VSO Software Forum

[Claire]

This is a guide to make an animated slideshow on a DVD that will read in any DVD player.
Download and install PhotoDVD

Quick links:
- how to video
- how to apply the same transition to many photos
- how to synchronize audio with photos
- Imaging tab settings info


Follow these easy steps to create a slideshow on DVD or for the web:


Step 1: Manage your photos

Add the photos to your to project by dragging and dropping your photos into the window, using the icons on the bottom left of the screen, or via File | Add file(s) or Add complete Folder.


By double clicking on your photos in the list you can access the edit slide window where you can rotate your images, change them to black and white, change the animation and more...
With the live preview you can also set your settings in live time. Press play, and as the photos go by apply the movement and transitions you want to be used on that specific photo. Press the Apply and close button when you have finished editing photos.



If you right click on a picture you will see that you can insert a chapter point.

These chapter points will be the basis for menu Creation. In PhotoDVD You will get a menu that looks like this (the top half of the screen will show the first image of your slideshow):

Selecting Chapters with your remote control brings you to a Menu section that looks like this:

Each chapter point becomes a thumbnail in the menu and a place from where you can begin playing your DVD. You can also change the way these thumbnails are labeled.

Go into the settings and click on DVD Menu. Here you can select different menu templates for your menu, and or choose No MENU, in which case no menu will be generated. If you create chapter points with No Menu selected they will be, nonetheless, navigation points on your DVD, that you can skip through when watching on your DVD player by pressing the >> button of your remote control.
Examples of the different menu templates:


You can specify the behavior or your DVD with various settings:
Auto-start playback makes your slideshow play immediately when inserted into your DVD player. Not checking this item shows your DVD menu upon start (if you have included one).

Loop playback plays your slideshow in a loop cycle, when the end of the slideshow finishes playing, the slideshow starts playing automatically from the beginning again.

Display subtitle on start will activate/display a subtitle channel if you have written comments to your photos in the edit slide window. Even if you did not add subtitles you may see the filename appear on the screen as it too is considered a subtitle channel. Subtitles / comments can be activated or de-activated via the Settings menu of your DVD or by pressing the "subtitle" button of your remote control.

Chapter text format allows you to choose 1 of 4 ways to label the thumbnails in your chapter menu.



Chapter Text:
Once you have defined your chapter points, by right clicking on the same photo you can define your Chapter Text which will be used as the title of the chapter thumbnail in the DVD menu:

Type in the text and press ok.

Looks like:


Photo Comments:
By double clicking on your photos you have added to your project you access the Edit slide window. Here you can add comments (1) to your photo slideshow as subtitles. You can access the subtitle editor on the right side (2) if you want to go further. On the final DVD you can activate your comments via the Settings Menu or by pressing the subtitle button on your DVD players remote control. If you select Photo Comments under Chapter text format, the title of your chapters in the menu will be the subtitle comments you wrote for that picture.

Looks like:


Time in slideshow:
Will display the time in which this particular slide will appear in the slideshow as the title of the chapter thumbnail in the DVD menu. You can see each time for each chapter point in the photo list:

Looks like:


Chapter number:
Will display the chapter number as the title of the chapter thumbnail in the DVD Menu, i.e. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc.
Looks like:


Step 2: Manage your music
Once you have defined your chapter points, and have added any other settings to your project in the Edit slide window, click on next. Add music files to play along with your slideshow.
The little scissors mean the audio will be cut (they will finish fading out), because its duration is longer than the diaporama one's. On the contrary, if the audio is shorter, it will loop until the diaporama has finished playing.
When you are ready, click on next.


Step 3: Output Format

You can choose either DVD video or YouTube.

DVD Video



Choose the video standard: PAL (for Europe; Africa, Middle-East, Asia, Russia, Australia, Brasil, Argentina . . .) or NTSC (for United States, Canada, Japan, South America, Mexico, Caribbean area . . .) and full screen (4:3) or wide screen (16:9).
You can also select the menu template which will be used on the title menu.

Below is the destination of the working folder. This will be the location of the compiled project. You can change this location.
If you tick the box "Burn converted project after compilation", it will compile and then burn right away, so make sure you have finished editing your slideshow. Note that even if you choose this option, your compiled project will be saved in the working folder.


