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iPhoto/iMovie/iDVD problem...photo slide show related.

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Hi,

I've created a photo slide show with iPhoto and exported/burned it with iDVD with my own menu and everything and all went well, except the photo quality is AWFUL. The pictures are jagged and not as sharp as they appear in iPhoto. I checked and watched the mpeg file it created in order for it to go to iDVD, and that was great - is it the Mpeg2 encoding that is ruining the quality?

I tried creating it in iMovie and it's the same thing.
 
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You can't judge it by the quality in the iDVD preview, burn it to a disc and watch it on a TV or fullscreen on a computer. The images have to be compressed a ton for the slideshow (the full res of the pictures is bigger than an HD screens resolution) so that it will work with normal TV's.
 
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i just found this thread via a google search. i had the exact same problem as the poster above and i'm wondering if anyone knows a workaround.

images look beautiful in iDVD preview and awful when burned to DVD and viewed on my normal TV or 23" apple display. obviously the compression is just too strong. any recommendations?
 

Del


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A TV even an HD TV is a VERY low resolution display compared to a high res digital photo, so it is best to load up photoshop and resize (either batch or individually) each photo/slide to the format and dimensions required (PAL or NTSC) before creating the slideshow!
 
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thanks for the reply, but this is perplexing. as a pro photog i am well aware of different resolutions as they apply to different media. TV, my HD display, my camera's sensor, etc. but wouldn't logic have it that if you supply more than enough resolution, it should still look great (though maybe operate a bit slower)? there's obviously no upscaling going on, so what exactly makes the high-res images look like crap after rendering the slides on DVD?
 
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It doesn't matter how high the resolution the photos are that you supply, they will all be resized to Standard Def

You essentially are getting screwed by a bottle neck

Digital Camera - By far the highest resolution (4368 x 2912 for a Canon 5D)
Computer - High Resolution, not as high as the camera (2560 x 1600 for a 30" screen)
Standard Definition DVD - Lowest resolution (640x480)
TV - 640x480 Standard Def, up to 1920 × 1080

So it doesn't matter how high quality the images are on your camera or computer, until you are burning HDDVD's or BluRay DVD's and playing them on 1080p screens you won't be getting anywhere near the quality of the pictures that you are actually taking (and even then you are only getting 1/2 of the possible photo quality)
 
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yeah i am familiar with all those resolutions. i shoot with a canon 5D and work on a monitor @ 1920x1200. so i would expect standard def to look like crap on my apple display if it was being scaled to fit the whole screen. but it isn't. and since it's not, shouldn't it be showing the images at their post-iDVD processed optimized viewing size? even if that's only 640x480?

it seems that my regular non-HD tv is the one place my slideshow should look great, but it doesn't. iDVD appears to have resized my images and then stretched them out (to something less than full screen, but stretched nonetheless) no matter what the viewing medium.

i just want to create a pretty slideshow that i can send out to prospective clients. iDVD looked like a great option, albeit a lightweight consumer app....but it looked solid enough....import, fit to audio, adjust themes, burn. it's turned into more of a hassle than i imagined.
 
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When you are watching the DVD on your computer set DVD player to play at Normal Size and you will see the true size.

Do you have the option on in iDVD to scale images for TV? I always turn that off. I have never had any issues with iDVD's quality and I do a lot of sports photography and sell DVD's of games and the quality is fantastic
 

Del


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I've just realised what the problem is, you shoot with a Canon :p
 

Del


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Another thing to bear in mind is that the pixels on a television set are rectangular whereas on computer monitors they are square!
 

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