digital photos no longer in focus

Ok I need some help. I have used Adobe Photoshop album to make simple slideshows. I don't do anything to the photos except drag them to the desired position. However when I do the same with moviemaker2 which provides so much more extras, the slideshow is clearly not in focus. It looks just slightly out of focus. The photos are taken with a 6.0 meg Fuji camera and again I don't do anything like resize them or change them for Adobe so I fugured it should be the same for moviemaker2. Help cause the program look so cool. Please be nice because some of you look like you are sorta mean. I guess I will take my chances..Thanks so much for any nice input, and my sons baseball team will thankyou also
karen

Hi Karen,

When you save your movie in Movie Maker, you're probably
saving at a resolution of something like 640x40, right?
Well, that's approximately only 5% of the resolution of
your original 6 Mega-pixel pictures. It's no wonder they
appear to be out of focus.

Besides the loss of resolution, Movie Maker doesn't
seem to do the best job in resizing. I think you'll
get somewhat better results if you resize (resolution)
your pictures to match the resolution of your movie
before you import them into Movie Maker.

If you only plan to view the slide show on your PC,
you can create a custom profile that will allow you
to save your movie in a higher resolution. I personally
have never tried that, but you can find instructions
on the Saving Movies page at www.papajohn.org.

--
-Bob
____________________________
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Media Center Edition
www.microsoft.com/ehome


"Karen" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:81C33B45-0798-4A71-AFBA-1CDC2634F25A@microsoft.com...
> Ok I need some help. I have used Adobe Photoshop album to make simple slideshows. I don't do anything to the photos except drag
them to the desired position. However when I do the same with moviemaker2 which provides so much more extras, the slideshow is
clearly not in focus. It looks just slightly out of focus. The photos are taken with a 6.0 meg Fuji camera and again I don't do
anything like resize them or change them for Adobe so I fugured it should be the same for moviemaker2. Help cause the program look
so cool. Please be nice because some of you look like you are sorta mean. I guess I will take my chances..Thanks so much for any
nice input, and my sons baseball team will thankyou also.
> karen

Arrgh... Why do I always find my typo's after I
hit the send button? The second line should have
read 640x480 (not 640x40). :-)

--
-Bob
____________________________
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Media Center Edition
www.microsoft.com/ehome


"Bob [MVP]" <bob@nospam.org> wrote in message news:uDm7TySREHA.3728@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Hi Karen,
>
> When you save your movie in Movie Maker, you're probably
> saving at a resolution of something like 640x40, right?
> Well, that's approximately only 5% of the resolution of
> your original 6 Mega-pixel pictures. It's no wonder they
> appear to be out of focus.
>
> Besides the loss of resolution, Movie Maker doesn't
> seem to do the best job in resizing. I think you'll
> get somewhat better results if you resize (resolution)
> your pictures to match the resolution of your movie
> before you import them into Movie Maker.
>
> If you only plan to view the slide show on your PC,
> you can create a custom profile that will allow you
> to save your movie in a higher resolution. I personally
> have never tried that, but you can find instructions
> on the Saving Movies page at www.papajohn.org.
>
> --
> -Bob
> ____________________________
> Microsoft MVP
> Windows XP Media Center Edition
> www.microsoft.com/ehome
>
>
> "Karen" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:81C33B45-0798-4A71-AFBA-1CDC2634F25A@microsoft.com...
> > Ok I need some help. I have used Adobe Photoshop album to make simple slideshows. I don't do anything to the photos except drag
> them to the desired position. However when I do the same with moviemaker2 which provides so much more extras, the slideshow is
> clearly not in focus. It looks just slightly out of focus. The photos are taken with a 6.0 meg Fuji camera and again I don't do
> anything like resize them or change them for Adobe so I fugured it should be the same for moviemaker2. Help cause the program
look
> so cool. Please be nice because some of you look like you are sorta mean. I guess I will take my chances..Thanks so much for any
> nice input, and my sons baseball team will thankyou also.
> > karen
>

Hi Bob,
Thank you thank you for replying......I haven't even saved anything yet. I am just working on dragging in the photos from files. They look great in the preview pane but pretty bad at full screen. So what should I do? I have downloaded the "Put me in Coach" song...too cute...so tell me again what you want me to do.
Karen

Hi Karen,

A 6 megapixel camera is taking pictures that measure about 2800x2200 pixels.
Adobe and image editing software uses all the pixels.

But high quality DVDs and computer videos are typically 640x480 pixels...
only about 1/3 of a megapixel. So one thing is understanding the different
quality levels between the picture environment and video.

And the preview mode of Movie Maker is using 320x240.... about 1/12 of a
megapixel.... but it's just a preview, not the final size of the saved
movie.

If your goal is a slide-show, consider using PhotoStory instead of Movie
Maker 2, or use them together.... how to do it depends on what you want to
do in your project. A couple pages on my websites to check are the
PhotoStory with MM2 page of my PhotoStory site, and the Saving Movies >
Custom WMV Profiles page of my MM2 site.

