Best software for Blu Ray slideshows?

[naturefilmer]

We all know how good well-taken photos look when directly viewed on TV, even big screen. I've been trying to find slideshow software that's good enough to preserve that high quality in a slideshow filled with all sorts of motion effects and transition effects. I haven't had any luck so far.

I tried CyberLink's Power Producer, but high quality photos turn out terrible.

I'm currently doing the free trial for ProShow Producer, and it is better than Cyberlink, but still the photos clearly have lost a lot of quality and there is lots of shimmering and graininess, unsmooth movement, etc. So I'm definitely not going to spend the $250 to buy it.

Anyone have any luck with any software for producing high quality slideshows for Blu Ray, which preserves the original high quality? Thanks in advance.

 

[Spillicus]

You could try Sony DVD Architect, which usually comes bundled with Sony Vegas. It will build slideshows onto a Blu Ray. You can download a free trial of it here.

Right now you can get it with Sony Vegas Move Studio HD Platinum from amazon for pretty cheap, and it includes DVD Architect.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/dvdastudio

 

[naturefilmer]

Have you tried it? Do you understand that my concern is about quality pictures, and can you personally say that the PQ, even with motion effects, is excellent? I just don't want to keep wasting time by loading new software, learning it, burning a disc, and being disappointed. So I'm hoping for responses from people who get the whole picture and problems and have a program they can personally rave about. Thanks.

 

[Spillicus]

Yes, I own it and have made Blu-Ray format disks with a slide show. The pictures look good, given that they are limited to 1080 pixels in height and are shown on a tv.

You may also be chasing the wrong culprit here though. If you're just letting the disk burning software compress the images for you, you might not be getting the best quality from that, and you might be better off using something like Lightroom and exporting specifically to a 1080 pixel high image.

Also, bear in mind that while an HDTV might have the same 1920x1080 resolution as the computer monitor you're using, a large tv has a much larger pixel pitch so that might effect how you percieve it, and the color gammut from your tv might be considerably worse as well, so things might come off a bit flat. You might be able to play with the tv settings a bit, but it's not a given that you'll ever be able to get your tv to render things as well as a decent monitor.

You seem pretty discerning about the slideshow quality. I'm afraid you may not have much of a choice but to try things until you find one you like. All any of us on this forum can do is say what worked for our particular situation. It's not about whether I "understand" your problem, as much as the fact that I'm never coming your house to see your problem for myself. If I rave about the software I use on a forum like this I"ll have a bunch of idiots yelling "Fanboy!", so the only advice I will give is that it works for me, and might be worth a try for you. And if you try it and don't like it, well, sorry about your luck, but as I said above there's more than just the software program that could be going on here.

Honestly, good luck.

Have you tried it? Do you understand that my concern is about quality pictures, and can you personally say that the PQ, even with motion effects, is excellent? I just don't want to keep wasting time by loading new software, learning it, burning a disc, and being disappointed. So I'm hoping for responses from people who get the whole picture and problems and have a program they can personally rave about. Thanks.

 

[The Skipper]

I view my photos in my home theater using a front projector. A home theater PC is attached indirectly to the projector, from the HDMI output of the PC display adapter to the HDMI input on the projector.

There is no loss of quality whatsoever doing it this way, versus viewing it directly on your computer monitor. In fact, because a calibrated home theater has wider dynamic range & more accurate colors than a computer monitor (even IPS ones), I find that I can see subtle difference between various camera settings that I otherwise would not notice on a computer monitor.

Not to mention the difference between 120" vs 27".

Another advantage to this approach is you can use your favorite PC photo or slide show software (mine is irfanview). And you don't have to worry about burning DVDs or blurays.

Whenever someone sees photos for the first time in the theater, they are blown away by the overall impact.

 

[naturefilmer]

Thank you for the reply. I apreciate the information. I've been looking into this this afternoon and trying more things, and I think I'm better off staying away from slideshow programs and just using the usb input on my blu-ray player and playing slideshows that way - direct from the player usb, to the TV.

The ProShow, I discovered, has an "anti-flicker" option for when using 1080i (I'd been using 1080p). That does get rid of much of the problem. Unfortunately, it also softens the image too much for me. I'm afraid I'm dealing with problems built into efforts to watch these things on big screen TV with software-produced motion effects.

I'll stick to USB sticks in the blu-ray. That way I get super sharp pictures and with no flicker and I can change transitions and do random play. And also play to any music I want from my stereo system.

It just was kind of neat seeing the Ken Burns effect in different ways in these photos, but at this point not really worth the reduced quality and the time and expense. Thanks again.

 

[John Koch]

Software that oriented to disc-burning is often geared to video, whose resolution maxes at 1920x1080. Therefore, it may import still photos with that resolution excellently. Larger files may require downsampling, hence the loss of IQ or perhaps other distortions. Or the "Ken Burns" effect may be awkward: moiré, jerkiness, blur.

I get good results with a 2008 version of Pinnacle Studio, but it downsizes large files, so I shoot many stills at 1920x1080 resolution. To zoom or crop a large file, it is better to do that in a photo editor, then import the cropped file into the video editor.

The higher versions of Vegas or Premier ought to provide a means to crop or animate large files with limited IQ loss or artifacts, but the only way to find out is test.

People who simply display photos on hard drive via screen don't understand that this is not the same thing as creating a slide show that is exported to a video file. A real slide show is something the recipients can play without need for the creator to push buttons or explain content. The shows created with video editors can include titles, narration, menus, sound effects, and whatever awful music the creator picks.

Anyone whose primary display or sharing mode is by files they burn to disc or upload to the Web quickly discover the futility of shooting at resolutions higher than perhaps 3mp.

 

[naturefilmer]

naturefilmer wrote:

We all know how good well-taken photos look when directly viewed on TV, even big screen. I've been trying to find slideshow software that's good enough to preserve that high quality in a slideshow filled with all sorts of motion effects and transition effects. I haven't had any luck so far.

I tried CyberLink's Power Producer, but high quality photos turn out terrible.

I'm currently doing the free trial for ProShow Producer, and it is better than Cyberlink, but still the photos clearly have lost a lot of quality and there is lots of shimmering and graininess, unsmooth movement, etc. So I'm definitely not going to spend the $250 to buy it.

Anyone have any luck with any software for producing high quality slideshows for Blu Ray, which preserves the original high quality? Thanks in advance.

I went ahead and spent the $250 for the Photodex ProShow Producer software, have used it a lot, and have been very happy with it. The problem I describe above turns out to be with just a few photos when applying a movement effect to the photo – a Ken Burns effect. It’s like when watching TV and you see someone in a tightly checked shirt and you lots of noise presented because of the checks. But for most photos the Ken Burns movement causes no problem. For the problem ones, you can apply settings to each photo individually, and so all you have to do is turn off any effect for those photos, and the problem is gone.

The software preserves the original PQ very well. And you can mix videos in with the photos, and those come out well also. You can mix videos from any different cameras, and whether recorded in 60i or 24f … whatever, with minimal PQ reduction. Spend some time synchronizing the video with music and come up with some amazing stuff.

 

[martylyy]

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