Poor quality burning slideshows iDVD

N

nels

Registered
Hi,

I am wondering if anyone knows what's the best method of creating a DVD of a photo slideshow that MAINTAINS the original quality of the photos?

I have tried using iPhoto and exporting the slideshow to iDVD at the largest movie size (640x480) and after compression on iDVD, it just looks horrible when played on both my 40inch HD LCD TV, but also on my 15inch MacbookPro screen as well as. Prior to export to DVD, if I play the slideshow directly from iPhoto on my laptop screen, or even on my LCD TV via an HDMI connection, the quality is crystal clear, so it must be a compression issue. I have read that similar problems arise when creating slideshows from iMovie which you then export to iDVD.

It should be simple and I don't know if I am missing something here. I have read that Fotomagico does a great job of this, but surely, the iLife suite should let you create slideshows that you can burn onto DVD at full quality to be played on TV, or else it would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. I would like to be able to do this without purchasing more third party software. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this work?

Thanks!
 
Not directly. I don't use iLife, so I don't know all the options there. The problem is not the compression, but the resolution. I don't see how Fotomagico can overcome that.

The DVD standard for US TVs gives a maximum resolution of 720x480. (In Europe, it's better but not by much, at 720x576). As a hint, 640x480 is the same resolution as the 12" CRT monitors that Apple shipped with consumer Macs in the early 1990s. To play on an ordinary DVD player, the picture has to be shrunk to that size, and then compressed with MPEG, and then the TV blows the picture up again for display.

When you connect the computer to the TV with HDMI, you can get the full 1920x1080 resolution, which looks sharper than 480p. Ideally, you would get similar large resolutions once Blu-Ray or HD-DVD burning comes to the Mac and iMovie. In the meanwhile, I guess you can approach that with the 1080i of the AppleTV, and its ability to display photos.
 
Well, a year and a half later and the quality of iDVD still sucks! Why bother?

All I want out of this mess is a means to show work, stills,video, sound from a single disk. (I do family stories for the families of hospice patients.) I could avoid the mush and have the final product go to CD and then to home computers. Nobody wants to see their lost loved ones swimming around in that mirky mush. How does anyone make decent DVD's of their image work? They sure as **** don't use iCrap er iDVD.

Suggestions anyone?
 
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