Photostory 3 - timing pics to audio

[Guest]

I am having trouble determining the length of viewing for each photo entered
into my slide show. I will enter a duration of 3 sec. and 2 seconds for the
transition but when viewing the show it is taking over 10 seconds to complete.

The music is going along, without and lags but the video is stalling, the
count is going without lag, but the screen seems "stuck" and won't keep up
with the counter or the audio. Each time I do a preview, it will appear
differently. My story is 150mg so it should be ok. Any ideas or tips?

thanks

 

[Raymond J. Johnson Jr.]

| I am having trouble determining the length of viewing for each photo
entered
| into my slide show. I will enter a duration of 3 sec. and 2 seconds for
the
| transition but when viewing the show it is taking over 10 seconds to
complete.
|
| The music is going along, without and lags but the video is stalling, the
| count is going without lag, but the screen seems "stuck" and won't keep up
| with the counter or the audio. Each time I do a preview, it will appear
| differently. My story is 150mg so it should be ok. Any ideas or tips?
|
| thanks

150mg seems like a lot; perhaps you should try a smaller dosage.

 

[Guest]

I am so confused as to what program I should be using and the more programs I
try to learn, it seems the less I know.

I am attempting to create a slideshow/video of my daughter's wedding with
several diffferent pieces of music, no narrative. I purchased the Photostory
2 and upgraded to 3, which allowed me to use more than one piece of audio.

The plan is to create a DVD for family members, and to this end I purchased
the HP 560i DVD. So at this point I have software that came with my Canon
digital camera, the software that came with the DVD, and the Windows
software. So I have ArcSoft ShowBiz2 and Arcsoft Camera Suite, with Video
Impression 2, Sonic Record v7.2 and Dazzle On DVD. Of course there is
Moviemaker, but I stayed away from it as I understood the quality would not
be as good.

Can I do what I am attempting to do, with what I have? Which program or
combination of programs would be best? And where can I get the best
information on how to use the programs I need to accomplish this. This was
to be a Christmas gift but I'm not likely to meet that goal.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will post this again separately to
see if there are any others who can help.

thanks,

 

[Guest]

I am so confused as to what program I should be using and the more programs I
try to learn, it seems the less I know.

I am attempting to create a slideshow/video of my daughter's wedding with
several diffferent pieces of music, no narrative. I purchased the Photostory
2 and upgraded to 3, which allowed me to use more than one piece of audio.

The plan is to create a DVD for family members, and to this end I purchased
the HP 560i DVD. So at this point I have software that came with my Canon
digital camera, the software that came with the DVD, and the Windows
software. So I have ArcSoft ShowBiz2 and Arcsoft Camera Suite, with Video
Impression 2, Sonic Record v7.2 and Dazzle On DVD. Of course there is
Moviemaker, but I stayed away from it as I understood the quality would not
be as good.

Can I do what I am attempting to do, with what I have? Which program or
combination of programs would be best? And where can I get the best
information on how to use the programs I need to accomplish this. This was
to be a Christmas gift but I'm not likely to meet that goal.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Raymond J. Johnson Jr.]

| I am so confused as to what program I should be using and the more
programs I
| try to learn, it seems the less I know.
|
| I am attempting to create a slideshow/video of my daughter's wedding with
| several diffferent pieces of music, no narrative. I purchased the
Photostory
| 2 and upgraded to 3, which allowed me to use more than one piece of audio.
|
| The plan is to create a DVD for family members, and to this end I
purchased
| the HP 560i DVD. So at this point I have software that came with my Canon
| digital camera, the software that came with the DVD, and the Windows
| software. So I have ArcSoft ShowBiz2 and Arcsoft Camera Suite, with Video
| Impression 2, Sonic Record v7.2 and Dazzle On DVD. Of course there is
| Moviemaker, but I stayed away from it as I understood the quality would
not
| be as good.
|
| Can I do what I am attempting to do, with what I have? Which program or
| combination of programs would be best? And where can I get the best
| information on how to use the programs I need to accomplish this. This
was
| to be a Christmas gift but I'm not likely to meet that goal.
|
| Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will post this again separately
to
| see if there are any others who can help.
|
| thanks,
|
| "Raymond J. Johnson Jr." wrote:
|
| >
| > | > | I am having trouble determining the length of viewing for each photo
| > entered
| > | into my slide show. I will enter a duration of 3 sec. and 2 seconds
for
| > the
| > | transition but when viewing the show it is taking over 10 seconds to
| > complete.
| > |
| > | The music is going along, without and lags but the video is stalling,
the
| > | count is going without lag, but the screen seems "stuck" and won't
keep up
| > | with the counter or the audio. Each time I do a preview, it will
appear
| > | differently. My story is 150mg so it should be ok. Any ideas or
tips?
| > |
| > | thanks
| >
| > 150mg seems like a lot; perhaps you should try a smaller dosage.
| >
| >

I was making a joke. A lame one, perhaps, but a joke nonetheless. You said
"150mg"; "mg" stands for "milligrams" hence my reference to a lower dosage.

 

[Guest]

LOL, totally missed that! Zing, right over my head. Actually the size was
wrong, don't even know where I got that.

