Simple iPhoto and iDVD Questions

[Veljo]

My cousin was recently married and I was thinking of using the professional photographs that were taken; import them into iPhoto, export them as a QuickTime movie and then import them into iDVD and burn a DVD for them. I just have a few questions:

IPHOTO: The images are wonderful quality. However, when I export them as a QuickTime movie there is no quality control whatsoever, so they export and they are of a lower JPEG image quality. Is there a way I can export them at their original quality or is there another program that is available that fades images much like iPhoto and exports them as great quality QuickTime movies?

IDVD: When I play the actual exported movie through iDVD the image is fine but when the image finishes either fading out or in the picture moves slighty because the video card smoothes the image out. I've exported the QuickTime movie from iPhoto at 1024 x 768 and iDVD uses 640 x 480 I think, so will this movement affect the quality that I will see on a television?

Thanks. Happy new year.

 

[brianleahy]

The NTSC DVD format has a max resolution of 480 lines, so regardless of what format you may snap the photos, they'll have to be scaled down to be displayable thru a set-top DVD player. I notice that you're in Australia - I don't know offhand which video format is in common use there (PAL? SECAM?) - but in any case, it's unlikely that the resolution is much greater.

HDTV has a max res of 1080 lines, and I know that current 'conventional' DVD players can't play at that res, and iDVD can't record at it.

Of course, on a DVD-ROM there are many ways you could create a very hi-res slideshow, but it would not be playable on a set-top player.

iMovie can import stills and transition between them with fades, then export the result to a DV file, which can then be imported by iDVD and stored as a movie clip. The quality is very good, though I would imagine somewhat better quality might be possible with the "Pro" software tools (Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro).