Which Slide Show S/W to use?

[johnd]

I want to start creating slide shows, with sound, fading etc. that can be played back on a TV. I have been thinking about getting ProShow Gold to do this. I've also had a bit of a play with the basic Nero S/W that came with my PC. What do people recommend to use to make slide show productions for TV viewing from CD/DVD? Is ProShow Gold the way to go or should I be looking at something else? I'm PC XP not MAC based.

Cheers
John

[Greg B]

John, Pro Show Gold is fantastic. It can do everything you need, and more.

I have just produced three DVDs of our recent trip, to very favourable feedback (no small feat
when you are inflicting your holiday shots on friends and family!)

I have DVD chapters, background music, video clips interspersed, the whole shebang. Titles,
captions, transitions (although trust me on this, one simple transition is the way to go,
even though they seem like a lot of fun). You can even do Ken Burns style moves.

Output can be to DVD, VCD, executable.

There is a bit of a learning curve, of course, but a bit of early effort gives significant returns.

I have looked at a couple of other apps, but I like ProShow best by far.

Highly recommended

[Geoff]

I agree with Greg, ProShow Gold is the bees knees!

[phillipb]

I agree too, but I would go one step further, try the new proshow producer, it's awesome.
In the latest version you can even fiddle with layers. Amazing what you can do. I recently did a show where I had a still frame of a beach scape with clear blue sky and a video of moving clouds as two layers on the same frame for a great effect.

[zafra52]

Except that I found ProShow Gold did not give me the screen resolution I wanted for my 42" plasma screen despite using PAL and the best quality settings in that program. The images did not come out in the tv as clear as when I used Cyberlink Medi@show (which is a nuisance because you cannot synchronise the sound track to the number of images nor does it produce more than one show using a DVD a menu as ProShow Gold does.

I ended up using Ulead MovieFactory 6 (now owned by Corel) because although it hasn't got as many features as ProShow Gold, it is still easy to use, can synchronise the sound track to the number of images you are using, allows making more than one show or presentation that can be linked with a menu, and it has an acceptable tv e screen resolution. In fact, better than ProShow Gold in my view.

So... my advice is to try before you buy. Download the trial packages and experiment with them and only buy when you are convinced it does what you want at the price you can afford.

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_5_ENU.html
http://www.ulead.com/dmf/runme.htm

[johnd]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll download the Proshow Gold trial as well as the other suggestions and give them a go.

Cheers
John

[Bindii]

I've used both Pro Show Gold and Ulead CD and DVD picture show 4... and honestly I much prefer Ulead... and at a quarter of the price its my pick for sure...

[mikephotog]

zafra52, what resolution is your 42" plasma and what res' images did you use?
I recently made a memorial DVD presentation using Producer for my mother in laws funeral and it was shown on a large (not sure what size) screen at the chapel and looked fine.

I've know people to use images that where only a few hundred pixels wide on the longest side and wonder why their images looked soft when zoomed or shown on a hi res screen. My images are usually a min' 1800 pixels on the longest side.

[zafra52]

Well, the images resolution are 2304x2898, 3504x2336 and 3264x2448. I chose 16:9 (Wide screen) but 4:3 (TV) produced the same results. I encoded using the DVD HQ (High Quality) and PAL settings for both the shows and the DVD at the time of burning. The TV is an LG Plasma with the XD setting on "ON".

I burned DVDs and then use a dvd player, like you normally do with a movie, to watch them. I don't have a laptop to plug it to the TV, otherwise I would use the 1024x768 screen resolution. Perhaps as an executable file the resolution would be as good as the computer monitor.

Now, I think ProShow Gold is an excellent program with more features than Ulead MovieShow or Medi@link, but I haven't managed to get with it an acceptable tv resolution despite using the above settings. I would love to know what I am doing wrong.

[JED]

I use ProShow Producer and what I do is pp the images in Ps7 using its 16:9 or 4:3 template.

I found that the images render better after being processed to the lower resolution. Its as though the full resolution image has more resolution than a tv can handle. Dont know if that is true or not but it seems to work for me.

Cheers, John

[zafra52]

John, how do you do that?

pp the images in Ps7 using its 16:9 or 4:3 template

I've been looking for such a template in CS2 and I cannot find it. Is it a filter or an action?

[JED]

John, how do you do that?

pp the images in Ps7 using its 16:9 or 4:3 template

I've been looking for such a template in CS2 and I cannot find it. Is it a filter or an action?

Template was probably the wrong term (sorry about that). Its a preset size option when starting a new image.

Select File>New and you get this dialogue box.



I select either the 768 x 576 Std PAL or the 1024 x 576 Wide PAL. Then I open the image I want to work on, drag it into the new image and resize & pp as desired, then "save as " to high quality jpg.

I havent tried the hdtv options as I dont have access to such a tv to test the results.

I havent played with CS2 at all to know what preset options are available, so you may have a few more options to play with.

Hope that helps.

Cheers John

[zafra52]

Thank you John. I will play with it to see what I come out with.

[Chaase]

I use Pinnacle Studio.
Whilst it is technically a video editing applications it handles still images brilliantly.

