Advice on committing 35mm slides to DVD

[Wayne Waag]

I’ve been doing slideshows for years using a combination of Proshow Producer and Vegas. I usually do my animations in Proshow (a lot easier, especially for complex, multi-layered effects), export, and then import into Vegas, adding titles, music, and voiceover tracks. However, for fairly simple slideshows, I’ve often used Vegas only and the rendered quality is quite good. I really can’t tell the difference.

IMHO, the important thing is to resize your images before importing them into either Vegas or Proshow. A good rule of thumb seems to be to resize your images to roughly twice the vertical resolution of your output. E.g. Blu-ray is 1080, so resize your images to 2160. An exception would be if you wanted to really zoom in on only a part of the image. Since you have Lightroom, you could easily export to JPG’s with the vertical resolution of your choosing. Regardless, your results will look better using Producer or Vegas.

wwaag

[Steve Rhoden]

And in addition to Wayne’s input, You can also use Vasst StillMotion
plugin for Vegas, for a whole lot easier and customizable approach in
creating slideshows with numerous photos and if you intend to do more
in the future.

Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia

[Rick Hughes]

what does ‘still motion’ give over and above just dropping slides on timeline and using standard transition ?

Not knocking this in any way, just keen to understand if it will be of benefit to me.

[Steve Rhoden]

-“just dropping slides on timeline and using standard transition“-
Are you kidding? Trying doing that with say 200 pictures the right
and proper way, by Panning and cropping each photo and then dropping
different transitions between them…. and see when you get done!

-“what does ‘still motion’ give“-
Download and give the trial a run and you will see the benefit this offers in terms of what i mentioned above.

Steve Rhoden (Cow Leader)
Film Maker & VFX Artist.
Owner of Filmex Creative Media.
Samples of my Work and Company can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/FilmexCreativeMedia

[Rick Hughes]

I wasn’t trying to be awkward or difficult – hope it diodn’t come across that way ……. never used Vegas for this just trying to understand if I should use ProShow Gold or Stillmotion

[Wayne Waag]

You first need to decide exactly what type of animation effects you want to apply. If all you want is some combination of pan, zoom, and rotate, then Vegas will work fine. The advantage of VASST Stillmotion and others such as Vegasaur (my preference), is that it will randomly apply these effects to all of your selected events. As Steve points out, it’s a lot easier than doing them individually. I use this approach all the time for what I call a preview or a teaser–just add a title and a music track and you’re done.

However, if you want to give some thought to exactly what type of motion to apply to each slide (recommended), then it becomes more difficult within Vegas. For example, zoom 20% bottom to middle on slide 1, pan lower left to upper right on slide 2, etc. Another problem is how to handle photos that were shot in portrait mode rather than landscape, especially in 16×9. Perhaps you want to have two moving portraits within the same frame? What do you do with the black borders? Do you want to present a moving photo with a border perhaps against a fading background? Granted, all of these things can be done within Vegas, but it becomes very laborious. If these are the things you want to do rather than very simple motion effects, use Proshow and consider upgrading to Producer (recommended). The real time-saver is being able to save an effect that you’ve created and then apply it in the future.

wwaag

[Rick Hughes]

I certainly don’t want random effects … a choice of transitions …. I tend to use no more than 3 or 4 on a project.
Pan & zoom would be nice … when I want it, and that’s it.

[Bob Peterson]

A couple of suggestions.

If you want the best resolution, keep in mind that DVD and Blu-Ray are very different in the resolution that they offer. DVD has a maximum resolution of 720 x 480 while Blu-Ray has a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080. For the best visual result, you will want to use as much of that resolution as you can to display your images. Thus, you will need to develop two different presentations; one for DVD and a different one for Blu-Ray.

Vegas can render your presentation in many different formats. For example, NTSC or NTSC widescreen. While this offers great flexibility, you will need to pick your format before you begin so that your presentation can make the best use of that format. A major consideration is aspect ratio. Each format has its own aspect ratio which will require you to crop your images to support that aspect ratio. An example is DVD using NTSC. This format has a pixel aspect ratio of .909 while Photoshop works with a pixel aspect ratio of 1. That means that Photoshop will need to deliver an image with a resolution of 655 x 480 rather than 720 x 480. The 655 is calculated as 720 * .909 which is 655. The Photoshop image will fill the screen because its pixels are slightly wider than the pixels in a video image. Similarly, other video output formats will have different aspect ratios which you will need to adjust for when sizing your image. That does not mean that all images MUST be 655 x 480. They can be, for example, 1310 x 960, or other multiples of 655 x 480. The important thing is to retain the ratio between horizontal and vertical.

It can be very frustrating if the image aspect ratio is wrong, because the video output will be letter boxed to make it fit into the available space. I would test your image sizes before getting to far into the project to insure that your aspect ratio is correct, and that the output video is displayed as you expect. For my own work, I use a standard template for cropping in Photoshop, so that I can select the best possible crop which will fit within the required template. I also set up an action in Photoshop which includes all the standard steps I take once the image is cropped. That includes things like setting the targeted resolution, flattening the layers, converting to 8 bit color, and saving as a png in the desired directory. That makes short work of processing the desired images.

My standard is to save at twice the target resolution as a png file. Vegas has always done well with pngs, and the extra resolution allows me to zoom in a bit if I want to. I do all sharpening, resizing, adjusting, etc. for still images in Photoshop. I think Photoshop is much more competent with still images than video software such as Vegas.

Similarly, Vegas’s strength is as a video editing tool, and it includes respectable audio editing as well. While other tools may offer advantages in creating a slide show, I suspect they cannot match Vegas when it comes to editing and finishing the final output. I always look at the rendered video output on a targeted display device such as a TV. What I see on the targeted device, may differ in terms of brightness, color, contrast, etc. from what I’ve seen on the computer. I can adjust for this in Vegas without going back to a slide by slide edit in Photoshop.

[Wayne Waag]

Very well said, Bob. It seems that are our respective workflows are pretty much the same. Photoshop is an amazing tool–the one that I’m willing to part with $10 a month for their latest version on CC. You can also apply most filters to video, but the rendering is very slow.

wwaag

[Bob Peterson]

I, for one, am not willing to part with $10 per month. I am happily ensconced on CS6, and have no plans or needs at the moment for anything else. There are already some respectable competitors popping up, so I will continue to watch those.