Auto Numbering of Photos?

wonka001 wrote on 4/1/2008, 7:59 PM
Not sure if this should be posted in this forum or VMS (Actually, I'll post in both just in case). Here goes:

I would like to create a DVD of all photos, but have each photo have a unique number. I figure I could do this by creating a transparent text with the number in the corner but don't see any easy way to have the program auto increment the number.

Probably an easy job for Vegas Pro and its scripts but all I have is VMS-Plat

Any suggestions, comments, thoughts???

TIA

Bill

Comments

bStro wrote on 4/2/2008, 7:17 AM
(All statements below are based on DVD Architect Pro. I don't have DVD Architect Studio to see which options and settings are available there.)

If you're doing this as a DVD Architect picture compilation, DVDA has an Auto Insert Slide Text option. After inserting a picture compilation (or creating a new project that is only a picture compilation), navigate into it, go to the Options menu and make sure this one is checked. Then add one photo to your compilation. DVD Architect will add the photo and put a text object based on its filename (without the extension) with its default text settings of Arial, white, and positioned in the bottom left. It can be a pain to edit several text objects after the fact, so adjust this first item to how you want the rest of them to appear. Then insert the rest of your pictures into the compilation, and DVDA will put the text in the same place with the same settings.

One disadvantage of the above is, of course, you have to rename all your photos.

Another solution is to edit your images so that the number is already there. This can be done pretty quickly in, for example Powerpoint. More recent versions have the option to insert a "photo album" (essentially just a way to batch import photos). Then you add a slide master that has the slide number on it, and apply that layout to all slides. Neat thing about this is you can rearrange the photos if you like, and Powerpoint will adjust the numbers accordingly. Then go to File -> Save As, choose an image format for the filetype, and away you go.

If Powerpoint gives you the heebie-jeebies, as it does many, I'm sure there are other presentation or imaging apps that will do something similar.

Last solution I can think of is to create a text file that, on separate lines, has the text you want to display. Then, back in DVD Architect, add a subtitle track and import your text file. DVDA will create a subtitle event for each line of the text file with the content of that line. Formatting subtitles is a little different from formating text objects. For subtitles, format one event the way you want, the right click that event (on the timeline, not on the workspace) and choose Apply Formating to Selected Tracks. Note that for subtitles, the color is controlled by a color set, not with the text format tool bar. Also note that subtitles will be off by default, so you'll need to either turn them on with your remote as you're watching the DVD or adjust your DVDA project so that they're flipped on automatically. Under File -> Properties is the option for an initial subtitle track, though I've never tested it.

Rob
TOG62 wrote on 4/2/2008, 7:59 AM
Hi Rob,

Just to confirm that DVDA Studio can auto insert slide text. No subtitles, though.

Mike
Terje wrote on 4/2/2008, 10:53 AM
Interesting option going through Powerpoint, have you ever tried this? I have tried to export JPEG from PP and quite frankly, it doesn't work. Colors are screwed up and it all looks terrible. I do this to put PP online and synch with a voice over. A set of JPEGs would be a lot higher quality and a lot smaller than doing it, as I do now, in Camtasia.
bStro wrote on 4/2/2008, 10:18 PM
have you ever tried this?

I wouldn't have recommended it if I hadn't. ;-)

Colors are screwed up and it all looks terrible.

Not sure what to tell you. Any slides I've saved from Powerpoint to image files have been indistinguishable (to the naked eye) from how they looked in Powerpoint in the first place.

I ran a test earlier today after reading your post. I put about a dozen JPEGs into a PPT file and saved them back out to new JPGs and also out to PNGs. Then I loaded each set onto its own track (original, PPT JPG, PPT PNG) and looked at opened up the vector scopes. There were some minor differences between each set, but nothing I'd categorize as "screwed up."

Just how screwed up are the results you're getting? It might depend on exactly what kind of stuff (and colors) you're using in Powerpoint. Could you post some screencaps of before and after?

Have you tried outputting to PNG instead of JPG? Might help, although it probably wouldn't save you much, if anything, in storage space over using Camtasia.

Rob
musicvid10 wrote on 4/3/2008, 6:46 AM
Play around with the batch conversion/rename function in Irfanview. It will autoname and auto-overlay the output images and should do close to what you want.
wonka001 wrote on 4/3/2008, 1:22 PM
Powerpoint did the trick for me. That's a neat trick I'm going to have to remember.

Thanks !

Bill
johnmeyer wrote on 4/3/2008, 4:18 PM
Creating an SUB file using Excel would have been my solution, especially since that also lets the user turn off the numbers. If the duration for each photo is the same, doing this would take less than thirty seconds, since Excel can auto-number cells, and can increment the times needed for the SUB file.

I just did a quick test, and you can do this with virtually no effort or time. Here is a link to a zip file which contains the Excel, VEG, DAR, and SUB files which I used to generate the numbering.

Zip file

The left column in the Excel file is the time at which the number should appear, and the right column is the actual number. You can use Excel's formatting to control things such as whether you want leading zeros, etc.

I then copied and pasted this into Vegas' markers (using the Edit Details view). I then used a script to change markers to regions. You can open the VEG file to see what this looks like. I then used another script to export these regions to a SUB file. I then opened this SUB file in DVDA. I have attached the DVDA DAR file so you can see the final result.

This workflow is more convoluted that it needs to be, but it didn't require any effort because I had the various scripts lying around. A much better approach would be to create the SUB directly from Excel, bypassing Vegas altogether. That would require a little more effort in Excel in order to write the file in exactly the correct format. If you want, I can spend about five minutes and write an Excel macro that will export in exactly the double-line format that DVDA requires.