Wedding Picture Help

[AmbitiousLemon]

Ok so my brother just got married and wants to burn all the guests a cd with a movie file that is a slide show with music showing all the photos from the wedding.

we checked out some shareware apps but none of them seemed very good at first glance (if anyone knows of any that are good please share) so i suggested he try imovie.

problem is when he exports to .mov the picture quality is so poor you cant see anyone's faces.

anyone got ideas/suggestions?

[Beej]

When you save or export there should be a setting where you can change the quality. You ma as well bump the quality up as high as will fit on the CD, assuming that's all that will be on the CD. Otherwise, make it as big as you can.

[arn]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
Ok so my brother just got married and wants to burn all the guests a cd with a movie file that is a slide show with music showing all the photos from the wedding.

we checked out some shareware apps but none of them seemed very good at first glance (if anyone knows of any that are good please share) so i suggested he try imovie.

problem is when he exports to .mov the picture quality is so poor you cant see anyone's faces.

anyone got ideas/suggestions?

iMovie may be the best way to go...

I looked into this for myself - but my goal was to burn to DVD. I assume he's ok with it being data only? He doesn't necessarily want it to play in a DVD/VCD player?

Is it for Mac only? or Mac/PC?

Here's what I did from iMovie... you can import JPEG's as a batch, and arrange them in a list. Import an MP3 as a sound track and lay it down... you can add cross fades pretty easy...

Now.... once you're done... you export to a movie... you can choose you quality... choose the best quality, since you're not worried about streaming it over the net

Note: watching it in iMovie is probably of lesser quality than the final product will be.

Give me some more details... this is definately doable.

It's possible to make a VCD of it... that should be playable in some VCD players... but you'll lose quality... as VCD's rez is pretty poor.

arn

[irmongoose]

Why don't you just import all the photos into iPhoto, then export it as a Quicktime Movie??




irmongoose

[Choppaface]

although it might take a bit longer to learn, you could use Flash to do all that and you can use the pix at max quality. be sure to export both windows and mac projectors to burn onto the CD. it's really not all that hard, if you go by flashkit.com or some other place you can learn the keyframing and sound in probably an hour or two max.......maybe another half hour or so of either searching through the help section of Flash or waiting for a board member response at flashkit on making the thing full screen using fscommand().....not too complicated and you won't have to worry about quality

you can also prolly do all this under the 30 trial period for it

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by arn
I looked into this for myself - but my goal was to burn to DVD. I assume he's ok with it being data only? He doesn't necessarily want it to play in a DVD/VCD player?

hes working on a powerbook so he cant burn to dvd. basically he just wants to give people a cd with a data file that will include the pictures fades and songs he wants to include.

Originally posted by arn
Is it for Mac only? or Mac/PC?

since he wants to share it with all of his guests its going to have to be mac and pc.

Originally posted by arn
Now.... once you're done... you export to a movie... you can choose you quality... choose the best quality, since you're not worried about streaming it over the net

Note: watching it in iMovie is probably of lesser quality than the final product will be.

hes already imported the jpegs and made a quick sample with some fades and some music be he tells me he can only export to .mov and that the quality is so low even on the highest quality that the you cant see anyones faces. the jpegs are originally 5mb files so they are high quality so the problem is with the export it seems.

apple's website isnt very helpful. its claims you can export to mpeg but my brother cant find out how to do that. any help?

(o and he is using mac os 9.)


[EDIT] i didnt have imovie so i downloade an old version (since apple wont let people download the newest version and wont let you install it without installing a whole operating system) and started playing with the settings.

exporting to hisghest quality quicktime file seriously degrades file quality. the i discovered the "expert" settings and found i could make it export without lossing as much quality but 10 second movie with 2 pictures was 142 mb. so does anyone know how to configure these settings to produce a movie without losing quality and without being huge? o and how do you export to anything other than .mov?

[teabgs]

One way is use photoshop and just make an animated gif. It'll be bad but it will work.

Also, if you can get final Cut, thatd be the way to go.

Are there any compressions in iMovie? Sorenson does a real good job if you can use it.

[arn]

Hey....

well, part of the problem is that iMovie handles everything in DV format... which is set rez of 720xsomething... so regardless of how big the files are, it's going to shrink them down to that resolution....

you may have to go with a 3rd party app... for slide shows... I'll look into it...

arn

[AmbitiousLemon]

imovie has sorenson compression in the expert settings i didnt know what it was so i didnt use it.

i guess all i need now is for someone who has some good ideas on how to configure those expert settings to retain quality. apple has slideshows on their website made in imovie but they dont say how they did it.

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by arn
Hey....

well, part of the problem is that iMovie handles everything in DV format... which is set rez of 720xsomething... so regardless of how big the files are, it's going to shrink them down to that resolution....

you may have to go with a 3rd party app... for slide shows... I'll look into it...

arn

we can change the resolution in the expert settings if you think thats what is causing the problem. what resolution should we use though?

ok as i ask im thinking. what if we took all the pictures into photoshop and applied a black border around them so they are all of the exact same dimensions and then set the imovie resolution to match that size. that sound good?

but any idea on the other settings?

