Large DVD Slide show.

[DVieau2]

I'm posting this on bestphotolist but the Grumble has some pretty good techies so here goes.

We've been burning DVD slide shows with Wondershare DVD Slide show builder. All jobs to date have been fine.

We are now trying to make a DVD with 2 thousand images!! Yes, this is what the customer wants.

The total size of the 2000 images is only 84mb. The slides are on for 2 second with 1 second transitions. No Music.

After 9 hours of computer processing the program refuses to burn and crashes. We've e-mailed Wondershare tech support and if or when they reply I'm sure they will say we're overtaxing our computer and probably creating a show larger than 4.7 gigs.

I'm looking for a low budget option. My computer is: Windows XP, Pentium 4, 2.8GH, w/1G RAM computer.

Any suggestions on slide show software that will handle 2000 images.

Doug

 

[Mike Labbe]

Will that same software export your masterpiece as an .AVI file/movie?

If so, I could convert the AVI to DVD for you, using ConvertXtoDVD

Mike

 

[DLB]

Get a Mac Doug!

dave.

 

[Bandsaw]

Proshow Gold - http://www.photodex.com/products/proshowgold

 

[Paul N]

Were you able to handle 2000 pictures before without any problems??? Or is this the first time the program had to deal with 2000 pictures?

If this is the first time, possibly you're running out of memory (RAM) with 2000 pictures (although their total size is not that big). Look at the Task manager when that happens (if possible) and see how much memory you have left when the system crashed.

Adding more RAM might be the solution, if this is the case.

For slideshows I use the following:

• Copy all image files to a CD
• Use a program like ACDSee (around $40-50) which is both an image viewer (best IMHO) and has a built in Slideshow function.

 

[osgood]

Proshow Gold - http://www.photodex.com/products/proshowgold

or ProShow Producer! I've been using that for a few years now and it's the bees knees IMHO!

These programs are well worth trying out the trial version. Very easy to use in their simplest form, but they have some very advanced features too!

 

[DVieau2]

Thanks for the Help.

Dave, your idea was echoed by a few other MAC Snobs I just not in the mood to buy a new computer today.

Mikes suggestion was also repeated by a couple of others.
We saved the entire job as an AVI file, instead of a DVD file. and then import that AVI file back into the DVD authoring program as a single file. It worked on a small job but after 2.5 hours of computer processing the big job crashed.

My friends all agreed that anytime your computer processes for hours you run a high risk of failure. Most of the programs out there have limits of about 1000 images.

I also was told that the size of the original files is almost irrelevant to the time it takes to render 2000 video images and transitions. Also the speed of the rendering process is almost entirely dependent on processor power alone so more RAM will not help.

Here's what we did:

We have two Panasonic DVD recording units for transferring video tape to DVD.
The DMR-EZ47V will play a jpeg slide show from the built in SD card reader. The manual says it will read 999 images but when we tried it only would show 514.

We copied the 2000 images onto four SD cards and played the four shows while recording with the second DMR-E20 recorder. It was a bit awkward and took over two hours but the darn project is done.