Advice on committing 35mm slides to DVD

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Hughes] “There is the major frame rate difference though, but that is not the same as calling it NTSC or PAL.”

While HD TV did get NTSC and PAL countries to agree on what resolution to use, they still disagree on what frame rate to use so PAL and NTSC still exist in HD and the only difference now is the frame rate.

If you want to reserve the terms NTSC and PAL to refer to SD then that’s fine. The fact remains that if you try and play 1080-50i Blu-ray on an HD TV from a country that used NTSC-Analog it won’t work. Call it anything you want, Blu-rays at 1080-50i won’t play in NTSC Blu-ray players or on NTSC HD TV’s.

~jr

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

[Rick Hughes]

John … accept what you say … I’m lucky I’m not in NTSC part of the world, and my player can any Blu-ray.
Could be worse I could be in France and also have to worry about SECAM 🙂

I read your reply above about doing the project in Blu-ray and then:

“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.”

Will that lose me part of the scanned image ?

If so, as the existing Blu-ray project will have all media, transitions etc., is there any other ‘global’ apply-all or script I could use to change Blu-ray to DVD prior to render as DVD format ?

Alternative once Blu-ray disc in created … I could use a ‘Blu-ray-to-DVD‘ program would that give me a better result ?

Just looking to maximise the viewers experience, as there is so much effort going into getting the slides into digital..
Never used the Pan/Crop approach you suggest so simply don’t know the impact to image.

[Bob Peterson]

You will, in the absence of ultimate serendipity, always lose part of your image unless the image is letter boxed so that you cannot see the details quite as well. It is far better to make an intelligent choice as to what you want to show in the space available, but that will require you to understand that different formats have different spaces. Perhaps it is best for you to let the software fit it in as best it can, and be satisfied with that.

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Hughes] “I’m lucky I’m not in NTSC part of the world, and my player can any Blu-ray.”

That’s exactly what I was trying to point out. People in PAL countries need to realize that NTSC countries cannot play their content. So NTSC vs PAL is very much alive and well.

[Rick Hughes] “Will that lose me part of the scanned image ? “

Yes. That’s what cropping does. If you don’t want to loose any of your image then just render to HD and accept the black letterbox bars. It’s up to you.

[Rick Hughes] “If so, as the existing Blu-ray project will have all media, transitions etc., is there any other ‘global’ apply-all or script I could use to change Blu-ray to DVD prior to render as DVD format ?”

I don’t see how this s any different that dropping the HD render into a PAL Widescreen project. You will get exactly the same result and your image will be cropped and it will be a lot more work even with scripts to help you.

[Rick Hughes] “Alternative once Blu-ray disc in created … I could use a ‘Blu-ray-to-DVD’ program would that give me a better result ?”

Since it would be using the same Blu-ray content it should give you the same result. I guess if you use a program with a better DVD encoder it could give a better result. It depends on the program you use. I’m not sure how it would handle the menus.

[Rick Hughes] “Never used the Pan/Crop approach you suggest so simply don’t know the impact to image.”

I can tell you the exact impact. You will be cropping 12 pixels from each side of the image to go from 1048 to 1024 so that there are no black bars on the top and bottom. that’s a 1% loss. Just doing put anything important in those 12 pixels and you should be fine. 😉

~jr

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

[Rick Hughes]

Thanks …think I can cope with 1% 🙂

[Wayne Waag]

And don’t forget TV overscan which will cost you about 10% on older TV’s and 5% on the newer ones. If you’re that concerned about showing the entire image, just shrink it so that black bars are showing on all four sides. Some of the older slideshow software programs used to have an option for doing just this.

wwaag

[Rick Hughes]

I” try some tests on my TV … thanks didn’t realise that

[Rick Hughes]

Having finished all the scanning and adjustment in Lightroom …. thought I’d start off the discs with one which I only need DVD for (no Blu-ray version)

So resized the slides to twice the resolution of DVD in jpeg as advised (1440 x 1152)

Just for some testing dropped some files on timeline .. of a PAL Widescreen project …
The files have the 1.457 aspect ratio the Videopreview window shows the images with vertical blackbars on left & right ……and if I use ‘Render As’ Mainconcept PAL DVD widescreen resulting mpg file also has these.

Anything amiss or is that what I should expect (it seems correct to me) ? ……… asking as there were comments that if I get aspect ratio wrong I can get letter box ….

I can improve by zoom in on ‘pan + crop’ and get image to fit full width – but would lose then top & bottom off image …..can I do that once and have it apply across all slides, or is that something MSP cannot do.

Would ‘Ultimate S Lite‘ be able to do this ?

[Wayne Waag]

[Rick Hughes]

I can improve by zoom in on ‘pan + crop’ and get image to fit full width – but would lose then top & bottom off image …..can I do that once and have it apply across all slides

Very simple to do in Vegas. Once you’re happy with one, just Copy. Then select whatever other slides you want, Right-click and select Paste-Event Attributes. It will apply, the same pan/crop settings and effect settings to those events you’ve selected.

wwaag

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Hughes] “So resized the slides to twice the resolution of DVD in jpeg as advised (1440 x 1152) …
The files have the 1.457 aspect ratio the Videopreview window shows the images with vertical blackbars on left & right”

I don’t know who advised you but you didn’t take the pixel aspect ratio into account so your images are the wrong size. PAL Widescreen is 1049 x 576 in square pixels (720 * 1.457). Twice that would be 2098 x 1152.

~jr

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