It can zoom, pan, add tranisitions, music, titles, DVD menus.
It can produce files incl HD, DVD, Mpg, AVI, Wma, Real Media, Quick Time

Some examples (remember these are heavily compressed

This is a new business venture I am going into (has opening 10 seconds of video).
http://www.accessaudits.com.au/Universal_Escape.wmv

This is a tribute I did for my Father IN Law after he passed away 3 months ago.
http://www.accessaudits.com.au/Bert.wmv
(For some reason the conversion has left the audio track off)

Cheers
Bruce

[zafra52]

Yes, I know Pinnacle's Studio I used it for several picture shows and also for video editing. I think my version is 10 plus, but I found it frustrating because it would not be reliable when burning (sometimes it worked but others didn't or played in one DVD and not in another). The program crashed frequently because it did not like some particular picture (I removed the offending picture and worked but found another it did not like to get stuck again in a different position) so I decided it was Studio 10 or my own sanity and so I removed the program, which is a shame.

Later, I bought ProShow Gold and because I am not happy with the image resolution it produces in my big plasma screen, I decided to use Cyberlink's Medi@Show instead, but as I mentioned above this one does not adjust the music to the collection of pictures automatically and can only deal with a show at a time, which is another big shame because it is easy and simple to use, but very tedious because you have to play with the length of the pictures to make them sync to the sound (something you would only wish on an enemy).

Therefore, I updated my old Ulead's MovieFactory 4 to version 6 (it is now owned by Corel) and I am a happier puppy. So, neither ProShow Gold nor Cyberlink's Medi@Show have the amount of features that ProSho Gold has, but at least in my big TV they produce a much better image resolution without the need of resizing hundreds of pictures.

It has been suggested above that I should resize my pictures and use a canvas option in Photoshop to create a show with pictures of smaller size perhaps this is the reason ProShow Gold does not provide a good image resolution, but as yet I haven’t found the time to do it, so the jury is still out. Personally, I think it has more to do with the codec these programs use to encode the images into video files and I suspect that where ProShow Gold shines is in the computer arena.

[phillipb]

I'm pretty sure that you can create the show with proshow gold and use another program to encode it. Then you may have the best of both worlds.

[Chaase]

frustrating because it would not be reliable when burning (sometimes it worked but others didn't or played in one DVD and not in another). The program crashed frequently because it did not like some particular picture

Thats really strange, I hammer it pretty hard with the stuff I do. I guess your video driver is up to date and you have all the latest patches. I know the original releases were unstable but the last few patches have made it rock solid.

Bruce

[zafra52]

John, I tried your suggestion

I use ProShow Producer and what I do is pp the images in Ps7 using its 16:9

I resized the images and used the hd template in Photoshop before creating a show using ProShow Gold, but the results in the big TV were even worse that using the picture files as they were. I believe now I was correct in thinking the DVD encoding for DVD output in ProShow Gold is not where near as good as Medi@show or Movie Factory. So I am sticking now with either or and I will use ProShow Gold for computer presentations. Thanks for your help and suggestions.

[zafra52]

Bruce, following your advice I installed Studio 10Plus and its two updates and I created a show and I must say it worked really well and as you say

I know the original releases were unstable but the last few patches have made it rock solid.

I still miss the option to adjust sound to the show automatically, but I guess one cannot have everything. So, thankyou for the advice.

[Chaase]

I still miss the option to adjust sound to the show automatically, but I guess one cannot have everything. So, thankyou for the advice.

My pleasure, can you explain what you are trying to do, there are a lot of tricks in the software, I have been using it for a few years.

The video I previously linked is removed I now have it on my new website http://www.universalescape.com.au I created it in Pinnacle and then converted it to shockwave in Swish Video. Its a great way to be able to share a family album with family and friends.

[JED]

John, I tried your suggestion

Fair enough. As I said, I havent tried out any shows on a hd plasma tv so didnt know if it would work for you. Was worth a try though. I do use Producer so it may have a better rendering engine than Gold. I guess it would want to for the extra $$$.

Sounds like Pinnacle is the go for you. Good to find the program to give you the desired results.

Cheers John

[johnd]

Thanks for the advice regarding slideshow software.

I tried out both ProShow Gold and Ulead Moviefactory and ended up buying Moviefactory.

However, I can't seem to get transitions and pan and zoom working the way I want with my slideshows. Whatever transition and pan and zoom I attach to a slide seems to take efffect on all slides. In other words I can't use different effects on different slides.

Is this a limitation of MovieFactory or am I doing something wrong?

Cheers
John

[zafra52]

John, I don't think you are doing anything wrong. I just checked it and the programs seems to allow only one transition and a pan/zooming effect per show, rather than per slide.

I am sorry, it is something I didn't know because I only use either one transition or one effect in my sides. If you have registered the software let support know just in case there is a trick we don't know. I write to them myself as well.

[johnd]

John, I don't think you are doing anything wrong. I just checked it and the programs seems to allow only one transition and a pan/zooming effect per show, rather than per slide.

I am sorry, it is something I didn't know because I only use either one transition or one effect in my sides. If you have registered the software let support know just in case there is a trick we don't know. I write to them myself as well.

Thanks for that. Yes I wrote to support and they confirmed only 1 transition and pan/zoom effect per show. No real problems, at least I know I wasn't doing something wrong.

Cheers
John

[zafra52]

John, I also wrote to them asking and they confirmed that one trasition and effect per show, which is a nuisance. Perhaps now that we highlighted the issue they might take notice for the next update.

I also downloaded the ProShow Gold latest update and I did a show to test it on Sunday, but it did not provide as good an image resolution as Movie Factory in my 42" LG plasma screen.