I am starting to get the hang of the various save options. I thought that
when I set the save option on the last page that when I hit "save project"
along the way, that was the format I was saving to. I realize now, that was
not the case. The project size is 158,491 KB and the WMV file is 43,635 KB.
I discovered that by saving it to the WMV format and viewing it there, I was
able to get it to play at the correct pace. Too many times on preview in the
wp3 format and it seems to get bogged down. I guess my clipboard or memory
or whatever gets too full. I find if I close, reboot my system and go at it
again, I solve that problem. I think I have it working now and so I'm on to
trying to figure out MM2 which I have never used and then trying to burn it
to my DVD. This is a larger project than I'm likely to do in the future (but
then you get hooked and keep trying to make it "better" LOL).

My Sonic RecordNow 7 needs the AVI file to burn to DVD. Would you recommend
the MM2 for conversion or one of the suggested conversion programs

http://www.canopus.com/US/products/DV_file_converter/pm_dv_file_converter.asp

http://www.jhepple.com/dv1to2.htm

http://www.ulead.com/download/dvconverter/download.htm

to get the best quality for DVD burning. I realize that the more conversion
you make, the more the quality degenerates, but I want to try to keep it at
the best quality possible.

thanks for the help,

 

[Ravi G. Ravichandran]

I am in a similar situation as you - need to create a good quality DVD from
a montage of digital pictures!

A simple answer to your question - MM2 can convert your WMV to AVI. I have
gotten decent results. The key may be the software you use to convert AVI to
MPEG-2 (format used in DVD).

Here are the steps I took (I am still experimenting and looking for better
results):
- Save PS3 output using NTSC DVD profile (I tried different profiles
including the one that came with PS3, modified version of it that gave
720x480 res and VBR quality of 100, one from PapaJohn's website
http://www.eicsoftware.com/PapaJohn/MM2/MM2.html - look in Photo Story
3-->Saving)
- Used MM2.1 to save it as AVI
- TMPGEnc 2.5 (free version) to convert the AVI to MPEG-2 (used NTSC DVD
template)
- Nero Express Vision to create titles and burn the DVD

Having said all this, I am disappointed at how many hoops one has to go
through to create something decent. I have tried trial versions of Sony
Vegas Studio + DVD and Adobe Premiere Elements. When it comes to a balance
between ease of use, time to create photo stories and reasonable features,
Photo Story 3 is hard to beat. However, I wish they had a profile to create
MPEG-2 directly! This will save us from all the conversions and loss of
quality.

If anyone has succeeded in creating a good quality DVD from PS3, please post
your experiences.

Thanks
Ravi

 

[Guest]

I discovered that with my HP DVD burner there was another software product
for burning, ArcSoft ShowBiz2. This product recognizes the WMV format so I
didn't have to convert to burn. I was quite pleased with the results. The
photos looked great, although the gifs I used to seam the project weren't
great, I should probably have made them jpegs.

Sandy

 

[dwswager]

I am in a similar situation as you - need to create a good quality DVD from
a montage of digital pictures!

A simple answer to your question - MM2 can convert your WMV to AVI. I have
gotten decent results. The key may be the software you use to convert AVI to
MPEG-2 (format used in DVD).

Here are the steps I took (I am still experimenting and looking for better
results):
- Save PS3 output using NTSC DVD profile (I tried different profiles
including the one that came with PS3, modified version of it that gave
720x480 res and VBR quality of 100, one from PapaJohn's website
http://www.eicsoftware.com/PapaJohn/MM2/MM2.html - look in Photo Story
3-->Saving)
- Used MM2.1 to save it as AVI
- TMPGEnc 2.5 (free version) to convert the AVI to MPEG-2 (used NTSC DVD
template)
- Nero Express Vision to create titles and burn the DVD

Having said all this, I am disappointed at how many hoops one has to go
through to create something decent. I have tried trial versions of Sony
Vegas Studio + DVD and Adobe Premiere Elements. When it comes to a balance
between ease of use, time to create photo stories and reasonable features,
Photo Story 3 is hard to beat. However, I wish they had a profile to create
MPEG-2 directly! This will save us from all the conversions and loss of
quality.

If anyone has succeeded in creating a good quality DVD from PS3, please post
your experiences.

Thanks
Ravi

The DVD Creation process is pretty complicated. This is why the
all-in-one solutions seem so unappealing. They can't be everything to
everyone.

I just started with Premiere Elements. Seems the trick here is that it
is expecting 720 x 480 input and converts everything handed to it.
I've achieved decent results by first converting my images with the
appropriate crop to this size. I use a Photoshop action to enlarge the
canvas with black background to fill the space as necessary. Your
stuck, as far as I can tell so far, with the predefined DVD templates.
I suspect there is a way to fiddle with this, but have not explored it
yet.

 

[dogprime]

One great product is "Automuvee" (http://www.muvee.com/).
You give it photos (or videos for that matter), music, and a style. I
can either fill in the music with photos or vice versa. The photos ar
shown in a dynamic way. They OEM the technology to ULead and Microsof
in a stripped down manner.
It also outputs to a number of format