[arn]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon


we can change the resolution in the expert settings if you think thats what is causing the problem. what resolution should we use though?

ok as i ask im thinking. what if we took all the pictures into photoshop and applied a black border around them so they are all of the exact same dimensions and then set the imovie resolution to match that size. that sound good?

but any idea on the other settings?

well. not really... cause iMovie will shrink the images to the 720 resolution when you use it in iMovie...

Even if you somehow get imovie to export at 1027x768 rez... what will happen is it will first take your original images, shrink them to 720xXXX, you will edit it together... then when you export it will scale them up... but you still loose that rez.

the reason is that DV (digial video) is a very specific format, and that's what iMovie uses...

ambitious lemon.... send me a few of the images, and let me see what I can do with it...

arn

[Choppaface]

IMO flash is still the way to go. first you dont know if these people (who probably mostly run windows) even HAVE quicktime, let alone know how to use the computer well enough to download it if they don't. second why lower the quality to that of a movie when you can show the pix at top quality in flash? mac a win audiece, flash can export mac and win projectors. also you're in OS 9, and flash is for OS 9. flash all the way

[AmbitiousLemon]

well my brother doesnt have flash (although i can acquire it for him, but id prefer not to have to) and im a little concerned that flash would be way to complicated.

if anyone can provide or find an easy tutorial for making a slide show in flash and exporting it then that might help. but also the people will have to download the flash player if we make it in flash so its not so different than them having to download quicktime. also Apple claims iMovie can export to mpeg but i cant figure out how.

hm, i just check flash is only like 12mb stuffed so i suppose transfering it to my brother wouldnt be a big deal, but still im concerned about it being too complicated for him.

[Choppaface]

no you would export a flash projector. they don't have to download anything because the player is included in the projector

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by Choppaface
no you would export a flash projector. they don't have to download anything because the player is included in the projector

o thats pretty cool. im just not sure how easy it would be for my brother to learn flash. its a very complicated application... seems a little difficult for someone who just wants to make a slideshow. but like i said if you could provide some quick directions maybe he could use it. is the demo available at their website fully functional?(its just a timed demo right?)

[Choppaface]

the demo is fully functional, just dies in 30 days

it really should be no harder than imovie

you can find simple tutorials at flashkit.com

it would be much easier for you I think if you looked at the tutorials with the app open. if I tried to explain it to you, it prolly wouldnt make much sense until you've fooled around with the app a little

[mmcneil]

Since all the pictures are stills, perhaps the best bet is to make a powerpoint slide show (I know it is M$, but it is the common denominator) and include the free PowerPoint Viewer (available on MS web site) in both PC and Mac versions.

[Rower_CPU]

Here's a couple of options:

1) Sign up for an iTools account and upload the pictures there. They have a slideshow type feature built in. No sound, but simple quick and accessible by any system/platform.

2) Get QT Pro and assemble the images and audio there. QT is just as prevalent as Flash.

You don't need different projectors for Flash. Just export the .SWF file which plays on any system with Flash Player. Flash is a good program, but the learning curve and time spent might not be worth while.

[macstudent]

you could also use Macromedia Director and make an interactive cd-rom.

[Choppaface]

yes, you could use director, but its quite a bit more complicated than flash

as for exporting flash without the projector, thats a bad idea. systems that don't have flash, or the verison of flash that you're working with especially, won't be able to play it. besides, it only adds like 400k, *not a big deal for a CD*

powerpoint would probably be the best idea actually if you already have office. it would probably be the easiest to use unless you're already familiar with something else

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by Choppaface
yes, you could use director, but its quite a bit more complicated than flash

as for exporting flash without the projector, thats a bad idea. systems that don't have flash, or the verison of flash that you're working with especially, won't be able to play it. besides, it only adds like 400k, *not a big deal for a CD*

powerpoint would probably be the best idea actually if you already have office. it would probably be the easiest to use unless you're already familiar with something else

Actually it would double the overall size since you'd need to make 2 of them...
I guess I just took for granted that since Flash comes preinstalled with most browsers, and that unless you're doing a lot of ActionScript it's going to be backwards compatible, that you don't need projectors.

[Choppaface]

well the file isnt going to be 325 megs so we don't have to worry about having 2 of them, and in terms of backwards compatability I havent had so much success with that. I've had actionscriptless movies made in flash 5, exported in flash 4 format, and they won't play past frame 1 in a browser with flash 4

[Rower_CPU]

That's strange...I guess Macromedia has some work to do...maybe Flash MX fixes that?

[Choppaface]

I'll try it but I doubt it. it didnt happen to me all the time, it was usually 50/50 as to what worked. besides, as tests have shown, the newer players are faster too (mainly in actionscript and XML though...)