The right approach to take depends on who your audience is and how you will
deliver the videos to them.... playback on a computer can be of considerably
higher quality than playing a disc on a TV in a DVD player.
--
PapaJohn

Movie Maker 2 - www.papajohn.org
Photo Story 2 - www.photostory.papajohn.org

..
"Karen" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:14C9985B-7D53-4CB6-98CB-5B0BFD1A550F@microsoft.com...
> Hi Bob,
> Thank you thank you for replying......I haven't even saved anything yet. I
am just working on dragging in the photos from files. They look great in the
preview pane but pretty bad at full screen. So what should I do? I have
downloaded the "Put me in Coach" song...too cute...so tell me again what you
want me to do.
> Karen

My goal is a slide show with music and transitions between photos. It will be played on a tv at a pizza parlor and at home on their computer or tv. So you think that Photo story would be the way to go.? In comparing Adobe photo album slide show to movie maker which would play betteron a tv without editing or resizing the photos...just dragging them into the program?
Karen

Hello there,

This exact issue is explained on my website in the FAQ section. There is
advice given here that is so wrong that I eventually decided to show the
consequences of taking that advice by the use of a few simple pictures. The
consequence of taking that advice is exactly what you describe. Fortunately
you are using software that will allow you to fix the problem very easily.
As you will learn in the FAQ, the width and height of an image measured in
pixels is not as relevant as its aspect ration...but check out the FAQ, you
will see what I mean.

--
Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work

Karen

Just a quick fyi for you -- my wife is doing things
similar to what you are doing and has found ImageResizer
to be invaluable to her -- it's part of Microsoft's
PowerToy collection:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...loads/powertoys
..asp

This capability bolts right into the XP operating system,
such that it will appear as an option when you right-
click on an image document -- it makes a copy you specify
and tags "(sml}", "(med)", etc to the original file name
to create the new name.

Harry

>-----Original Message-----
>My goal is a slide show with music and transitions
between photos. It will be played on a tv at a pizza
parlor and at home on their computer or tv. So you think
that Photo story would be the way to go.? In comparing
Adobe photo album slide show to movie maker which would
play betteron a tv without editing or resizing the
photos...just dragging them into the program?
>Karen
>.
>

Great suggestion, Harry. I use the Image Resizer
PowerToy all the time myself. It's a real time-
saver.

--
-Bob
____________________________
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Media Center Edition
www.microsoft.com/ehome


"Harry" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:14b5501c44577$25987630$a301280a@phx.gbl...
> Karen
>
> Just a quick fyi for you -- my wife is doing things
> similar to what you are doing and has found ImageResizer
> to be invaluable to her -- it's part of Microsoft's
> PowerToy collection:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...loads/powertoys
> .asp
>
> This capability bolts right into the XP operating system,
> such that it will appear as an option when you right-
> click on an image document -- it makes a copy you specify
> and tags "(sml}", "(med)", etc to the original file name
> to create the new name.
>
> Harry
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >My goal is a slide show with music and transitions
> between photos. It will be played on a tv at a pizza
> parlor and at home on their computer or tv. So you think
> that Photo story would be the way to go.? In comparing
> Adobe photo album slide show to movie maker which would
> play betteron a tv without editing or resizing the
> photos...just dragging them into the program?
> >Karen
> >.
> >

Hello Harry,

As far as I can see this utility does not crop images and at the same
time preserve the image itself. In fact it does not seem to crop images at
all.

The image gets squashed if you select an image size that corresponds to
the requirements of DV-AVI (720 x 576 or 720 x 480) Do you know of a way to
make it preserve the image (by not squashing it) so that when you bring an
image of any size larger than the requirements of DV-AVI down to the size
required by DV-AVI. If its always going to squash the image its not going to
be much use in the process of preparing a video for eventual conversion to a
DVD

The test I applied was with a black and white image. the image has one
diagonal black line in it and was 1600 x 1208. I used the utility to bring
this down to 720 x 576. The proof that no crop had occurred resides in the
fact that the line still went from exact corner to exact corner. (If it had
been cropped that would have shown up as some displacement in the black line
along one of the edges of the new picture) For a demonstration of the test
and squashing of an image check out the FAQ on my website for Movie Maker
and take a look at "Pixels & Quality" followed by Image Ratio.

I do agree that it is a great utility where the new image has the same
ratio as the original...very handy indeed.

Best Wishes.....John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
www.the-kellys.co.uk

"Harry" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:14b5501c44577$25987630$a301280a@phx.gbl...
> Karen
>
> Just a quick fyi for you -- my wife is doing things
> similar to what you are doing and has found ImageResizer
> to be invaluable to her -- it's part of Microsoft's
> PowerToy collection:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...loads/powertoys
> .asp
>
> This capability bolts right into the XP operating system,
> such that it will appear as an option when you right-
> click on an image document -- it makes a copy you specify
> and tags "(sml}", "(med)", etc to the original file name
> to create the new name.
>
> Harry
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >My goal is a slide show with music and transitions
> between photos. It will be played on a tv at a pizza
> parlor and at home on their computer or tv. So you think
> that Photo story would be the way to go.? In comparing
> Adobe photo album slide show to movie maker which would
> play betteron a tv without editing or resizing the
> photos...just dragging them into the program?
> >Karen
> >.
> >