Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 6/22/2005, 10:45 AM
Several ways to do this, each with its own tradeoffs.

1. You can insert pages into your main menu and then drag each slide onto each page so it becomes background media. You'll have to change the "Stretch Type" for each page to letterbox. This is a pain to do because I don't know how to automate the process. For 10-20 slides, however, you can be done in ten minutes. [Edit] Each menu, by default, displays indefinitely. You can then use the menu navigation to cause the next "menu" (your next picture) to be displayed when you activate a menu button or press the chapter advance.

2. You can insert a Music Compilation and drop each slide into that. The advantage to this is that you can have thousands of slides in the music compilation (although if you want to navigate directly, you can only have 99 per compilation, so you'll need multiple compilations). Also, these images are stored as a single frame, so regardless of how long the image is on the screen, it takes up no additional disc storage. The downside to this is that you can't have any background music. Also, there is no way I have found to adjust the duration using the standard DVDA user interface. Since, for your purposes, you'd want to set the duration to something like ten minutes per slide (effectively keeping each slide on the screen "forever"), you'd need to adjust the duration. There IS a way to do this via the hidden properties page, but since Sony doesn't support this, I hesitate to post how to do that.

3. You can do a similar thing to #2 above, but use the Picture compilation instead. You can set the duration for each slide to a large value. The downside of this approach is that DVDA actually creates video for each second that the slide is on the screen, so you may end up running out of disk space. However -- and I haven't tried this, so this may not be correct -- since there is no movement (it is a static slide) -- you may be able to reduce the bitrate down to next to nothing and still get a really good-looking slide, thus dramatically reducing the disk space required for each slide.

RalphM wrote on 6/22/2005, 5:42 PM
Thanks John,

I used the Picture compilation method and it worked fine setting the duration of 12 pictures to 10 minutes each, then optimizing the disc to fit it all.

While I've found Vegas to be intuitive, DVDA and I do not seem to operate in the same universe. I appreciate your help.

RalphM
johnmeyer wrote on 6/22/2005, 5:53 PM
While I've found Vegas to be intuitive, DVDA and I do not seem to operate in the same universe.

I have only used three other DVD authoring programs, so my experience is not too broad. For DVD authoring, DVDA is actually pretty good compared to the competition.

You might want to check out Ed Troxel's newsletters here:

Vegas Tutorials

Click on the Newsletter Contents Index and you'll be able to find which issues have information on using DVD Architect.
bStro wrote on 6/23/2005, 8:19 AM
I want to create a DVD that behaves like an old slide projector -
[...]
While I've found Vegas to be intuitive, DVDA and I do not seem to operate in the same universe

I'll say. I believe SF/Sony's goal was to develop an application that creates DVDs that behave like DVDs. ;-)

Rob
RalphM wrote on 6/24/2005, 6:22 PM
You are correct Rob, but my two statements are not linked, not even in the same post. Have you been editing sound bites for a political campaign? ;-))

New technology should generally surpass the old. It took me awhile to understand why the buggy whip holders in my van were too big - cupholders you say??!!

Have been forced to spend quite a few hours over the past two days learning the basics of DVDA2 on an additional project, and it is slowly coming through. Have decided it is not so bad.

Vegas6/DVDA3 are still in the box - gotta finish one more project before I do the upgrade, then back to the learning curve.

RalphM