Digital Slide Shows

[boBQuincy]

I mentione this in another thread but it probably got buried in the thread so I am bringing it up again.

Like others I am always looking for new and fun ways to show my photos, especially ones from Walt Disney World. I have made albums, framed prints, and now scrapbooks, but the most fun so far is the digital slide shows.

Not to show my age, I started this long ago when we actually used slides and a rudimentary programmer to control the projectors in sync with a sound track. The digital version allows us to put these on the web and share them with a much larger audience, besides including some effects that were difficult to impossible years ago.

Ok, here's a link to a clip from one of my shows (don't forget the audio). Anyone else doing any of these?

http://www.mindspring.com/~image-ination/

boB

 

[mabas9395]

I remember seeing that on another thread, but I don't remember which one. Did you mention which program you use for that? I'm looking to put one together from our recent trip to DL but two things I haven't figured out yet. 1) Theme Music - You have LK music to go with LK slides. I have hundreds of pictures but I'm having a hard time grouping them in ways that match the music. And 2) I also have some video clips that I want to include but haven't seen any examples of slide shows with both video and photos to see if it can be done well.

Any ideas?

 

[bsbkmacgowan]

And 2) I also have some video clips that I want to include but haven't seen any examples of slide shows with both video and photos to see if it can be done well.

Any ideas?

My husband, Brian, and I have finally started creating some digital slideshows from our various trips to WDW - lots more to go, though! Here's a sample if you'd like to see it, and about half-way through we included some video of the Dapper Dans singing "Happy Birthday" to our younger daughter, Kellie. So yup, it can be done!

http://www.skmacgowan.com/videoscrapbook.htm

We fooled my Dad, (a retired photographer - hey, he's on-topic! ) when we showed him the full-length version of this video... he thought that we videotaped a bulletin board with all the photos, pins, tickets, and other ephemera stuck on it, and I'm still not sure he believed me when I told him that I did it all in Paint Shop Pro...

I always get really misty and sentimental when I watch the whole video... our "little" girls are growing up way too fast!

Sandy (and Brian, Bonnie & Kellie, too!)

 

[mabas9395]

If you did the bulletin board in PSP, can that do the slide show as well or did you use something else?

Another question, if your final output will be meant for viewing on a television screen, what is a good pixel size to use for your photos in the slide. I have a Canon Rebel XT, so I think the 8mp photos will just make my project too large and that I should probably resize them, what do you think.

BTW, I saw your video and loved it. I better not show it to my wife or she will expect the same thing out of me.

 

[manning]

Here is a fun slide show program by Simple Star called PhotoShow. They license the program to Nero as Nero PhotoShow Deluxe

Click on the view samples for each pack on the link below. Turn up the sound.

http://simplestar.com/psd_choose.php

 

[Live_From_Little_Red]

I'm Sandy's husband, I did the video work on the slideshow, so I'll put in my 2 cents.

If you did the bulletin board in PSP, can that do the slide show as well or did you use something else?

Sandy's graphics really push the whole thing over the edge of creativity. She did all of the graphics in JASC's PaintShop Pro (now owned by Corel). She combined all of the elements on to corkboard and exported the image as a 4320x2880 jpeg file. Sandy can tell you how she made all of the elements, that alone was monumental - I believe the final layered PaintShop Pro file exceeded 80MBs.

Sandy passed everything over to me for animation. The corkboard jpeg and all of the photos and video were then loaded in Sony Vegas (version 6.0d). Sony Vegas is an extremely versatile and powerful video editing program. They sell a home version (Sony Vegas Movie Studio) for around $100, which is just as powerful but you are limited to the amount of layers that you can use. Sony Bundles with Vegas, DVD Architect which is a very poweful DVD creation program.

Once I had everything in Vegas I basically did a pan and scan animation. The hardest part was to get a smooth animation without artifacting when zooming in on the corkboard. The final animation is about 20 minutes. As you saw in the demo the theory about the corkboard is that zoom into an image and behind that image are other photos that fall into the same theme. Fort Wilderness, Main Street, Parades, Epcot, etc. Each photo on the corkboard that you zoom into is paired with an exit photo that you pull out of and back on to the corkboard. The camera then changes direction and zooms into another photo as it makes its way around the corkboard.

Another question, if your final output will be meant for viewing on a television screen, what is a good pixel size to use for your photos in the slide. I have a Canon Rebel XT, so I think the 8mp photos will just make my project too large and that I should probably resize them, what do you think.

