Doing 24p will definitely give you more of the film-look, especially in Vegas 6. I've used it in one pan-zoom picture show mainly because the pictures were from an album from the 30s and 40s. I think it added to that look of the past. However, you'll get much smoother, sharper pans and zooms at 29.97 and that might be preferable for a more modern show (recent pictures). Try both, make mpgs and then put them on a DVD together and see what you think.

My issue lies because in the past when i've used 24 w/ stills it looked a little choppy in parts when watched on DVD, but then again, I prefer the look of 24 over standard interlaced. I have vegas 5 by the way.

Something that would work very well for this would be DV Filmmaker for Windows.

It will only deinterlace when motion is present, so that on fairly quick pans and zooms you'll get a film-look, while preserving the full resolution on slower pans, zooms and shots without much movement.

Unfortunately it's not cheap, $145. I think I got my copy for $99 a couple years ago and have since upgraded to the latest version free. You can download and try it though.

Photo animations tend to look awful with DVFilm. What happens is that since the motion is all pans and zooms rather than motion with a static frame, every pixel is always different on motion than it was in the previous frame. Because of this DVFilm wil "deinterlace" the whole picture which basically amounts to reducing the resolution by half.

Instead just render the slideshow as a 24P mpeg, and after you make the DVD, if your DVD player and TV set are progressive scan compatible, make sure they are actually set up that way. They never default that way because of compatibility problems if they did, and it is my experience that very few setups that are capable of 24P playback are actually set up that way.

One last thing: use 23.97 rather than 24p.

My suggestion is to use 29.97i. The temporal resolution at 29.97i is 2.5 times greater than 24p. There are 59.94 still images per second at 29.97i, there are only 24 at 24p. At 24p, all your pans, zoom and dissolves will stutter. 24p is HIGHLY, I repeat, HIGHLY, overrated.

You may wish to read my post on the subject here:

http://sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=285294

John

Well you can always try both and see which you like better. You really should do this. Until you do it's all just theoretical.

With a 24p render, you definately have to use a lot less motion than you can get away with at 29.97. Even with small movements you'll see the stuttering motion, but people are used to seeing that. If the slideshow is played back on a TV that doesn't do progressive scan it won't look as good as a straight 29.97 render either. At 29.97 I always do a .001 vertical gaussian blur which I don't need to do at 24p.

The main thing I like about 24p is that if you have a 16:9 widescreen video and you play it back on a regular 4:3 TV, it doesn't get damaged as much. This is because 4:3 TVs throw away every fourth line and doing this screws up the interlace pattern. To deal with this, DVD players do a hardware blend fields deinterlace which really looks medicre. What you end up with is blurry stuttery video.

24p widescreen played back on a progressive scan compatible DVD player and television throws away every fourth line, but doesn't do this extra deinterlace step, and so less damage is done. Of course, most 24p compatible setups are still at their default values as they sit in peoples living rooms, and so the video is medicre no matter what you do.

BTW The Sony Vega 4:3 TVs have a 16:9 Enhanced Mode. It is not explained well in the instruction book. To use 16:9 enhanced mode you setup your DVD player as if is connected to a 16:9 TV. When you play a 16:9 DVD the image will be streached vertically until you go to the Vega menu and select 16:9 enhanced mode. The vega will reduce the verticle size to the correct aspect ratio without thowing away any scan lines. Blew my socks off. ;)

Ed