Picture sets to DVD

[Yaro]

Not sure if this is the right forum but I'll try here. Recently a friend of mine showed me a DVD that he was given which contained lot's of pictures with a nice music background. The best thing about it was that the pictures/photos were put in chapters by topic and there were really nice transitions between the pictures, not like sharp triangles but as it they were rolling out from the main view like book pages. Very smooth. Is something like that very difficult to do and what program could you recommend.
yaro

[Supreme2k]

<--- Tools > Photo Blu-Ray/DVD/VCD

[Yaro]

Didn't spot that Will try them. Thanks.

[Yaro]

OK so I tried the most popular one by Photodex and it's no good. The others seem to have similar problems like poor output quality, crashing, problems with creating menus for DVD. Are there any other options that would be simple enough and effective?
yaro

[poisondeathray]

The ones that look great with animations are usually custom made with editors like vegass/premiere/after effects and authored separately with custom menus. They usually are not done with easy to use 1 click software.

DVD will give you poor output quality, mainly because of the low resolution; all your high quality pictures get reduced to standard definition

If you weren't happy with photodex, it's time to step up and make a custom photo dvd.

[Alex_ander]

TAW4 can do it in combination with usual video titles, great menus, etc. Several dozen transition effects, automatically loading picture folders in alphabetic file order, audio track and subtitles. Selectable: with borders or cut to full-screen for non-standard original AR's. Very simple to use (wizard-type authoring program).

[neomaine]

There's also the free Microsft PhotoStory3. I've recommended it to some family and friends and it seemed to be at about their learning curve. Its on the newbie side but functional ... and free.

[Yaro]

I'm not really looking for fancy animations. I just want to have a nice menu consisting of 2 maybe 3 pages with buttons for a couple of slideshows. Simple transition will do just fine for me but a music background would be a really good thing to have.
Main concern is the quality of output sideshow as some will be watching it on HD TVs. What workflow would you recommend?
I'll try TAW4 when I get home. Cheers
yaro

[byteguy]

OK so I tried the most popular one by Photodex and it's no good.

What did you find wrong with it? I've been using it for years and years. Lots of control (and I'm just using the Gold program and not the super-function Producer) and the output quality is crystal clear.

The others seem to have similar problems like poor output quality, crashing, problems with creating menus for DVD.

If ALL the programs have similar problems then maybe it's not the programs. What kind of system are you running on?

[Yaro]

It's not that I tested them all but red the reviews underneath. In my case the output was of pretty poor quality and only 2 of 6 buttons/thumbnails were working and even that wrong starting the wrong show. I couldn't get the menu the way I wanted it with the main page showing links to to different menu sets where one was supposed to have 6 and the other 3 thumbnails. When I chose 6 all the pages went to 6 and when changed the second page to 3 all pages changed to 3. I don't know how you're getting crystal clear output quality which is the greatest of my concerns. I can't see any options to improve it. I've got the output set to High Quality DVD (Safe) and the output is just useless even on my 19" monitor so I can imagine it will be dreadful on a 30 something HD TV.

Didn't have the chance to test TAW4 today but I'll certainly try tomorrow after work. Thanks
yaro

[Yaro]

TAW4 would be great if not the 200 pictures per show limit. Also I'm not too sure about the menus. I don't understand what do the mean by tracks and why there are separate menus for audio when you choose a template. Shouldn't audio be just for the music background. Also only to audio tracks per show which is just not enough.
yaro

[Noahtuck]

OK so I tried the most popular one by Photodex and it's no good. The others seem to have similar problems like poor output quality, crashing, problems with creating menus for DVD. Are there any other options that would be simple enough and effective?
yaro

I'm with byteguy
I have used both versions of photodex's Proshow and i have never had a problem.
Excellent results.
Lots of options, transitions, ect.

What were you exporting them as ?
I always set it to use custom output with the specs i want, not the templates.

[Yaro]

What do you mean by custom settings? I chose Create DVD and the Encoding Quality to High. Cant see any custom options in there. Also I can't see any option to create a multilayered menu.
yaro

[Alex_ander]

TAW4 would be great if not the 200 pictures per show limit. Also I'm not too sure about the menus. I don't understand what do the mean by tracks and why there are separate menus for audio when you choose a template. Shouldn't audio be just for the music background. Also only to audio tracks per show which is just not enough.
yaro

Probably 200 is the limit just for a track (a 17-min part with their default 5 seconds per picture). A track means a separate VTS (generally up to 99 VTS's). If you want to change music while watching (e.g. to make an alternate audio version with comments) then you need to add more than 1 audio track (from your external file, of course). Menu types (separate audio page or not) are selectable, the choice is wider if you use 'custom menu based on a template'.
For better resizing+encoding quality I previously convert all source pictures from jpeg to bmp or png (the same thing with menu backgrounds). You can also configure the internal encoder for a higher bitrate (default is 7000 kbps).

[Yaro]

Yeah I figured that out as to the audio tracks in TAW4. I just thought I can add mp3 files for the background music but looks like I would have to create one large mp3 for the duration of all the slideshow. Not very practical if you have multiple chapters and want to have different music for your chapters. So far from comparison I got the best results using DVD Photo Slideshow. Image quality like TAW4 but better control over the background music. Still I don't understand why Producer gives me such a crappy picture quality. Do I need to downsize the pictures first? I think I create a litle show and check it's settings with Media Info. Maybe that'll explain what's the problem.

I had similar problems when editing a dvd movie with Ulead Studio. For some reason the output quality was pretty poor comparing to the ordinal imported with DVDdecrypter. Maybe it has to do with some codecs allready installed on my system... no idea.
yaro

[Yaro]

This is what Media Info log gives me:

Writing library : Photodex mpeg encoder

Video
ID : 224 (0xE0)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings, Matrix : Default
Duration : 30s 120ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 14.6 Mbps
Nominal bit rate : 7 447 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 1.405
Stream size : 52.3 MiB (96%)
Writing library : Photodex mpeg encoder

Text
ID : 32 (0x20)
Format : RLE
Format/Info : Run-length encoding


Does anything here explain the poor quality of my slideshow?
yaro

[poisondeathray]

Can you be more specific about describing what you mean by "poor quality" output compared to the output from some of the other programs like TAW4? ie. is there macroblocking? artifacts? poor colors? etc...

[Yaro]

Much less sharp and the colours look washed away.
yaro

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[Yaro]

In your place I would just check how it works for you on your computer.

I just noticed that Windows Media Player for some reason plays my movies with much worse quality than VLC. This shouldn't be related however as all my tests were played on a different PC using the same application.
yaro

[Yaro]

It's probably not the best way but here is what I thing to do. First create a non menu slideshows with TAW4 for it's best quality. Then I'll use PgcDemuc to extract video file from the VOB. Then I'll import them to some editing tool like Ulead Studio to add sound. Ulead will give me a sound and video file. I tried that before so I know that again the video will be poor but I can use Muxman to mux Ulead's audio with my PgcDemux output. This will sort one part. Then I think I can use Nero to create menu with chapters and finally burn my DVD. Hope that works fine this time. It's not the simplest way but taking into account the amount of time already spent on testing different ways its surely worth it.
yaro