Tom Brooks
Forum Replies Created
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You’ve come a long way already and you’re quickly getting out of my depth on DVD slideshows. I see your problem with the transitions. I think you can either “convert the slideshow to a track” or go back to your original method of editing the slideshow in Final Cut as a movie and then force manual pauses into it by way of chapter markers. Try to research both methods in the help file. You can set the behavior of the chapter markers so that the video automatically pauses at the end of each chapter and waits for a ‘next’ cue. All of these methods limit you to 99 changes, because either the number of stills or the number of chapter markers is limited to that.
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I’m not familiar with iDVD. You could produce the PowerPoint show within DVD Studio Pro as a slideshow. DVD Studio Pro 3 includes a slideshow editor. You would export your PowerPOint as a series of stills, import these into DVD SP3, bring them into the slideshow editor, add audio and transitions as desired. All the how-tos are in the online help system. It would be best to export your slides from PowerPOint as 720 X 534 (720 X 540 is close enough) pixels if possible. This converts to the proper aspect when imported to DVD. Obviously, this is not a hi-res medium for slides. Only very simple slides with large shapes and fonts or pictorial content will work very well, as Walter states. Typical business presentations have too small fonts and too much info to work well as DVD.
If you still want to do it, it’s a relatively easy process. A tutorial that included a slideshow came with my copy of DVD Studio Pro2. This walks you through the steps quite easily. DVD SP3 will be similar, but with more new features to play with. In the slideshow editor of DVD SP3 there is a pause checkbox for each slide in the show. Checking that makes it so the slide won’t advance until the user presses the ‘next’ or ‘play’ key on the remote.
Your whole project, including the 4 movies should be assembled in DVD SP3. I take it that the other slideshow you mention advances automatically with its sound track and that you have produced it as a video in Final Cut? It could be done in DVD SP instead, but it’s up to you to decide which is better. The Apple Pro Training Series book on DVD Studio Pro is also good for a wealth of techniques and examples–far beyond the tutorials included with the software itself. The book is called “Apple Pro Training Series: DVD Studio Pro 3.”
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Press the hours meter button under the front panel cover. This will display values on the time counter display on the deck as well as on composite output 2 if you have a monitor connected. ON the counter display you use the up/down arrows to display the various counts available. The number shown is only the resettable number. You must press right arrow to see the cumulative or total hours for each count. I presume if the trip count has never been reset, it’ll be the same as the cumulative. All counts show together on the composite out.
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A very easy way is to use Particle Playground and modify the particle stream to look like smoke. You need pro version of AE for this. Search for a tutorial by clicking on the Adobe After Effects COW logo at the top of the posts and then searching for “smoke” on the tutorial listing page. You will find stuff like this very easy exampla:
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I theorized at the time that they fed Mr. Ed (a talking horse on U.S. TV show) peanut butter to make him move his lips and then selected bits that matched his lines. This site corroborates that theory.
https://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_029
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I’ve seen this, but don’t know why it happens. I’ve worked around by adding black to end of comp, render it out, then lop off the useless white in QuickTime Pro.
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At one time there was a Windows codec for the ABVB, but I can’t find a download for it anywhere on the Avid site. But Animation codec at 100% should be fine. Remember that the ABVB uses upper first field order.
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Effect/Distort/Bulge is somewhat workable. If you bulge your picture larger towards the center, the image gets enlarged in that area and can look bad because you’re blowing the image up to larger than its native size. So go easy if it’s video or make your TV screen smaller than the native size of the video. As far as putting a highlight on it, a mostly transparent white or light blue rectangle, distorted to match the distortion of the screen is a start. Basically, a TV screen is a weak, distorted mirror, which will show you an image of any object in a direct line from the the object (a window, say) to the TV screen and then to your eye. If the camera that is looking at the TV is moving, of course your reflections will have to move as well. Place a small non-flat screen TV in view of a window and look at it. What does the reflection look like? Make your white layer look like that. Then stylize as you wish.