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Post by kiev4a on Aug 16, 2007 15:06:46 GMT -5
After getting sidetracked for several month I got back to work and have nearly completed the DVD I'm putting together on our trip to Europe last spring. About 500 photos covering Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France and the U.K. The primary audience will be the other two couples who went on the trip and our kids.
The last thing to do is add background music for each segmant. Some of it is classical plus some national anthems (and it wouldn't be right not to include "Rule Britannia) (love that song). Today I found and downloaded a music editor so I can modify the songs to fit the length of the segments (the DVD program I'm using doesn't have that option). Hopefully by this weekend I'll have it wrapped up.
Last night Sara and I were viewing one segment and she observed that now the whole trip seems like a dream. Hard to accept we ever actually went. If we win the lottery, Princess Cruises has a 107-day world cruise (6 continents). Only $28,000! -- not including air fare to Ft. Lauderdale and back from the U.K. at the end of the cruise. We've already decided if we win the lottery we'll be on that ship! I'll just call the boss and tell him my keys are on the roof!
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Post by kiev4a on Aug 21, 2007 10:23:18 GMT -5
Update:
The DVD is finished!!!! Actually there are a couple of little things I would do differently if I was doing it again but the average viewer won't notice.
In the end it worked out to 15 chapters totaling about 500 photos and background music and runs about 1 hour 5 minutes. Changing even one item, whether it is a photo, fade or cropping means recompiling the whole thing and even on a relatively fast computer the program I am using, called "Muvee" takes about 8 hours!!. I usually start the process in the evening and when I get up in the morning it is done.
Things I have learned:
1.With still photos--especially horizontal photos, you need a little movement--even if it is just a touch of zoom--in or out. It makes the presentation active. Otherwise the pictures just sit there like they are being shown with a slide projector, and we all know how fast that can put viewers to sleep.
2. You don't want to leave a shot on the screen more than about five seconds--it seems like an eternity. If the viewer wants to take a longer look he or she can press pause.
3. Use fades or dissolves between pictures--again it makes the presentation more active. The program I used has different presentation choices so you can vary the transitions within the same chapter.
4. When presenting things on a TV screen horizontal photos work better than verticals--there is a lot of black around verticals and they can't be shown as large as horizontals.
5. Use background music. Again this keeps the presentation more active and makes the time pass faster. I used mostly classical music which seemed to fit -- with a little John Tesh here and there. In long chapters like Florence, London and Paris I used more than one song, again to add more variety.
6. Unless you have the patience of Job, when your are dealing with that many pictures, chapters, syncing the music and compiling time you probably aren't ever going to get it absolutely perfect. I ended up making four versions before getting one that I felt was good enough to give to family members--and there are still a couple of things that could be improved.
7. I used 300 dpi jpegs in the presentation. I don't know if the Muvee program changes the resolution. I do know they all look great on a 32-inch LCD TV. I also don't know if the dpi affects compiling time. I did run some early tests with 180 and 300 dpi photos and they looked about the same on a TV screen but I decided to go with the higher rez and that's what my Nikon records at.
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Reiska
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Post by Reiska on Aug 21, 2007 14:31:20 GMT -5
Congratulations Wayne!
I happen to know how it takes time and patience. I have done several, though video editing jobs once. Over four hours of intensive working and two minutes completed.
One thing which might have been over sized is the 300dpi resolution. I'm sure the audience will enjoy your creation.
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Post by herron on Aug 21, 2007 14:38:17 GMT -5
Congratulations!These projects can be a real chore! The DVD I made for my father-in-law's 90th birthday last January was one of those month-long back-breakers! I agree with every point you made, except the 300dpi. TV is a lot like your computer monitor, and doesn't get a whole lot better looking if the image file is bigger than 72dpi. But I made sure there was movement in all the still pictures, from angled pans (so my in-laws looked as if they were coming down the church steps at their wedding in 1948), to simple dissolves. The movement kept the thing from being totally boring! I used classical music a lot (it was hard finding music - other than war songs - from 1917). I wound up buying CDs of some older music, then using a free download file called CDex to extract the songs I wanted and convert them to compressed MP3. Put in things like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" for the images of my father-in-law in his Army (WWII) days, and "I'll be With You In Apple Blossom Time" for the march down the church steps (timed nicely to the line "...some day in May..." as their wedding day was May 29).  I put the whole thing together in another software download called MemoriesOnTV3. Worked flawlessly (although the music-to-image sync was a bear, and took the longest to get right)! It's long over, and all the great-Aunts got their requested copies, and there are still things I would do differently, given a week more time! Maybe for 95. 
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Post by kiev4a on Aug 21, 2007 15:13:45 GMT -5
Ron:
The primary reason I stuck with 300 dpi originals was that saved me from having to convert 500 pictures to lower rez.
The Muvee program allows you to drop in music files but you can't edit them for length like can be done in Windows Movie Maker. I found a decent program called Wavepad and edited the songs to fit--sometimes combining different ones into a single medley, then dropped them into Muvee. I'll check out MemoriesOnTV3.
Wayne
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Post by Rachel on Aug 22, 2007 16:02:13 GMT -5
Western digital makes a universal floppy drive that is external and plugs into a USB port. I may get her one of those for some future use...although I know no one with any experience with the item. Ron , I have an IBM external floppy drive which connects via USB. The computer just recognises it as the A drive; you don't have to do anything else. You can even boot from it in the traditional way. |
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Post by kiev4a on Aug 23, 2007 8:19:26 GMT -5
One wonders why they still have floppy drives. Of course a lot of computers come without them now.
