Blurry iDVD slideshow DVD's????

Steve:

Are you cropping the photos to the recommended iDVD 4:3 before importing into iDVD? And do you have NTSC selected as the output format? You must remember that the DVD is compressing the photos during the encoding process and the resulting output is geared for TV display and is less than what you see with the high resolution monitor. Here's a site about TV resolution.

My experience has been that the resulting DVD images on our TV are as good as I get from broadcast or cable presentation of stills.

You crop in the iPhoto edit window. Select the photo and either double click on the thumbnail or click on the Edit button. Select the DVD 4:3 in the Constrain window. Then select the area you want to use and click on the Crop button at the bottom of the window. Many files from digital cameras are already in the 4:3 ratio, 1600 x 1200 for example, and do not need cropping/cronstraining. For portrait photos do nothing.

Hello,
This is my first post to this kind of discussion so please forgive any missteps. I have the same problem that Steve has and I talked with Apple CS today and they don't seem too sure of how to fix the problem. Specifically I created a custom slide show in iPhoto then sent it to iDVD using the "send to iDVD" command from the share menu. I selected the 16:9 format before creating the slide show and did everything by the book. If you select this aspect ratio the computer crops for you. As with Steve the results on my plasma and on my computer from the burned DVD are terrible. I have several excellent books on this subject and not one of them addresses this problem. I will try again with Apple CS again tomorrow.

Hello everyone,
This is a follow on from my post of yesterday regarding poor quality resolution of slideshows when playing back from burned DVDs.
I just talked to Apple CS again and their response is " produce another slide show, send it to iDVD and see what happens". In other words they really do not know what the problem is and don't know how to fix it.
Another thing that happened on my project is that when I play the slideshow on my plasma at 16:9 the picture is distorted and all objects show up as tall and narrow. Has anyone else had this problem?
I am now at a loss! This is not what I expected from the much vaunted iLife suite and is not as advertised.
Can anyone help please?

Hi Everyone

First time poster here just wanted to say that like Steve I have exactly the same problem with iPhoto slideshows (with music and KB effect) sent to iDVD in 16:9 widescreen format, movement in all of these is very jerky. However, is I change screen fiormat to 4:3 TV and keep the same slideshow with same slides, KB effects and music then the jerkiness disappears. Also all is fine if I select export and export to a quicktime .mov file at 720x480 res. Problem is I want a 16:9 slideshow to show on modern TVs (dont know about rest of world but in UK nearly all TV's are now 16:9)does anyone know how to achieve a smooth quality 16:9 slideshow viewable on 16:9 TV's? If so could they please let me know as this is driving me mad.
Thanks in advance for any help

iMac G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Hi There
I am using both a Dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 and a 1.67 GHz PowerPC G4 Powerbook. I have a wireless network.

My problems relate to the Powerbook.

I am a first time poster too, and I have had very similar problems trying to convert slideshows into DVDs using the different methods suggested in the Help menus and recent Mac journals.

I echo exactly your plea for a way to export slideshows to DVDs without horrendous loss of quality.

When I created a Quicktime movie the loss of quality was shocking and totally unacceptable.

The best results I got quality wise in getting a slideshow onto DVD so far is to create it in iMovie but you do lose editing functions and have to have the same transition and timings for transitions for every slide.

The only way I can see to ensure top quality and portability is to hook up a Powerbook to a Plasma or a 30inch Mac monitor and use an HDMI connection and play slideshows directly from a Mac.

I have also had the Send to iDVD option in the Share menu crash very frequently and randomly with some of my slideshows and not others.

I have not followed any particular cropping formats but I am not concerned about my images filling the screen and I quite like the blackspace that you get with cropped slide images as a consequence.

Why do we not have the same editing features menus for slideshows across all the i applications?

Why can't we burn a slideshow to DVD directly from iPhoto?

I also have a problem insofaras I haven't yet found a way of transporting my iPhoto Library and Slideshows from the Powerbook to the G5.

Do any of you know how to do this?

I want to work on slideshows I created on my G4 on my G5 but how do I get them there? I would be very grateful for a solution to this.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi Baygun,
You can copy the ENTIRE iPhoto Library folder to the new G5. Make sure it has a different name before you place it in the Pictures folder so it doesn't replace the library that is already there.
Launch iPhoto with the Option key depressed and choose to open another library. Navigate to the library you just copied over from the PB and highlight it, then click the "open" button.

Copy iPhoto Library folder from one Mac to another
-If the library is small enough, burn the ENTIRE iPhoto Library folder to CD/DVD.
Drag the iPhoto Library folder from the CD/DVD to your Pictures folder of the iMac.

-If the computers are networked, copy the ENTIRE iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder of the other Mac.

-If you have an iPod, copy the ENTIRE iPhoto Library folder to the iPod. Connect the iPod to the other computer and copy the iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder of the other Mac.

-If you have a firewire cable, copy the ENTIRE iPhoto LIbrary folder to the Pictures folder of the other Mac

Things to keep in mind:

-If the usersnames are different you might have to set the permissions on the iPhoto Library folder to Read/Write for the new user. Check the "apply to enclosed items" at the bottom of the "get info" window.

-If there is another iPhoto Library folder on the other Mac, change it's name so it doesn't get replaced by the iPhoto Library folder you are copying into the Pictures folder...or....drag it to another place on your hard drive.

Lori