8mp photos could be used but the program would have to sample them down to video rez. Video rez for DVD is 720x480, I usually try to stick in the 2mp size of around 1600x1200. This allows for good zooming into the picture without an real significant hit on the speed of rendering. With 8mp, I would probably either resize the whole image down, or if there was just a section that I was interested in, crop out that section and then size that down if necessary.

BTW, I saw your video and loved it. I better not show it to my wife or she will expect the same thing out of me.

We are glad that you enjoyed the video. It took us a couple of weeks to get it done. We are really pleased with the results. We took the final video and created a DVD with custom menus, including irregularly shaped menu buttons.

We don't seem to do anything the easy way, but it was a fun project to work on; we hope to do more of these.

Brian

 

[WillCAD]

I don't put together productions or anything, but I do have a screen saver on both of my computers that shows off my Disney pics in order. It's a very well done piece of software - small, easy to configure, and flexible - and best of all, it's free!

http://www.joeltechnologies.com/PSindex.html

 

[Dan Murphy]

Wow, those are so creatively neat!!! I really enjoyed them, sure wish I could do the same. Thanks.

 

[RadioNate]

My husband, Brian, and I have finally started creating some digital slideshows from our various trips to WDW - lots more to go, though! Here's a sample if you'd like to see it, and about half-way through we included some video of the Dapper Dans singing "Happy Birthday" to our younger daughter, Kellie. So yup, it can be done!

http://www.skmacgowan.com/videoscrapbook.htm

We fooled my Dad, (a retired photographer - hey, he's on-topic! ) when we showed him the full-length version of this video... he thought that we videotaped a bulletin board with all the photos, pins, tickets, and other ephemera stuck on it, and I'm still not sure he believed me when I told him that I did it all in Paint Shop Pro...

I always get really misty and sentimental when I watch the whole video... our "little" girls are growing up way too fast!

Sandy (and Brian, Bonnie & Kellie, too!)

Ok, THAT was awesome! Very very cool. thanks for sharing!

 

[boBQuincy]

My husband, Brian, and I have finally started creating some digital slideshows from our various trips to WDW - lots more to go, though! Here's a sample if you'd like to see it, and about half-way through we included some video of the Dapper Dans singing "Happy Birthday" to our younger daughter, Kellie. So yup, it can be done!

http://www.skmacgowan.com/videoscrapbook.htm


Nice. *Very* nice! I really like the corkboard motif, it 'pulls' you into the presentation.
My full Lion King show starts at the gates of AK and leads you down the pathways to the Lion King Theatre. I really need to find a way to get the full show on the web.

I noticed a lot of compression on your presentation and this is something I have run into, where without it the shows can take a huge amount of space and be difficult to put on the web. I probably need to compress mine more. It also makes slow pans and zooms a litle jumpy, htere may not be a way around that.
Like mine, I bet yours look fabulous when run from a DVD on a big screen!

I use Photodex's ProShow Gold and it too can put video clips in the presentation. It also allows a separate audio clip to be joined to a slide, where the main soundtrack volume will lower for the duration of the slide. Fun stuff!

I usually size my images at 1600 x 900 to correspond to widescreen video. Larger than that probably won't improve the video image and makes the finished project very large.
For now my biggest show is a 1000 slide show running about 35 minutes, it takes about 3 GB on a DVD.

The shows can be done simply or can take a *lot* of work depending on how complex you want them. ProShow can be as easy as taking a bunch of images and a music clip, then having the program automatically time the images to fit the audio.

It's fun, I encourage more people to try them, and definitely share your work with us!


boB

 

[Lachesis00]

What do you guys use to make the slideshows? I have Nero but I am wondering if there is a better program... The Nero I use (maybe it's old?) doesn't have... many options

My husband, Brian, and I have finally started creating some digital slideshows from our various trips to WDW - lots more to go, though! Here's a sample if you'd like to see it, and about half-way through we included some video of the Dapper Dans singing "Happy Birthday" to our younger daughter, Kellie. So yup, it can be done!

 

[bsbkmacgowan]

What do you guys use to make the slideshows? I have Nero but I am wondering if there is a better program... The Nero I use (maybe it's old?) doesn't have... many options

Brian uses Sony Vegas to create our slideshows - we have the professional version, but there is a home version of it available as well (you're limited to only 3 layers each of audio and video, I believe... but don't quote me there!) I used PaintShop Pro to create all the visual elements from photos or scans of all the items.

Nice. *Very* nice! I really like the corkboard motif, it 'pulls' you into the presentation...
I noticed a lot of compression on your presentation and this is something I have run into, where without it the shows can take a huge amount of space and be difficult to put on the web. I probably need to compress mine more. It also makes slow pans and zooms a litle jumpy, htere may not be a way around that. Like mine, I bet yours look fabulous when run from a DVD on a big screen!

