I burned my first iDVD andpicture quality is not good. Originals are excellent. My photos are shot in raw or jpeg, both are not sharp when I view my DVD. I viewed it on my 1080 dpi tv and my new apple computer.
iDVD '08, Mac OS X (10.6.7)
berniefromhamilton wrote:
My photos are shot in raw or jpeg, both are not sharp when I view my DVD.
You will need to understand that photos and video are two very different beasts. You are also constantly changing the size.
Taking huge photos with millions of square pixels and turning them into (highly compressed) interlaced video with a frame size of 720 x 480 is already not an easy task .... but then you take the disc and upscale the video by roughly 4 times to view it on your HDTV. There just has to be some loss in quality along the way.
One thing you can do (if you want to stick with iDVD/iMovie) is to drop your photos into one of the video presets in Photoshop, scale them, then save the new version and import that into iMovie/iDVD to build your slideshow.
The other possibility is to use other software like Photo to Movie or Fotomagico. Both have quite a good reputation around here.
mish
Thank You Mish
I guess what I'm calling a movie is really just a glorified slide show. With the music, titles etc. But really why have iDVD or go through all the trouble to make a DVD if the quality is going to be poor. I transfered my photo's from Aperture and then into iMovie. From iMoive I proceeded to make my DVD in iDVD. So you mean to say that the current software in my Apple computer is as good as ity gets. In other words if I want to make a DVD to look as good as it did in iMovie I have to have different software? If this is the case, I think Apple really needs to have a good look at their capabilities or performance. Shame on them if this is a good as it gets. All the little extras like themes and menus are great, but mean nothing if your picture quality is poor. I would be ashamed to show my DVD to friends. My photgraphy skills far exceed the finished product in iDVD.
P.S. When I preview the movie in preview it is poor also. But excellent in iMovie.
It will never look as good as in iMovie. That is the nature of converting/compressing digital media. To give you a comparison: if you adjust to much in Aperture, you will introduce grain at a certain point. There is only so much digital information available that you can play with. And video is much worse.
berniefromhamilton wrote:
If this is the case, I think Apple really needs to have a good look at their capabilities or performance. Shame on them if this is a good as it gets.
Apple might be able to improve the software. The other thing is that you are using it for something that it was not originally designed to do. iMovie and iDVD were designed to work with video and they do that quite well. I edited with iMovie for quite a while and sold the resulting DVDs .... never a complaint about quality.
berniefromhamilton wrote:
P.S. When I preview the movie in preview it is poor also. But excellent in iMovie.
I'm guessing that you do your slideshow in an HD project. If so how do you export from iMovie?
mish
I'm having the same problem with a slideshow I've made to show at my brother's memorial service. Quality on DVD player is terribly disappointing. I'm finding 2 solutions online - download & use iMovie 6 (I have 11) or buy Roxio Toast 11 Titanium. I purchased a new MacBook Pro & software thinking it would give me an excellent product; but the slideshow I did for my dad's service from a free download of Photo Story on my old HP 2 years ago was far superior. I am devastated at the $ I've spent expecting a superior product from Apple. And time is running out. If anyone can verify that the Toast software will work, I'll buy it. Can I transfer what work I've completed onto Toast without having to do the whole thing over again? I put the slideshow together on iMovie, then sent it to iDVD to burn the disc. Yes, it's all scanned older photos, no movies available. I'm getting short on time, and I am desperate for some solution to make this slideshow better. All of my relatives will be watching it. 😟
There are many ways to produce slide shows using iPhoto, iMovie or iDVD and some limit the number of photos you can use (iDVD has a 99 chapter (slide) limitation).
If what you want is what I want, namely to be able to use high resolution photos (even 300 dpi tiff files), to pan and zoom individual photos, use a variety of transitions, to add and edit music or commentary, place text exactly where you want it, and to end up with a DVD that looks good on both your Mac and a TV - in other words end up with and end result that does not look like an old fashioned slide show from a projector - you may be interested in how I do it. You don't have to do it my way, but the following may be food for thought!
Firstly you need proper software to assemble the photos, decide on the duration of each, the transitions you want to use, and how to pan and zoom individual photos where required, and add proper titles. For this I use Photo to Movie. You can read about what it can do on their website:
http://www.lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovie.php
(Other users here use the alternative FotoMagico: http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/homevspro/ which you may prefer - I have no experience with it.)
Neither of these are freeware, but are worth the investment if you are going to do a lot of slide shows. Read about them in detail, then decide which one you feel is best suited to your needs.
Once you have timed and arranged and manipulated the photos to your liking in Photo to Movie, it exports the file to iMovie as a DV stream. You can add music in Photo to Movie, but I prefer doing this in iMovie where it is easier to edit. You can now further edit the slide show in iMovie just as you would a movie, including adding other video clips, then send it to iDVD 7, or Toast, for burning.
You will be pleasantly surprised at how professional the results can be!
To simply create a slide show in iDVD 7 onwards from images in iPhoto or stored in other places on your hard disk or a connected server, look here:
I burned my first iDVD andpicture quality is not good. Originals are excellent. My photos are shot in raw or jpeg, both are not sharp when I view my DVD. I viewed it on my 1080 dpi tv and my new apple computer.
