create multi media

cspub wrote on 1/13/2004, 7:53 AM

i've been doing some multi media for our church. mostly jpg with transistions and then some text affects. i've done it in swish which produces a flash file. we have wanted these timed to music so i export an avi file, then take to my dvd to encode and make dvd. this makes the timing issue ok.

problem is long conversion on both ends. many times it is corrupt. now we are also wanting to add small video clips.

i'm looking for easy to use package. screenblast appears to be it. questions are:
do i still need to create in swish first?
do i then import avi into screenblast?
what size pics and movie are best when you are going to run on projector? does it matter to make movie size 800x600 or is it over kill past 640x480? i want good quality but don't want to slow things down. any help would be great.

Comments

mmreed wrote on 1/13/2004, 9:26 AM

if you use swish for titling, yes. However Screenblast does have titling ability, but it is not as robust effects as you can get using freeform flash in swish.

www.wildform.com also has a flash titler geared towards the video market.
wildFX Pro is the name.

Screenblast will adjust your images for NTSC use, but if you want to size them yourself, NTSC resolution is 720 x 480. Im not certain how the projector would play into this.

Are you feeding the projector from a DVD player? If so, it would be normal NTSC feeds.

Steve Grisetti wrote on 1/13/2004, 1:07 PM

I'm not sure why you're jumping in and out of several formats, but I'm not surprised it's taking your computer so long to render and re-render it all.

As mmreed says, the best strategy may be to skip swish completely and do your entire project in MS3. Create an AVI with it and then use MyDVD, which comes with MS3, to turn it into a simple DVD.

Unless you're doing extremely long or complicated pieces, rendering time should be relatively short.

mmreed wrote on 1/13/2004, 1:16 PM

I can see using swish or another tool to create titles... the titling in MS is weak... Ive been looking at WildFX Pro from www.wildform.com and have also been looking at the new SwishMax.

I use Swish 3.0 and KoolMoves (another flash app) in webdesign on a daily basis... you can create some very good title animations with it and chromakey out the background. Ive found Flash titling is ok... but its hard to get it to a pro level. WildFX Pro claims to be better when exporting to avi. The demo looks interesting.

Chienworks wrote on 1/13/2004, 4:10 PM

Actually the correct size for stills in an NTSC project is 654x480 (787x576 for PAL) or some multiple thereof. This is because still images use square pixels and NTSC video uses pixels that are slightly narrower than they are tall. However, in the long run, this really doesn't matter unless you absolutely have to have the entire picture exactly fill the frame perfectly. Chances are, almost all the time it really won't be a problem if the image doesn't fit perfectly. Consider a 35mm slide show in which some of the slides are vertical; these don't fill the screen the same way that horizontal slides do, but they still show a useful picture on the screen.

If you want to have the image fill the frame and it isn't exactly the correct proportion you can crop withing Movie Studio once the image is on the timeline. Of course, if you wanted to make the image the correct proportions before bringing it into Movie Studio then you would be cropping it anyway, so it really doesn't make any difference if you crop before or after importing it.