YouTube



Here are several settings.
Select an audio and a subtitle track and choose the resolution of your compiled video.
The "split output file" option will allow you to get around the 15 minutes length limitation on YouTube. Bascially, it will split your video into parts of the wished duration (in minutes only).
The ouput format will be mp4.


Clicking on Next Step will lead you to the compiling process which will start automatically.
That is all there is to it!

[Claire]

How to synchronize your audio with your photos:

Once you have added your audio files you will notice a color has been attributed to each song. Now in Step 1 you will see how each audio song matches up with your photos, i.e. what photos will play with which song.


If you want to match up certain photos with a particular song, then in step one right click on the photo where you want the song to end and select "Set this photo as end of audio file" and select the song you want to end.

In the image below I want the song "street song" to stop playing at image 10 (with the turtle). PhotoDVD will calculate the display time of photos 7-10 so that their display time matches the total time of the song. In fact the complete song of "street song" will play, selecting "Set this photo as the end of audio file ...." does not cut the audio file, changes the display time of your photos.

[Claire]

If you want to apply the same transition or movement to multiple photos it is easy.

In Step 1 simply select the photos you want to edit, either by:
- selecting individual photos pressing down the "ctrl" and selecting with the mouse the photos you want to edit
- selecting a section of photos, by selecting the first image you want then by pressing the "shift" key and holding it until you select the last image. Let up the shift button
- selecting all the photos by pressing at the same time "crtl" + "A"

After you selection has been made, right click on it and select "Edit all selected pictures".


Now in the Edit slide window you will see all the photos you selected and by applying a transition or movement here you will be setting it for all the photos.

[Claire]

Understanding the Imaging tab of the settings:

Here we have 3 sections.

Output quality
Of the 3 settings available select the quality you would like for your slideshow. This setting will be using during the compiling stage of your slideshow in step 4. The quality does affect the speed at which the slideshow can be compiled, so if you are just wanted to check out what the final result will look like you could compile in low quality to get an idea. The better quality you set the more resources PhotoDVD will take of your computer in order to compile the slideshow.

Properties

Cutting is a cropping of your pictures, taking away the edges of your pictures. This is particularly noticeable at the first appearance of your pictures on the TV Screen during the slideshow. As animation continues this is less noticeable. (If you already take well balanced pictures or is you take primarily close up it would be a good idea to leave the cutting option at 0%.

Amplitude is a sweeping motion from left to right or vice versa of the picture. Moving the curser to the right will elaborate this movement in the slideshow. If would be possible to select this at 100% only a tiny portion of the "beginning" of a picture would appear at first and as animation continues the rest of the picture will start to appear as the part of the picture that was first shown will start to disappear until you come to the complete other end of the picture.

Zoom Factor is a sensation of the moving into the picture for a view closer up. Moving cursor the right will increase this sensation.

Allowed random transitions is a drop down box allowing you to check which a transitions you want to be available and used in your slideshow when you have selected the option Random Transition in the Edit slide window. So here in the drop down window if there are transitions you do not like and do not want to be used you can uncheck them.


Background color will be the color used to fill the rest of the screen if your photo is not large enough to do so itself. You will see this notably for vertical photos, where there is empty space on the right and left sides.

Timing
These are overall default settings for PhotoDVD. When you start a project these are the default times you will find in the Edit slide window.

If you have set specific settings for the image display time or transition time in the additional editing window, your custom values will not be overwritten. Only photos with default settings will be modified with these new global setting values.

Transition time is the time in seconds of transition between pictures (they melt into one another or kind of superimpose each other). This process can either be a very quick on or done very slowly, you are in control.

Image display time is in seconds + milliseconds _s____ms. This allows you to adjust the time for pictures to be displayed. Do remember that if you want one picture to be displayed for a longer period than another go “Edit Slide” by clicking on the icon in the shape of a pencil.

Total animation time is the the transition time and the image display time added together.

and a last section
Max thread number for multiprocessor support: allows you to increase or decrease the number of cores PhotoDVD can use to process your images during the compiling stage. The higher the number is the faster the compiling process can be done. Note: not all computer have multi-core processors even though it is becoming more and more widespread.