I tend to overdo on archiving. I have three hard disks in my computer and I usually keep copies of my photos on the main drive, one of the other internals AND on a Western Digital external drive--plus on DVDs.
I don't have a straight CD drive anymore. I have two DVD drives--both also will handle CDs The latest--I can't remember the brand--is a 16X dual layer "Litescribe" drive that can laser titles on the disk covers. The Litescribe disks are finally starting to come down in price. Paid $40 for 50 DVDs the other day. My mate suggested that was pretty expensive until I reminded her that back in the early '80s we paid $7 for ONE 320K 5.25-inch floppy! And we thought we were getting a deal! Haven't tried any of the dual layer DVDs that can store like 8 gigs yet. They still are too expensive.
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Post by Rachel on Aug 23, 2007 8:41:50 GMT -5
One wonders why they still have floppy drives. Of course a lot of computers come without them now. Wayne, I doubt if ANY new computers come with floppy drives. I very rarely use one now but the external floppy drive was very cheap and I very occasionally want to use one to store a very small amount of data off the computer. I know it's not an ideal medium and not very secure but OK if I don't expect too much of it. I used to use Iomega Zip disks but the drives didn't seem very robust. I lost a lot of data once cos I couldn't read the disks produced by a "going faulty" drive  |
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Post by kiev4a on Aug 23, 2007 11:44:24 GMT -5
Rachel:
We used the Zip drives briefly when we sent book projects to printers out of the area. About 25 percent of the time they arrived at their destinations corrupt. But they were the best thing we had at the time. Omega must have made a lot of money with the Zips in a very short time but the CD recorder knocked them out of the market overnight. Now everything goes on either CD or, on big projects, DVD. Working a lot with graphics, I seldom have files that will fit on a floppy.
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Post by Microdad on Aug 23, 2007 12:49:00 GMT -5
I've been using Sony's software for DVD authoring along with Pinnacle hardware. I think the program truncates the file size of the pics so I don't bother resizing them unless they're really big which takes longer to load. One problem I've had: the disks have trouble playing in some of the older DVD players. As I understand it, the problem is with players that don't have progressive scan. Maybe someone can shed some light on this (?) On the subject of media: The changing technology (though fun and exciting at times) becomes a problem especially with photography. I recently had someone ask me if I knew anyone who had a working computer with a 5-1/4" floppy drive so they could transfer some older files. This type of thing worries me, as I'm continually transferring files, mainly photographs to redundant forms of media. I'm also fearful of Cd's going bad, so I store my digital photos in multiple areas including HDD's and Cd's etc. Of course, I keep my negatives in a fireproof box and never worry about them. Go figure  |
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Post by Rachel on Aug 23, 2007 13:58:03 GMT -5
Rachel: We used the Zip drives briefly when we sent book projects to printers out of the area. About 25 percent of the time they arrived at their destinations corrupt. Wayne, I think that ZIP disks must rate as the most unreliable form of removable media. I do have a USB 250MB drive and a few disks but I don't really know why I bought it Re-writeable CDs are a much better proposition but they always seem to be a bother to write needing special software although you can use them like floppy/hard disks by formatting them as UDF disks. Nowadays I just use a USB memory stick. |
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Post by herron on Aug 23, 2007 14:04:56 GMT -5
Since I put my CPU together from components, I made sure to add a floppy drive. Came in handy during my recent computer crash, since a lot of the "recovery" programs I needed were on -- you guessed it -- floppy disks! If I didn't have it built in, I would be sure to have a USB connection and a portable one...just in case! The Linux software my nephew provided - to get into the crashed disk to remove data files - was on a CD...but Toby indicated the file was small enough he could have put it on a floppy, only his system doesn't have one anymore! I also have a CD drive and a DVD drive/burner installed...but would probably go to double DVD drives if I had to do it over. Now that the new hard drive is installed, I have almost a half terabyte of memory storage available on three drives! ----- Ron (Head): You might want to do some surfing about Linux stuff that's available (a lot of it free) that might be able to help read Jeanneatte's short stories and recipes, regardless of what word processing software they were created in...translating them into simple text files that you can paste into your current word-processing set up. |
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Post by Rachel on Aug 23, 2007 14:05:46 GMT -5
One problem I've had: the disks have trouble playing in some of the older DVD players. As I understand it, the problem is with players that don't have progressive scan. Maybe someone can shed some light on this (?) I don't really understand DVDs. I guess that you can use them for storage like a CD but when you put video content (ie in a DVD recorder) on them there are all those strange files which I can't make head or tail of As far as I can see you can't rely on really long term integrity with any electronic form of storage. Multiple copies and continuous checking for readability seem to be the only answer. |
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Post by kiev4a on Aug 23, 2007 16:44:32 GMT -5
Rachel:
I use DVDs for archiving but on a project like the one just finished you have to have software to put everything into format for stand alone DVD players, which is a different kettle of fish. That's why it takes 8 hours for the program to compile things before writing to the DVD.
I've never had a DVD or CD "go bad" but I'm sure if you left them out in direct sunlight it wouldn't take long for problems to develop. I had a program for making stick on labels for CDs but quit using it because I've heard stories about the labels lifting while the drive is running and jamming things up. More likely, I think, with music self-loading players but the LiteScribe lasers the info direcly on the disk surface, eliminating the possibility of trouble.
Like Ron, I built my system and put it in a server case that can hold about six hard drives and two or three CD or DVD players and it runs really cool even with all that stuff installed. The only problem is the case alone weighs something like 30 lbs so it doesn't move often.
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