Reduce size of slideshow

James,

You don't necessarily have to reduce those file sizes to get a slideshow on a DVD. That's the beauty of iDVD - you give it movies, slideshows, and/or slides with a total playing time below 2 hours, and it does all the compression, encoding, rendering, into a format that can be read by most set-top DVD players. iDVD only cares about the time, so you do not have to be concerned with the file sizes. Very cool.

There are actually several ways to do that. You can use iPhoto to create your slideshow, then Share > Send to iDVD. The process takes a while, as the slideshow is compressed into a QuickTime movie. When it arrives in iDVD all you have to do is customize your menu. This is probably the easiest method. A downside is that it gives the lowest resolution, because the slides are compressed once by QuickTime and again by iDVD, and because the dimensions of the QuickTime movie are smaller (slightly) than the dimensions of an iMovie project or iDVD slideshow.

You could use iMovie to import the photos as stills, then create the slideshow in iMovie before moving on to iDVD to create the disc. This gives you precise control over Ken Burns and with timing the music to the photos. Some people have reported that they see diminished quality of their slides in an iMovie slideshow with larger image files. iMovie can create a shimmering effect (the jaggies) on photos with sharp angles, such as photos of architecture. If that is the case, you really may want to reduce their size before creating the slideshow. (I'll get to that.)

There are some 3rd party apps that are said to create a higher quality slideshow, which you import into iMovie, then iDVD. For links see the next thread.

This thread has an informative discussion of various methods to create a slideshow: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=967804&tstart=0

But, getting to your actual question, you have to export your photos outside of iPhoto in order to reduce their size. If the large size is due to the scans being TIFFs, you could change the format to jpeg during the export, then check the size to see if it is sufficiently reduced. Otherwise, iPhoto has no way to change the file size without reducing the pixel dimensions. You may want to choose "Name: Use Album Name" during the export to keep these files listed in album order. Since you have over 99 photos you may want to break the set up into 4 smaller albums, if preserving the order is important to you. Then you'll have to use an image editor like Photoshop Elements to reduce only the file size. Once reduced, you can import the photos back into iPhoto, or simply drag the folder(s) of images into iMovie to create the slideshow there.

Any questions?
🙂

James:

Read my post in your other topic re the turned photos. In my experience and opinion to get the best image quality in a iDVD slideshow it should be created entirely in iDVD from stills. The benefits are: 1 - better image quality; 2 - all images can be scaled to the TV safe area thus loosing no part of the image to TV overscan which occurs with slideshows in QT movie file format; 3 - easily added titles or subtitles to selected images.

The downside if you're a Ken Burns fan is there is no KB effect.

If you haven't burned a disk and viewed it on a TV set then do so. The resulting DVD is encoded with rectangular pixels which do not show as well on the computer's monitor as they are square pixels. You may find the finished product acceptable when view thru a TV set.

Do you Twango?

TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've written an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

MBP 2.16Ghz; G5 Dual Core 2GHz, 2G RAM ea, 250G HD; G4 Dual 1Ghz, 1.5G RAM; Mac OS X (10.4.10) 22" LCD, 710G FW HDs, Canon: SD700IS/i850/LIDE 50, Epson R200, 30G iPod, 2G Nano