Thanks Bob! Yeah, there's a lot of compression on that online piece... I sure wish that wasn't necessary with the internet, but it is. <sigh> (That's also why we only have a couple minutes of the show online, too!) And yup, we're very please with the way the show looks on a larger television (if you can call an 18-year-old 21-inch TV "larger!")

I have (and used to use) ProShow, too... but a year ago, Brian & I went to a church-sponsored seminar and one of the products disscussed was Vegas... and boy, was it "sweet" in comparison! In fact, after the seminar was over, we literally drove right around the corner to Best Buy and picked up our own copy of Vegas right then and there. I have Brian do all the Vegas work - we sort of "tag team" I guess you'd say... he really excels at that work, while I really prefer to do the "construction" part.

I will admit, though, that I was really pushing the limits to my computer's abilities with that corkboard... at one point, I was working with around 45 separate layers in PSP... and with the equivalent of a 12-megapixel image... well... let's just say it took a long time whenever I saved that puppy!

Glad y'all liked it! (and thanks!)

Sandy (and Brian, Bonnie & Kellie, too!)

 

[handicap18]

I haven't done anything with pictures yet, but I have done some video editing. After our first time to WDW in '01 I made a 3 1/2 minute video set to Billy Joel's version of "When You Wish Upon a Star". It came out great. Only problem I had was trying to get it to record back to my video camera. Video CD's were still not really big and DVD burning wasn't an option. Unfortunately that computer died and I never got around to making a backup copy of the video.

I had Adobe Premier as the video editor (can't use it now as its not applicable with Win XP).

I do want to get back into doing that kind of hobby work again. I took a year of audio/video production in college. It is a lot of work and with 2 kids and another on the way now it doesn't make for a lot of time for any kind of editing.

I applaud all of you who have taken the time to create your video's. They are great. Once I can find the time I'd love to put a few together. Excellent job everyone!

 

[boBQuincy]

I downsized my slide shows for the web so I could fit a few more at
http://www.mindspring.com/~image-ination/

Two are WDW related, the others are from some of my other interests, all part of my photography hobby.


boB

 

[RadioNate]

I downsized my slide shows for the web so I could fit a few more at
http://www.mindspring.com/~image-ination/

Two are WDW related, the others are from some of my other interests, all part of my photography hobby.


boB

Great work, I really liked the Studio's one, cool music choices! I've just starting doing some of this in iPhoto and iMovie. Not as complex but a great way to share the photos and relive the memories!

 

[bsbkmacgowan]

Hey Bob, good job!

I really like the transition you did for the Tower of Terror

Funny how a hobby can turn into an obsession, huh?

Sandy (and Brian, Bonnie & Kellie, too!)

 

[boBQuincy]

Hey Bob, good job!

I really like the transition you did for the Tower of Terror

Funny how a hobby can turn into an obsession, huh?

Sandy (and Brian, Bonnie & Kellie, too!)

Thanks!
Obsession? Just because at 50+ (we won't say how many +) I am going back to school for graphics and web development? Obsession? Who, me?

I looked at your website and photos, I really like the painterly effects and have tried to do some but certainly not as good as yours! They're really amazing, like combining the elements of photos, paintings, and graphics.


boB

 

[bsbkmacgowan]

Thanks!
Obsession? Just because at 50+ (we won't say how many +) I am going back to school for graphics and web development? Obsession? Who, me?

I looked at your website and photos, I really like the painterly effects and have tried to do some but certainly not as good as yours! They're really amazing, like combining the elements of photos, paintings, and graphics.


boB

No, we won't speak of obsessions! (and hey, I'm probably not too far behind you in age, likewise Brian!)

Thank you! I haven't done any new prints in quite awhile... at one point, I was seriously trying to go somewhere with them... but then real life got in the way (we had to pay rent and put food on the table... yeah, those "luxuries" )

Then when we found out about Vegas... well, that sort of opened up a whole different aspect to our combined computer graphics backgrounds, and unlike the print work on the top of my webpage, Brian and I work together as a team on the projects (I, alone, was the one doing the printwork, and while it was "a good thing", I really do get a lot more emotional satisfaction from working with him on these projects.)

In fact, we're currently working on a show for the daughter of some friends of ours... she's graduating this week from high school... my goal is to make her Dad cry (not that I'm a meany or anything... that's just one of our "measures" of a show "well-done"... if we can get 'em to cry tears of joy, we know it's done right.)

Better get back to scanning...

Sandy (and Brian, Bonnie & Kellie, too!)