Saving Project for transfer to DVD

[Guest]

We created a slideshow in Movie Makerthat we want to burn to a disk. The
slideshow is composed of pictures that we scanned. It is approximately 22
minutes. I was having a lot of trouble saving the file, because it would
freeze halfway through the slide show, however the audio would continue. I
finally got it saved, but after it is burned to the DVD the pictures are not
very clear. Can someone tell me the best quality setting to use in the "Save
Movie Wizard" in order to get a better quality picture?

 

[Guest]

How did you ovwercome the save problem? My video is only about 12 minutes
and I can succesfully only 8.

 

[Rehan]

... because it would
freeze halfway through the slide show, however the audio would continue. I
finally got it saved,

www.papajohn.org > Problem Solving > Cant save the video

but after it is burned to the DVD the pictures are not
very clear. Can someone tell me the best quality setting to use in the "Save
Movie Wizard" in order to get a better quality picture?

This topic has been very hotly debated in past. The following is my
opinion gathered after personal experience.

For still images the dimensions of the images matter more than anything.
Since the output of the WMV from movie maker is 4:3 or 16:9, your input
images should be of the same ratio. Furthermore the size of the input
images should be the integeral multiple of the final "display" size: the
dimensions the movie gets displayed in media player. I would recommend
using a WMV codec with output size of 640x480 and 2.1Mbps or more bitrate.

DV AVI and WMV (NTSC) formats are not suitable since these distort the
pixel dimensions during encoding. These are more suitable for video
footage which is captured in the non-square pixel resolution.

By all means try out other peoples opinion as well. However please
report your personal observations if you do compare different settings.

Also see the weblog entry about this topic by Dean Rowe (of Movie Maker
team):
http://blogs.msdn.com/deanro/archive/2005/04/19/409563.aspx

 

[John Kelly]

Hello,

The best is DV-AVI (actually there are many better but Movie Maker does not
go that high)

If your stills are JPeg you "may" have4 problems with the project
file.....Others have found that converting the stills to bitmaps (bmp)
solves there problems. There are many forms of JPeg but the problem is not
consistent and therefore you can not say it is defiantly one form or
another.

--
John Kelly
www.the-kellys.org
Truthfully, I am not an Instant Expert, But I know someone who is going to
have to try a LOT harder
\|||/
(oo)
----------ooO-(_)-Ooo-------------
All material gained from other sources is duly acknowledged. No Value is
obtained by publishing in any format other peoples work

 

[Wojo]

It isn't about the length of the video it is about it's complexity in
comparison to your system resources.
If you are only able to save about 8 minutes it is likely that you are using
a lot of transitions and effects that are making the video too complex for
your computer. The other possibility is that 8 minutes or so into your video
there is an image or clip that Movie Maker doesn't like and it's getting
stuck on that clip or image.
The best way to save a complex video is to split it into segments and save
them separately. Maybe split them when you go from one song to another if
your using any or just split it at around 6 minutes. Delete everything from
whichever point you choose to the end of the project and save that as a
separate project. Then save that to your hard drive. Next open the original
project and save everything from the beginning to the point where you
started to delete the first time. Save that as a separate project and then
save that to your hard drive. Now import the two videos you created into
your collections and drag them in order to your timeline. Now your project
doesn't have all the complex transitions since they are now incorporated
into your videos so if you save this final compilation to your hard drive
you will have your finished movie.
-Wojo