Bill,
Because of Old Toad's comment, I checked out the iPhoto group. As he knows, I don't use iPhoto. I do so much "stuff" in Photoshop Elements, that I find iPhoto limiting. So if you are willing to bypass some of the iPhoto issues (and feature like Ken Burns Effect, which makes me dizzy), you might consider building your slideshow totally within iDVD. Here's two of my more complex projects:
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Ireland 2004 iDVD Project
Nearly 800 images dragged into iDVD as organized folders from the hard drive. Transitions on each image, and menus, sub-menus, and sub-sub menus. The sub-menus are created by clicking on the Folder icon on the iDVD interface.
Main Menu has 6 buttons: Downpatrick, Antrim Coast, Letterkenny, Sligo, Trim, and Extras. Behind each button are additional buttons ranging from 3 to 6 buttons. The Extras button goes fairly deep. When you click on Extras, it gives you 3 choices on a new menu. The "B&Bs" button opens a new menu with 5 buttons. The "Movies" button opens a new menu with 4 buttons. If you click on the "Irish Music" button, you open a new menu with 2 buttons. At that point, you are at a "sub-sub-sub menu."
Music was on 95% of the slideshows. Some movies converted to QT DV from Canon S400 digicam .AVI files (iDVD 4). Now convert to H.264 with QuickTime 7. Images are original 4MP (2MB) JPEG images from the same digicam. This DVD project is around 4GB with all pictures as DVD-ROM content.
Best Quality setting.
Started at 8:13 p.m. Stage 4 at 10:29 p.m. Done at 10:54 p.m. Additional copies at 11:16 and 11:38. Then copied from 4X to 8X drive: 11:55-12:10.
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Then I made an autoplay version with one of the QuickTime-based movies playing before the main menu:
Started 9:08 p.m. Went right to Stage 2. Stage 3 started 11:34 p.m. Stage 4 started 11:42 p.m. Finished with burned DVD at 11:53 p.m. Started second copy at 11:54 p.m. Finished burning a second copy at 12:08 a.m. This was with Pioneer 107D 8X burner.
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I made some minor changes to the autoplay version and re-burned it.
Started at 7:35 pm. Went right to Stage 2 (rendering and encoding). Went to Stage 3 at 10:03. Went to Stage 4 at 10:14. Finished with burned DVD at 10:27. Burned a second disk from 10:40 until 10:53. Burned a third disk from 10:54 until 11:08. Used Ritek 8X DVD-R.
Power Mac G4 DP 1.25 GHz
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Mediterranean cruise
I had over 1000 images from a Mediterranean cruise. I broke them down in to 24 Albums in iPhoto (fewer than 99 images each). In iDVD, I created 6 Folders which created sub-menus. Main Menu buttons (folders/slideshows) such as Barcelona, French Riviera, Florence, Rome, Naples, Malta. Then I added each of the corresponding 24 iPhoto Albums to those 6 slideshows, thereby creating 24 total slideshows on sub-menus. Takes some planning. All slideshows had transitions and music.
Set to Best Quality
Started 5:45 p.m.
Finished at 8:30 p.m. 2 hours and 15 minutes to render 1000 picture transitions. Balance of time in Multiplexing and burning.
Power Mac G4 DP 1.25 GHz and 4X DVD burner.
