Advice on committing 35mm slides to DVD

[Rick Hughes]

Guys … I dont have Photoshop but do use Lightroom which I find excellent for getting best out of pictures … does not give masks and all the filters of PS – but I don’t need those.

I will be (as per advice above) creating a DVD and a Bluray disc(s)

Both will be for PAL (not NTSC) … I would hope that if I create a project for Blu-Ray and obviously render as Blu-Ray I can use same project file and also render as using a PAL widescreen DVD template ….. this make sense ?

Failing that I’ll create a Blu-Ray disc and then use Blu-Ray to DVD conversion ……… certainly don’t want to have to do the multiple projects more than once each (around 800 slides)

Be interested in what size you advise I should save image files as ……. they are at moment 4276 x 2984 tiff files.

The Blu-Ray would be standard 1080p resolution (1920×1080 pixels), at 60 fps.
DVD would be standard 720 x 576 (16:9 PAL) 25 fps

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Hughes] “Both will be for PAL (not NTSC) … I would hope that if I create a project for Blu-Ray and obviously render as Blu-Ray I can use same project file and also render as using a PAL widescreen DVD template ….. this make sense ?”

PAL Widescreen and PAL HD use different aspect ratios. Assuming you set your project for PAL HD you will get black bars on the PAL Widescreen rendering unless you stretch it at render time or crop it at editing time.

I would render to Blu-ray. Then create a PAL Widescreen project and drop the Blu-ray render into that and crop it to PAL Widescreen aspect before rendering to PAL Widescreen. Just open Pan/Crop and right-click the frame and select Match Output Aspect before you render.

[Rick Hughes] “Be interested in what size you advise I should save image files as ……. they are at moment 4276 x 2984 tiff files.”

I would make them slightly larger than 1920×1080 so that you can zoom in a bit and still get full quality. HD is 2MP and your 4276 x 2984 images are over 12MP so you have more than 6x the resolution you need. You don’t want Vegas Pro resizing this. Get the images down to maybe 1.5x resolution which would be 2880 x 1620 which is almost 5MP and should be plenty of resolution for zooms.

I would also output as PNG or JPG. TIFF files don’t perform well in Vegas Pro because, I believe, Vegas uses QuickTime to process them. I use JPG for all of my photo montages and have no problems.

[Rick Hughes] “The Blu-Ray would be standard 1080p resolution (1920×1080 pixels), at 60 fps.”

First of all 60fps is not PAL, that’s NTSC. I thought you said you were PAL. Did you mean 50p? Also neither of those are valid Blu-ray formats anyway. Blu-ray supports 1080-50i, 1080-60i, 1080-24p or 720-60p. Frankly, 60p for a slide show is a bit ridiculous. You could probably get away with 15fps for a slide show… it’s almost like watching paint dry. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Rick Hughes]

Thanks for the detailed comments I need to give this serious thought. When you say aspect ratio is different I would use 16:9 in both cases.

PAL 16:9 for SD video
Not sure what you mean by different aspect ratio, could you explain further ?

For Blu-ray I was basing it on this standards table:

On the last point maybe my wording confused things.
The Blu-ray standard allows for:
“High-definition video may be stored on Blu-ray Discs with up to 1080p resolution (1920×1080 pixels), at up to 60 (59.94) fields or 60 frames per second.”

There is no PAL or NTSC as such
I normally use 1080p 24 fps or 1080p 60fps

I’ll stick to 24fps for this as you rightly point out its stills.

If my understanding is wrong please educate me.

[Bob Peterson]

The explanation of all this was what I tried to do in my post. Perhaps read it again, and try to understand what John and I are trying to explain to you? I think it will save you a lot of time and aggravation. I must confess that I do not have, nor have I used Lightroom. Thus, I cannot tell you whether it can do what you want it to do. Perhaps you can try Photoshop Essentials which is a light version of Photoshop.

[Rick Hughes]

Bob … appreciate the comments you guys have given …. need to try & understand what it means for my project.

Lot of information is on NTSC, I will be using PAL for DVD … I will follow your comment on 2 x resolution.

[Bob Peterson]

PAL for DVD has a resolution of 720 x 576 with a pixel aspect ratio of 1.093. You can find these numbers in Vegas Pro by looking at the Render As screen for your desired format. In the Render As screen, click on customize. The customize screen will tell you the resolution and pixel aspect ratio.

[Rick Hughes]

I don’t have Vegas Pro … I have MSP 12 don’t think that makes any difference here.

When I look at PAl widescreen template … 520 x 756 is there but pixel ratio is 1.457

Is there something I have set wrong ?

I intend producing DVD ( and Blu-ray) for widescreen only

[Bob Peterson]

No, you have the correct number for widescreen. You did not specify widescreen the first time, so I looked at Program Stream Pal.

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Hughes] “Not sure what you mean by different aspect ratio, could you explain further ? “

Yes, 16:9 is a term that’s used very “loosely”. Look at the first chart that you posted. HD is 16:9 at 1920 x 1080 PAR 1.0. If you divide 1080 by 9 and multiple that result (120) by 16 you get 1920 because 1920 x 1080 is 16:9. PAL widescreen is 720 x 576 PAR 1.4567. A Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) of 1.4567 means that PAL Widescreen is not using square pixels like HD does. In order to calculate the “real” dimensions in square pixels you must multiple the width by the PAR. if you multiply 720 x 1.4567 you get 1,048.824 but since you can’t have a fractional pixel we around up to 1049. That means that PAL Widescreen is actually 1049 x 576. if you divide 576 by 9 and then multiple the result (64) by16 you get 1024. Since 1024 does not equal 1049 PAL Widescreen is not 16:9! So your PAL Widescreen is going to be wider than your HD Widescreen. Another way to check is to divide the width by the height. 1920 / 1080 = 1.78:1 and 1049 / 576 = 1.82:1 so again, PAL Widescreen has a wider ratio than HD.

[Rick Hughes] “”High-definition video may be stored on Blu-ray Discs with up to 1080p resolution (1920×1080 pixels), at up to 60 (59.94) fields or 60 frames per second.””

That statement is misleading because while resolution can be up to 1080 and frame rate can be up to 60, both are not supported at the same time!. To get 60 fps you must go down to 720 resolution. The chart you posted supports this. Both 59.94p and 50p are only listed under 1280×720.

[Rick Hughes] “There is no PAL or NTSC as such “

There absolutely is! 50i is PAL and 60i is NTSC. This is governed by the respective electrical standards in those countries of 50 cycles and 60 cycles per second respectively. If you are in a PAL country the players usually play NTSC discs but the opposite is not true (i.e., NTSC players will not play PAL discs).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Rick Hughes]

Thanks for the details ….. interesting your comment on PAL … over last few days been doing lots of Googling and all I have read state there is no PAL or NTSC (or equivalent) in the in Blu-ray standard.

I have never seen PAL or NTSC on any Blu-ray disc I own, only regional coding … which is a different thing.
There is the major frame rate difference though, but that is not the same as calling it NTSC or PAL.

I won’t argue with you though as I am still learning about Blu-ray creation …