An AVI can be pretty big -- which can be a real liability if you plan to copy it to disk.

A DVD-quality MPEG2 should be more than satisfactory at a much smaller file size.

On the other hand, note that computer monitors are usually of higher resolution than TVs (My monitor plays at 1280 x 1024 while my TV plays at 640 x 480), so it may be just a tad blurry (not much) with your Windows Media Player playing at full screen. On the other hand, so would the AVI.

So, am I hearing that my best shot is to save it as an MPEG2 format, and play back using windows media player? Will that work for people who have older versions of windows (ie, 98, 2000)??? If so, can it be set to auto-run when a CD is inserted into their CD drive?

#2, does Screenblast offer any output that is greater in resolution, on par with what a PC monitor can display if the intent is a PC show only?

Sounds like a difficult choice between the editing capabilities of full motion, vs. the high resolution of PC slide shows... is that correct?

Yes by all means save your 720x480 DV resolution slide show as MPEG2 right from the start. Grisetti is right, the size of the AVI files will quickly eat up hard drive space.

If you also want to share them with friends, then you might want to make a second render that is Microsoft Windows Media Video (WMV) format. Windows doesn’t come with an MPEG2 decoder so your friends will have to have DVD player software on their PC to read MPEG2 files. Also you won’t fit more than 20 minutes of DVD quality MPEG2 on a CD. That’s why I suggest saving them as WMV.

So, render an MPEG2 file using the DVD template if you want to save them to your hard drive to later burn to DVD without loosing quality. Then render again to WMV file for sharing with your friends on CD.

As far as using a higher resolution, I think you are limited to what Video standards actually allow. If you watch DVD’s on your PC you’ll realize that you don’t need more than 720x480 to get great results on a PC screen.

~jr

Thanks again all - as a test for resolution, I slapped together a pseudo-slide show in Windows Movie Maker, and outputted the thing to 720 x 480, then played it back on my PC. While nowhere near as good as what it can show, it is acceptable. The only disappointment was the transitions - nowhere near as clear as I expected.. very blotchy during the transition (only transition I used was fade). Is this limited to Windows Movie Maker, or would the same result exist in Screenblast as well?

Interesting observation - I rendered it twice - both times in WMV format. First time I selected "best quality for playback on my computer". The settings defaulted to 640 x 480, 30 fps, Bit rate 1.1 Mbps. The resulting file was a bit over 22 Mb. The second time, I selected "high quality NTSC", settings were 720 x 480, bit rate variable, 30 fps. That file was about 1/2 the size, even though the resolution was much better. Any idea on why?