Slideshow question

[Bsmooth]

This may not be the place to ask,however,its been very helpful in the past so here goes;My wife has been trying to put together a small slideshow with music and some written commentary on some of the photos to send to her grandmother so its visible on a DVD she can play on her tv.So far we've not had much luck with CD or DVD using Roxio 7.If we make a CD it isn't recognized by the DVD player and we've had no luck at all with DVD's.Could someone let me know how this could be done?

[etaf]

theres a number of slideshow packages - but not all DVD's will play pictures.
I have found that my mothers £200 writer will not play but my brothers £24 from tescos works well.
and all i need to do was copy the jpgs onto the DVD.

i think ProShow Gold has had some great reviews in photo mags in UK
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0403/04032401photodexproshowv2.asp

[DwightMcCann]

I am currently leaning toward Sony Vegas Movie Studio ... a little more expensive than ProShow Gold (around USD100 I think) but more flexible in several ways. They both have free trials (which is what I am doing with both of them at the moment) so you should give one or both a try.

[Danny Boy]

I downloaded the trial version of ProShow Gold and it seemed to be great till I burned a DVD. My Sony DVD player couldn't recognize the disk. I eventually bought Sony Vegas Movie Studio and it has worked great for me. The slideshow I put together for my daughter's soccer team had music, good transitions, scrolling credits and I've just scratched the surface of what it can do. I'm satisfied with it and would recommend it.

Dan

[ltdedorc]

Bsmooth,

I use Pictures to Execute, www.wnsoft.com , to build my slide shows with transitions & background music. At the very end when I'm ready to burn a DVD I create a video avi file. Then I go to my Sonic My DVD Studio Deluxe (very similar to your Roxio 7.0) to import the avi slide show file & burn it to a DVD+R disk. Usually the DVDs are in NTSC standard but I have burned to PAL tv standards. Good luck...Harvey

[DwightMcCann]

Danny Boy, can I ask you a few questions offline or start a new thread about Vegas Movie Studio ... or do you know of a forum on the web that discusses it?

[Danny Boy]

Dwight,

Below are a couple of links that I have found:
http://www.vasst.com/login.htm
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&forumid=54

Dan

[Bsmooth]

Well I tried again in Roxio 7 and after I had finished the whole process of making the slideshow and went to burn it I got an invalid disc message.Talk about a pain in the &*&^.So far the newer Roxio is not exactly what I had expected.

I'm really getting sick of having to pay for updates that shoyld have been included in the first place.Between Roxio and Photoshop and all the other great updates they could just include in an update patch,but I'm sure they wouldn't want to do that for fear of losing the almighty buck.

[DwightMcCann]

I know that a lot of folks like ProShow but I am leaning more and more toward the Sony Vegas Movie Factory 4 product and it is only $99. While it seems to handle stills quite well (seemlessly might be a good word) it can also handle some types of video (I have not done video yet, but I can see where it would be effective) as well as text, etc. Since both ProShow and Movie Studio have free trials I'd suggest that ... although you can't make DVDs with the Movie Factory trial as it restricts MPEGs. However, my boss uses it and says it is quite simple and works!

[markubig]

I have an older copy of Vegas Video 4.0 which I still use. Very powerful with transitions, effects, scrolling credits. My slideshows switch pictures w/ the beat of the music. What I did was render my slideshows as MPEGs and then use a DVD software (Sonic My DVD?) that came with my Sony DVD burner to put in on a DVD that can be played by newer DVD players. My experience is that DVD+Rs can be read by the newer DVD players ~2000 and later. I've burned on DVD-Rs and the players couldn't read them, but when I put the DVD+R into the same player, it worked.

[Citizensmith]

You may want to check out PhotoStory 3. It's free from Microsoft (assuming you have a licenced copy of WinXP somewhere to register - its one of their bait applications), easy to use, and saves in a choice of formats and resolutions. Does a good job. Probably missing a few bells and whistles, but I an live with that due to the lack of cost associated with it.

[Art Rodriguez]

You may want to check out PhotoStory 3. It's free from Microsoft (assuming you have a licenced copy of WinXP somewhere to register - its one of their bait applications), easy to use, and saves in a choice of formats and resolutions. Does a good job. Probably missing a few bells and whistles, but I an live with that due to the lack of cost associated with it.

I use PhotoStory 3 and like it. It is easy to create slideshows and you can add music. The best thing about it is it's free. I use "DVD for PhotoStory 3 for Windows" that I purchased at www.sonic.com (http://www.sonic.com) to create DVD's to play in the DVD players. It's a plug-in for PhotoStory 3. I paid $19.99 (US Dollars) for the download. I also had the option to purchased the backup CD for an extra $16.99 (again US Dollars).

If the DVD's is for yourself and family members only, this is a good program. The quality is fairly decent for the price.

[Mark_48]

I've been using Proshow Gold for a while and it works very well for me. What I'm having a hard time with is if I have question on how to do something the help file included usually doesn't answer it and online user help appears limited to a Yahoo User Group. An email or two I sent to Photodex seemed to have gone unanswered.

I see Sony Vegas Movie Factory mentioned and I'm wondering if there might be better support both from Sony and users as well.

One feature I really like of Proshow is the "Ken Burns" style of panning and zooming of still images. Can Sony Vegas Movie Factory do this as well? I've used these effects in a wedding slideshow recently and have had comments that people enjoyed the slideshow more than wedding videography they have seen.

[DwightMcCann]

I still haven't bought the trial version but expect to when I get a nostril above the waterline, so Ican't speak to support. As for the panning/zooming in Movie Factory, it has a fairly nice feature where you set the beginning and ending states and it moves/expands/zooms or whatever during the period the image is being displayed. This includes rotating while panning and zooming.

It also has a number of text effects, including making rolling credits, that look nice, although they do not seem editable ... that is, once created you can't change them but have to start again. I don't think any of these programs are particularly mature.

A feature it does not seem to have that I would like is to select images and apply times and transitions to all selected images, although planning should eliminate that need, sigh.

So, having used both trials, I am going to pay a bit more for Vegas (which handles video, too) as it seems to have the features I want. I should note that price is no object for me ... I would buy a $500 package if it did everything I wanted the way I wanted it to ... but nothing seems to meet those requirements.:confused:

[Danny Boy]

Also what is nice about the Sony Vegas software is the help. It has a feature called something like "How do I do this" and it can either walk the user through certain features/functions or it can do it itself so you can simply watch. I've used it a number of times and like it.

Dan

[DwightMcCann]

Danny, yes, I forgot about that ... those tutorials are a really nice feature and use your actual workspaces/menus rather than some totally separate window that might not actually match what you are working with.

[Rob612]

I use Premiere for everything that deals with video. Probably its an overkill for a slideshow but that's what I'm used to ;)