DVD slide show

[sodface]

I'm currently working on a DVD project and I wanted to include a slide show of digital stills as part of the "special features".

I have tried using ulead dvd pictureshow, which is fantastic at producing slide shows in VCD, SVCD, and DVD formats, but the problem is creating the slideshow in DVD and storing it on the harddrive gives me the slideshow as a .vob file. I haven't found a very good way converting this to an .mpg file for import into a dvd authoring program.

The .vob should already be an mpeg2 stream so you'd think it would be easy.

I've tried a couple of utils like dvd to mpg and max dvdtompg but they don't work. One performs illegal operations under XP and the other will not let you select a file on the hard drive - it expects you to pull it off the DVD drive.

Any ideas?

[Duvie]

I will try on my pinnacle system tonight and see what it gives me.....It should be able to convert to an mpeg2, but I got to admit I haven't tried it....

[Duvie]

I was successful...I added about 20 pics to a 4:00 min mp3 song then added about 2-3 second transition effects and then at the end I went to make movie and hit mpeg2 compression, set bitrate, set resolution size and then hit make mpeg button....

Then opened it up in several programs as a mpeg2 and even imported it into a file as an mpeg2...

[Duvie]

I checked up on trying to get the vob and conert it or strip the mpeg2 stream out and I can't find anything...Short of running a total re-encode to mpeg2 with one of the mpeg2 programs I think you need to makes sure it is made into an mpeg2 like I did in pinnacle and not obviously making a file that has the settings of a DVD compatable disk....That option may not be available in that program.....If not drop me a line about a pinnacle demo!!!;)

[sodface]

Thanks Duvie.

I also just came up with a sort-of solution you might be interested in.

The only problem I see with doing the slide show in a video editing program is that if you are working with a large number of stills - I'm doing about 60 for this project - you would have to manually do each transition between pics, and also set the pics to play for the same duration. Seems to me it would be time consuming with a large number of stills, though I'm not very experienced with video editors and there may be a way of adding the transitions all at once - I don't know.

The solution I found was to simply rename the .vob to .mpg and then import it into a dvd authoring program as you normally would.

This allows me to still use Ulead DVD Pictureshow to generate the slideshow - which does a fade transition between each pic. Ulead then saves a first play vob and then the slideshow is a separate vob. Just renaming the large slideshow vob did the trick.

Funny thing is, media player will not play the mpg after I rename it, it still thinks it's a dvd file, and won't play it unless you have a dvd decoder installed but DVD workshop allowed me to import and play the clip in my dvd project (it doesn't let you import vob's)

This method seems to be effective if you are only dealing with one vob at a time. If you need to join multiple vobs - that's a different story. I haven't tried it and I read that joining and then renaming to .mpg causes audio sync problems, but, like I said, I haven't tried it.

[Duvie]

I agree that is a bit faster but it doesn't take that long as you would think.....


I could highlight all the clips I want if they are in the same directory and place them..If I have 20 pics and a 4min (240sec) song I just go to settings edit and set stills to be placed at 12sec...however transitions are in the 2sec range so I can set them at 10sec and then just stretch the last one to make up or set a fade to black....Whole thing takes me less then 1 minute....

Edit: One of the things I can do is make each pic unique in length with a simple drag to the left or right and then with the mp3 down below it in a timeline format I can see if the last pic goes over how much I need to drag it back to keep it in synch with the length of the mp3 file.....

Also I can pick unique transitions for all of them as I have a library of over 200+....Makes it nice to have differing transitions...puts a little entertainment in it....

[SubZero]

Proshow gold is a great application if your goal is to create slideshows and have the music automaticaly synchronized with your slides... putting in captions, etc... Great transitions and all.

Much simpler than the ulead, adobe and pinnacle applications but it is good at what it does.

It's shareware.. Get it here: http://www.photodex.com

[Duvie]

thanks Sub....I think I may try that out and she how she works....

[sodface]

Yeah, I just downloaded too, I'll let you know. Thanks for the tip, this'll be the fourth program of this type I've tried!