Creating Still Pictures CD (Continued)

[Guest]

I have my scanned photos, my audio is loaded and saved. When I play in the preview it is fuzzy. I found links describing why. I have saved this project to my hard drive using DV-AVI (NTSC ???). I then played it on my computer. It opened up MS media player to do this. The pics were still fuzzy. I then saved as High Quality Video (NTSC ???), and it played a little more clear. After the pics were scanned they were very clear, no fuzziness. Only fuzzy when I play the file. I have seen a couple of messages about Plus Photo Story 2. Since I have no video and all are still pics, will this be better geared toward what I am trying to do? If so, will I still need a third party software to load to a CD in VCD or SVCD format

Thanks

 

[Bob [MVP]]

I haven't tried Photo Story yet myself, but you
might find some useful information at Papa John's
web site: www.photostory.papajohn.org

You can get better results using Movie Maker if
the resolution of the photos you import are the
same as the resolution of your output video.
Otherwise you're relying on Movie Maker to downsize
the pictures, and it doesn't do a very good job
at that.

You can use your favorite image editing application
to reduce the size of your pictures one at a time,
or you can reduce them all at once using the
Image Resizer PowerToy, which you can download here:

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

And note that no matter how you do it, when you
reduce the resolution of a picture, you are
going to lose quality.

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

I have my scanned photos, my audio is loaded and saved. When I play in the preview it is fuzzy. I found links describing why. I

have saved this project to my hard drive using DV-AVI (NTSC ???). I then played it on my computer. It opened up MS media player to
do this. The pics were still fuzzy. I then saved as High Quality Video (NTSC ???), and it played a little more clear. After the
pics were scanned they were very clear, no fuzziness. Only fuzzy when I play the file. I have seen a couple of messages about Plus
Photo Story 2. Since I have no video and all are still pics, will this be better geared toward what I am trying to do? If so, will
I still need a third party software to load to a CD in VCD or SVCD format?

 

[Graham Hughes, MVP Digital Media]

If you can get to use a high quality photo-editing software, such as
Photoshop, for resizing your images you can do it without losing resolution,
but then it's going to depend on what software you have and/or how much you
want to spend on buying it.
What are the ???? after ntsc for? You need to choose whichever is appropiate
for where you live.
Graham

--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.simplydv.co.uk

I haven't tried Photo Story yet myself, but you
might find some useful information at Papa John's
web site: www.photostory.papajohn.org

You can get better results using Movie Maker if
the resolution of the photos you import are the
same as the resolution of your output video.
Otherwise you're relying on Movie Maker to downsize
the pictures, and it doesn't do a very good job
at that.

You can use your favorite image editing application
to reduce the size of your pictures one at a time,
or you can reduce them all at once using the
Image Resizer PowerToy, which you can download here:

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

And note that no matter how you do it, when you
reduce the resolution of a picture, you are
going to lose quality.

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

the preview it is fuzzy. I found links describing why. I

have saved this project to my hard drive using DV-AVI (NTSC ???). I then

played it on my computer. It opened up MS media player to

do this. The pics were still fuzzy. I then saved as High Quality Video

(NTSC ???), and it played a little more clear. After the

pics were scanned they were very clear, no fuzziness. Only fuzzy when I

play the file. I have seen a couple of messages about Plus

Photo Story 2. Since I have no video and all are still pics, will this be

better geared toward what I am trying to do? If so, will

 

[Bob [MVP]]

Graham,

I don't understand your comment that you can
resize an image without losing resolution.
The whole point in resizing them is to reduce
their resolution.

If I take a 2272x1704 picture from my digital
camera and resize it to 640x480, I've lost
resolution -- a LOT of resolution.

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

 

[Graham Hughes, MVP Digital Media]

Bob,
I took your post to read that however you did it, it would reduce the
resolution by resizing the picture, not that you needed to resize in order
to lose that resolution.
Yes, if you take the example you have quoted, it will lose lots of
resolution.
If, for example the OP had pictures which were an odd size, perhaps he had
scanned and cropped them and needed to resize the picture to suit MM2, then
he could actually do this without loss of resolution of the picture, you can
keep the same number of pixels, but in effect are making the actual size of
the picture smaller.

Have I explained what I mean clearly ?????
Graham
--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.simplydv.co.uk

Graham,

I don't understand your comment that you can
resize an image without losing resolution.
The whole point in resizing them is to reduce
their resolution.

If I take a 2272x1704 picture from my digital
camera and resize it to 640x480, I've lost
resolution -- a LOT of resolution.

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


"Graham Hughes, MVP Digital Media" <[email protected]> wrote in

message news:%[email protected]...

 

[Bob [MVP]]

Got it!

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

 

[Guest]

I think what I may do is re-scan my pics. I do have many different size pics, some are very old to very new, wallet to 8x10, so when they are scanned they come in many different pixels dimensions. The last time I scanned I did it at 200 DPI, which was the default, this time I will do it at 300 DPI. Do I need to adjust the pixels when I scan or leave them be? If I do need to adjust them how and what to adjust to? I am trying to get to DV-AVI which MM2 says will save it to 720x480
Thanks

 

[Graham Hughes, MVP Digital Media]

Before re-scanning them all, what photo editing software do you have? It may
be easier to just use a crop tool and resize the pictures you have to the
size you need.
Graham

--
Graham Hughes
MVP Digital Media
www.simplydv.co.uk

I think what I may do is re-scan my pics. I do have many different size

pics, some are very old to very new, wallet to 8x10, so when they are
scanned they come in many different pixels dimensions. The last time I
scanned I did it at 200 DPI, which was the default, this time I will do it
at 300 DPI. Do I need to adjust the pixels when I scan or leave them be?
If I do need to adjust them how and what to adjust to? I am trying to get
to DV-AVI which MM2 says will save it to 720x480.

 

[Guest]

I am using HP Photo and Imaging Gallery

 

[Graham Hughes, MVP Digital Media]

I normally use photoshop, but I'll have a look at the hp app tomorrow
hopefully and see what it can do. Did this come with the scanner?
Graham

 

[Bob [MVP]]

I often use HP Photo and Imaging for cropping &
changing the resolution of my photos.

Cropping is easy. Just select the area you
want and click the crop button in the toolbar.

Whenever possible, I try to maintain a 4:3
aspect ration when I crop the image. Otherwise
you'll get black bars on the top & bottom, or
left & right when you add them to your movie.
(assuming you movie aspect ration is 4:3)

After cropping, you'll want to change the
resolution of the image to match the resolution
of your movie (typically 640x480 or 720x480 NTSC).
PAL is slightly different.

From the Image pull-down menu, select Resize...
Set the Units to Pixels. Check the two boxes
labeled "Keep original proportion" and "Resample".
The number in the Resolution box really doesn't
matter here. Now set the Width and Height to
the resolution of your movie.

John Kelly has posted that you can maintain
a higher resolution (NxM) as long as N and M
are integer multiples of your final video
resolution. That certainly makes sense, but
I've never tried that myself.

The advantage to resizing the image to exactly
the resolution of your movie, is that you will
see up front the best possible quality you
could expect to see in your final movie.

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