Slideshow Madness

[Ken W]

I’m having such troubles exporting slideshows that I may go insane. I want to be able to do two things:

 

1. Export a slideshow to a file that I can burn on a CD or DVD and give to people to play on both Macs and PC’s. I would like this slideshow to have music; having motion (Ken Burns) is a plus but not a necessity. I would like the slideshow to play full screen, or close to full screen, on the receipients monitor and the photos to be very high quality. My photos are from a Canon 5D and are sharp.

 

2. Be able to burn a slideshow of movies to a DVD for playing on a television and have the pictures retain their hi quality and sharpness.

 

 

I have tried the following applications to accomplish these tasks.

 

Toast 8 with Motion Picture HD. I can make nice slide shows with Motion Picture HD, but can’t seem to find a way to export it into a QT file that is high quality and will play full screen. Also when I send the slideshow to idvd it ends up looking crummy on the TV.

 

Adobe Lightroom. Only seems to export a PDF file that does not contain music.

 

Imovie HD 6/IDVD 6. I can set up the slideshows for DVD burning and playing on a television, but the quality on the TV (50 inch plasma) is really poor.

 

Iphoto. I can export to QuickTime and get high quality photos and music. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to control transitions or get motion without first creating a slideshow in Iphoto. If I create a slideshow in Iphoto with transitions and motion I only seem to be able to export the slideshow to a small QT file. This misses my goal of enabling the recipients to view it in full screen, or near full screan.

 

Aperture. I can make a very nice slideshow in Aperture, but don’t see how to export it.

 

Photo to Movie. This is a terrific program and I can make great slideshows with music, transitions, and interesting motion. However, again I can not seem to find a way to get the slideshow into QT for sharing at the same quality level I’m watching it on my monitor. Same problem with going to iDvd for the TV.

 

Can anyone help? Are there some simple settings in QT (I have the pro version) that will help me? Should I be exporting to something other than QT? Is there a tuturial somewhere I can follow that will help me accomplish my two goals?

 

I switched to a Mac about a year ago because I wanted an easy way to edit and share photos and video. I’m afraid I may end up in a loony-bin instead.

 

Ken

[Andrea]

I have the same two objectives, the same problems, and am in the same condition --going crazy! One of the only other suggestions I've read about, but haven't tried, is using Pro Show Gold (www.photodex.com). I'm a Mac user and don't want Windows on my machine to run Pro Show. My latest attempt was to use iView, but I haven't figured out how to get an iView slideshow onto DVD.

 

I'm hoping someone will respond to your post with an answer!

[tsantee]

I’m having such troubles exporting slideshows that I may go insane. I want to be able to do two things:

 

1. Export a slideshow to a file that I can burn on a CD or DVD and give to people to play on both Macs and PC’s. I would like this slideshow to have music; having motion (Ken Burns) is a plus but not a necessity. I would like the slideshow to play full screen, or close to full screen, on the receipients monitor and the photos to be very high quality. My photos are from a Canon 5D and are sharp.

If you want audio then you must make a movie from the slides. If limited to the applications included with Toast you should choose Motion Pictures HD. Select the 16:9 format in preferences and then a HD quality for export. Then burn it as a data disc for play back on computers at high resolution. If you can live without music then use the Photo Disc format in the Data window. See Making a Photo Disc in Toast Help. Toast automatically includes a photo player for both Macs and PCs when it creates a Photo Disc.

 

2. Be able to burn a slideshow of movies to a DVD for playing on a television and have the pictures retain their hi quality and sharpness.

Impossible unless you get an AppleTV and save your pictures as HD H.264 format for playback from a computer. The resolution of still photos on a TV is 640x480. The image also is interlaced. The best you can do is the Toast slide show or iDVD slide show feature which looks much better than making a movie of still photos. With those slide shows the still image is shown full frame and will advance in a set number of seconds or you can advance and go back using the chapter skip button on the remote control. I think these look pretty good. I find it best to lower the resolution of my photos to 640x480 using a photo editing application (Lightroom, for instance) rather than have Toast or iDVD doing the resampling.

 

The options you described trying didn't include a Toast or iDVD slide show. Drop a folder of up to 99 photos onto the Toast Video window. It creates a video DVD title with 99 chapters of which each one is a still image. You can add another 99 folders of photos. iDVD has a similar feature that also lets you add an audio track. iDVD also gives you the ability to select one transition style for the slide show.

 

I have the same two objectives, the same problems, and am in the same condition --going crazy! One of the only other suggestions I've read about, but haven't tried, is using Pro Show Gold (www.photodex.com). I'm a Mac user and don't want Windows on my machine to run Pro Show. My latest attempt was to use iView, but I haven't figured out how to get an iView slideshow onto DVD.

 

I'm hoping someone will respond to your post with an answer!

Something I didn't mention in my previous post is it is possible to put both a video DVD slide show and a "Photo Disc" slide show on the same DVD. Simply create the video DVD slide show in the Toast Video window and choose the options to have the pictures included as full-sized image files. In this case you wouldn't want to lower the resolution of the images before adding them to Toast. The result will be a video DVD slide show that plays with DVD players and the Mac & PC Photo Disc application that plays the full-resolution pictures on a computer.

[Tom K]

...

 

Iphoto. I can export to QuickTime and get high quality photos and music. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to control transitions or get motion without first creating a slideshow in Iphoto. If I create a slideshow in Iphoto with transitions and motion I only seem to be able to export the slideshow to a small QT file. This misses my goal of enabling the recipients to view it in full screen, or near full screan.

 

...

Ken

 

In iPhoto6 create the slideshow. Next select it and next go to share menu and send it to iDVD. Now I am not a frequent Mac user (though I have one and it is pretty cool for things I like to do) but this seemed to create QT file that was higher resolution then just doing export.

 

Just try this - you have nothing to loose but few minutes of your life

 

Hope this helps to solve one of your dilemas!

 

Cheers

 

TK