dvd-slideshow

[neddie]

I'm trying to use dvd-slideshow to make some photos into a movie, but I can't get it to look right. I can cross-fade between the pictures ok, but as soon as I try to use the zoom/pan effect, it all moves really jerkily and looks rubbish. It seems like a common problem because there's a special entry in the FAQ about it (output "shaky or not optimal"). I've tried the suggestions in the FAQ but it still looks rubbish.

 

My screensaver is called "smoothslidesaver" and this does everything perfectly - it zooms and pans and fades and everything looks silky smooth. I just want the same output on a DVD movie.

 

Or if there is any other tool which can do this I'd love to hear - I tried mandvd but the options there seem really limited.

[neddie]

:bump: :unsure:

 

Does noone else have the same problem?

Is that because it works for you and moves smoothly, or do those who make slideshow DVDs from photos not care about the sliding/panning/zooming effect?

 

(I still haven't managed to understand why zooming & panning gets named after a single bloke (Ken Burns) - it's not as if zooming and panning wasn't invented before...)

[ianw1974]

I've had a similar if not exactly the same problem, except with video mpegs from my video camera that I then wanted to make into DVD format on my machine (Linux). If I take the same videos and do it under Windows, it works fine. I have a feeling it's something to do with the video editing and making aspects under Linux and I don't know what to do to fix my problem either.

 

Panning left to right or up and down is jerky. If you stay still for the video, it's fine to an extent. But overall the quality is crap than compared to the same done under Windows. Doesn't matter which distro, which video editing tool (devede, tovid, etc).

[neddie]

Aha, so maybe it's not the dvd-slideshow itself that's causing the jerks, but the MPEG compression tool instead?

Is there anything I could do about that? Is the compressor configurable / exchangeable? There doesn't seem to be any intermediate output from dvd-slideshow that I could post-process with something else. Or are there any good open-source windows programs that could make a nice slideshow DVD out of a set of photos? (Heresy I know but if you say there's a big difference for your videos...)

Or, and this is something that's just occurred to me, I haven't actually tried playing the output on a DVD player, I just assumed that if mplayer shows it jerky then it'll still be jerky when burnt. Have you tried your videos on the DVD player, and is the jerkiness still there?

[ianw1974]

My friend did a slideshow with our wedding pics - I just can't remember what he used under Windows but I can find out.

 

For me, if I playback the DVD on my laptop (where I created it), it's fine without jerky. If I then put it in a DVD player, true one and watch on the TV it's crap and jerky. I also have put it down to the encoding process, and I've tried using mencoder and ffmpeg first before putting them through devede or tovid. It's definitely the encoding process that is screwing around with it.

[neddie]

After a bit of playing with image2mpeg, I'm coming to the conclusion it's a problem with dvd-slideshow, not with the MPEG encoding.

With image2mpeg I get nice smooth zooms and fades, much better than with dvd-slideshow. The only snag is I can't work out how to do the pan bit (I can only get it to zoom in or out of the centre). Any clues? Oh, and it also takes an unfeasibly long time to produce even the shortest of movies, but if it gets the right result I won't grumble.

 

There's also an outstanding bug on the dvd-slideshow bug-tracker about jerky pans, and it's still open. My guess is some dodgy number-rounding at the wrong part of the calculation.