Good morning Terry,
Contacting you this way as I know you vet comments and you will see this first.I am having problems accessing/posting to the forum and I wonder if others are too.From my computer the page has been hacked by the "Turkish Hacking Sabotage" (www.thsgroup.org)Most odd (and sinister!)and has been this way for 3/4 days. No way I am clicking on their link of course but as you have posted 3 reviews on the main page since the problem started occurring, with no comment, I thought it best to report something - it might just be me!!

John Smith
johnsmith3941@hotmail.com

John:

You are absolutely right. The Forum has been obliterated by the Turkish Hackers for the past week. The hacked site is not our local server but the server that hosts the Forum. We have asked for it to be fixed and we are still waiting.

Like you I didn't dare click on the Turkish Hackers URL.

If it is not fixed soon we will have to move the Forum to a different host.

Terry

Dear Terry,

I have a problem you may be able to help me with.

I have over 400 images of our 4 months in the UK on a 512MB compactflash card.

If I connect the camera to our wide screen TV set I am able to put on a good picture show for guests with landscape and portrait shots showing as such.

I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS FROM A CD IN THE DVD PLAYER.

When a friend in the UK transferred the images to a CD from the CF card via his computer, playing the CD through the DVD player showed the images taken portrait as rotated 90 degrees (and filling the screen). The same happens when I had Ted’s Cameras transfer images from the CF card to a CD – suitable for printing I guess.

If I transfer images from CF card to the computer turning those taken as portrait are turned 90degrees. If I highlight these, turn them 90 degrees, save them and then burn all of them to a CD then –
1. If I play the CD through the computer then all images are upright

2. If I play the CD through the DVD player then those images which had been rotated do not appear - only the words – “cannot display”.

So I have not achieved my aim. Any ideas?

Regards Geoff

Geoff:

It so happens that I have spent a lot of time on this very issue of making slide shows for TV and I have come to the following conclusions.

First, you need to use an application that creates slideshows on CD/SVCD/DVD. I use one called Memories on TV. Nero [latest versions] will also do it.

I prepare the images in Photoshop so that they are the right size for our TV system -- 720x576 for square TV and 1024x576 for widescreen. I make the images smaller than these dimensions to allow for overscan. This means something like 500 pixels high at 72 dpi.

Once you have done this all your pictures have the correct orientation and they are ready to load into a slideshow application.

With these applications you can add sound to the show, set transitions [fade,dissolve etc] and set display times.

Now comes the tricky bit. Slide shows on CD are not very good. In fact they are generally unacceptable. On SVCD they are barely acceptable. But on DVD they are brilliant. If you don't have a DVD burner think seriously of getting one -- they cost about $75.

For a slideshow on DVD the still images are converted the the MPEG movie format [same as DVD and digital TV]. You can create menus and make the disc to auto-play. You will love the output using this method.

You cannot throw images at the TV straight from the camera and expect good results. You must put a bit of work into creating a properly structured show. It is easy enough to do and really a bit of fun.

I have made several terrific shows -- even if I do say so myself -- using this method, but it took a lot of trial and error before I got it right.

Make sure that you copy all your pics from your memory card to a CD so that they are always there and cannot be altered. They are your digital negatives. Then copy all the images to a folder on your hard drive and work from there.

If I can give you any extra info just email me.

[You can download Memories on TV from http://www.codejam.com/products.htm

To create DVDs you also need to download the MPEG2 converter. The whole thing is not cheap but it is the best.

On the other hand if you decide to buy a DVD burner make sure that you buy one with Nero supplied -- then you get the slideshow maker for nothing.]

Terry L