HELP Simply adding a slide show to a project

jkb242 wrote on 6/29/2003, 2:36 PM
Accoding to DVD Architect it is so easy to CREATE and ADD a slide show to a project but when saving the Slide Show it is saved as a project file which doesn't seem to be recognized when trying to incorporate it inot a project that might consist of several other files.

The manual indicates that only multimedia files can be added to projects but the slide show is a project into itself??? The Slide Show I created played just fine in the preview mode but saving it as a file that DVD and can use elsewhere in another project is puzzling. Can some one assist??

Also, I need to join two slide shows in a project since the background music changes from one group of slides to another and there seems to be no way to do this as one big show using different audio tracks, can someone help here as well. This is not covered in the manual and I am out of options. Finally, is it not possible to add a fade transistion from slide to slide in the slide show creator? Cold switching from slide to slide is so basic and loss of a smooth show is lost.

HELP PLEASE

Jerry

Comments

jeffcrow wrote on 6/30/2003, 3:12 PM
Do you mean that you selected a project type of slideshow from the new project menu? I have never used that feature but I would guess you are right, that the slideshow would exist in the project file and not as a media file.

I don't think you can mix the different project types. I make slide shows too but I do it in Vegas, then render it out, which makes it become a media file. This gives you all the abilities of Vegas, filters, color correction, sharpening, pan and crop, transitions, etc. that you don't get with a slideshow project in DVDA, and it is just another media file you can include with your other media in a DVDA menu based project. A feature I like is to be able to set markers at different points in the slide show and use a scene selection menu to allow the viewer to jump to a group of photos that interest them rather then make them sit through the whole slide show if they don't want to. I don't think you can do that with the slide show project type.
jkb242 wrote on 6/30/2003, 8:24 PM
Thanks very much for the input. The manual is confusing on this point and you do actually create a slide show that you really do view but it does not create a media file. The scene transistion you mentioned sounds interesting. Do you really find that the sharping plug-in really helps and do you use it often??

jeffcrow wrote on 7/1/2003, 1:59 PM
I have only used the sharpen plug-in a few times as the photos I use are digital so they are already sharp, a little too sharp sometimes. I actually find the color correction plug-in to be the most valuable, and the brightness and contrast plug-in, individually and sometimes together, you can take a bland or flat or even slightly out of focus shot and "sharpen" it up, making it clearer and more viberant. You also get to use the flicker reducing options if you have some horizontal stripes in the photo that flicker. There is just so much more you can do in Vegas, it makes you wonder why the slide show option is even in DVDA in the first place. It looks as if they may have planned on making DVDA a stand alone program at one time, so it was a feature they needed to include for no reason other then the fact other stand alones do it too and they would need to compete with them. For the best looking slideshows, I'd recomend putting them together in Vegas, rendering them out, then dropping them onto either a single movie type DVD if the slideshow will be the only thing on the DVD, or better yet, into a menu based DVD, with scene selection buttons pointing to different points within the slideshow.

Have Fun!
jkb242 wrote on 7/2/2003, 7:26 PM
Thanks and I did just that, much thanks for the suggestion and feed back. I usually save these in MPEG 2 format to get full screen but for DVD, they have to be 720X 480 right??
dvdude wrote on 7/2/2003, 7:55 PM
What do you mean by MPEG-2 format as opposed to 720x480 exactly? MPEG-2 refers to a compression system whereas 720x480 refers to image size. They are not mutually exclusive, so you can have a 720x480 MPEG-2 file all at one time.

One of the standard DVD formats is just that.


Andy
jeffcrow wrote on 7/4/2003, 5:42 PM
What is important here is aspect ratio, divide the small number by the larger, the result is the aspect ratio. If you take a photo and resize is to 720x480, objects will look fatter. When you render your video, the codec will do some resizing too, which may make it worse. The best size is 655x480, or any multiple of those that when divided produce the same ratio, like 1310x960 for example. But even then I still get a bad output aspect ratio from the codec. So I find it better to start with one that is still a bit too wide, then after the render, on a TV anyway, it looks correct. So I find that I can put my still camera's 1600x1200 photos directly to the timeline with no resizing and they come out about right, and the higher resolution renders to a nice clear sharp image on the TV!