All files"... What kind of file are "Images"?

And finally... I don't know why, though my WinOnCD program menus and dialogs are in English, the help file is in German... Anybody has an English (or Spanish) help file for version 3.8?

Well guys, thanks for your help a lot.

[RFontenot]

I don't do that many landscapes. Most of my pictures are close ups of my family. They look just like they are supposed to. Another reason why the VCD Toolkit is the program to use for VCD authoring.

RF

[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 2001-08-17 16:48:44, RFontenot wrote:
I don't do that many landscapes. Most of my pictures are close ups of my family. They look just like they are supposed to. Another reason why the VCD Toolkit is the program to use for VCD authoring.

RF
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I still don't believe it -- otherwise, it would resize the aspect ratio for things you may not want it to resize...

Why don't you try this... Extract one of the segment items off the VCD on your PC. Now, load it in Virtualdub and copy one of the source frames and paste it in an image editing proggy (e.g., Paint Shop Pro).

Now, RESIZE the image to a 4:3 aspect ratio (this is what the TV would do when displaying it). For example, resizing 704x480/576 or 352x240/288 ==> 800x600.

Now load up your original image on your PC (which will have the correct 1:1 aspect ratio) and compare them side by side. Even better, resize to exact dimensions and layer one on top of the other. Is the aspect ratio of the VCD version still correct?

If this is true, VCD Toolkit is very remarkable indeed. However, I doubt very much that this specific issue has been addressed as if it has been, it should definitely be documented as it is taking an active intervention on your images.

Regards.

[Betamax]

On 2001-08-16 23:52:56, vitualis wrote:
<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>
There is an example of this and how to fix it on the VCDImager demo VCD. My original post on this issue was here: http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=38352&forum=1
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>
Vitualis, where can find that demo-cd ??
Tx.

[legman]

It's been a while, but this is a really cool way.

Use adobe premiere 5.5 and the cce 2.62 plugin.

Set you project so that the still play for the frame rate you want. Now you can import a hundered or so stills at a time and just drop them on the time line. If you set it up correctly, they will stay there for 2-5 seconds. Whatever you set. Now you will have a svcd, not vcd. BUT you can use tscv now to add menus that are really cool also.

Give it a shot, trust me, you won't be disappointed.

[speedy]

After reading your comments my first thought was WHY does this guy want to get thousands of images on one CD?

If you really want something special this is the way to go.

1. Gather all your images, open each in Photoshop or some similar graphics program. Adjust levels, then use curves to get the correct adjustment for shadows and highlights. Crop as necessary so all images are the same dimmensions. I find it better to pick your favoite image in a series then either enlarge or decrease the others to match. Be realistic with your croping.

2. Use a video editor like Video Factory or another where you can drag and drop to the timeline.

3. Decide on how long each photo in a series of photos of similar subject matter should appear on screen. It seems the sweet spot is between 3-5 seconds not counting and transition time. Each series should be the same time on screen for each image, but do varry series to avoid boredom.

4. Apply a crossfade or transistion between each image. Much more interesting that just going from one image to another. Moderately slow disolves or wipes at an angle work best with slight to moderate feathering.

5. Add an overlay at start of each series if you like to explain what each series is about.

6. Add background music. Match the music to subject matter. Avoid overlaping or cutting music track short if possible so it don't run into next series. Works much better if music completes when a single series does. Either add or reduce number of picturs to accomplish.

At lot of work and no way to get thousands of picutes of reasonable quality on a single CD if you care about quality. Buy why would you want to? I've done this kind of project several times and limit a single CD-RW to a single topic. Rarely are you going to want more than a few hundred of the same topic anyway. If you get your photos organized on your PC in seperate folders fairly simple to update later. Anyway, that's how I do it. Now I got all my neighbors bugging me to do their photos. Yea right... sure.

[vitualis]

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On 2001-09-08 14:03:39, Betamax wrote:
Vitualis, where can find that demo-cd ??
Tx.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm referring to the VCDImager demo VCD: http://vcdimager.hvrlab.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/demovcd/

Regards.

[guillep2k]

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On 2001-09-08 19:19:05, speedy wrote:
After reading your comments my first thought was WHY does this guy want to get thousands of images on one CD?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Speedy... My entire family album consists of thousands of images. If I wish to distribute it among my relatives, it's easier to make a single CD than several CDs. Besides, why should I want several CDs, when one CD has enough room for all the images?

BTW, my goal is to have some procedure I could automate, so my wife presses a button and voila! my/her VCD/SVCD/miniDVD is done. I use Compupic for batch processing (resizing)... Photoshop to make some brightness/contrast adjustment, but that's all the manual processing I want to do.

I don't think I'll make a movie thru Premiere because the movie will be considerably larger than the individual frames. But that's only my guess... didn't try it yet. Same for the music. The whole idea is to watch the pictures in family, and talk about them.... music wouldn't be nice.
I'm not Robert Zemeckis, you know... It takes lot of work and lots of good taste to make a slideshow interesting enough. And a movie has another thing that's not good: it is very interesting to have the ability to move freely between pictures, back and forth.

At this moment, I'm experimenting with miniDVDs. I'll tell you how it does soon...

Regards,
Guille