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January 17, 2006
[ THE DIGITAL CHRISTMAS TRADITION ]
At Casa dpexpert a tradition has developed over the years. Mrs dpexpert makes the pudding and Mr dpexpert takes the photos on Christmas day.
In the days of film the snapping was frugal -- film and processing cost money. We might fire off one or two 36 exposure films, have them processed, show the prints around once -- ho hum! -- and then put them in the famous shoe box.
Since no-cost digital came along we have been profligate in our shooting. For Christmas 2005 we were testing the wonderful Nikon D200 digital SLR, fitted with a 1 gb memory card, the Nikkor 18-200mm zoom and a Nikon SB600 Speedlight. Why stint ourselves? We took 400 pictures. The battery just coped but the memory card needed to be emptied every 107 shots.
From the 400 photos of pulling bon bons, wearing funny hats and giving and getting the “just what I want” presents we had to select about 100 for the DVD slide show. No more shoe box! These days everyone gets their very own copy of the Christmas epic.
Once the collection had been narrowed down to 100 we resized the images in Photoshop. Allowing for television over-scan and for the fact that not everyone has a widescreen TV we find that the best size is about 640 pixels by 420 at 72 dpi.
When all the images are resized, colour corrected and the brightness and contrast fixed then the gamma of all the slides needs to be reduced. A television is much brighter and of higher contrast than a computer monitor, so the brightness and contrast of the images must be reduced in the PC. The best way to establish the correct image brightness is by trial and error. Put a couple of images with various degrees of correction on a rewritable DVD and check them on the TV.
Photoshop File/New has a drop down list of Presets and two of these presets create new file templates for PAL television, standard and widescreen. We use a Photoshop action to Select an image, Copy, Close, open New/File/Preset/PAL 720x576, fill the background with black, Paste the image, centre it, Flatten Image and Save. It is harder to describe than it is to do.
We also amuse ourselves creating title, credit and end slides.
Once the slides are created we drop them into Memories on TV, add music, select image transition effects and delays and in “Burn” we select DVD, PAL and “Save to and then burn from file” and select a destination folder for the video file. This is important if the plan is to run off multiple copies.
Memories on TV is available for download at for US $50, complete with the MPEG2 rendering engine. There are other slideshow creation programs, including Nero that comes bundled with many DVD writers, that will do the job. The important thing to bear in mind is that the program must be able to convert still images to MPEG2 and burn to DVD. A CD, VCD or SVCD slideshow is a poor substitute.
We rip the music for the show using the free ripper Audiograbber and we use Audacity to edit the music so that it plays seamlessly for 10 minutes.
It all helps to fill in the hot, slow days between Christmas and New Year.
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MORE DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR CREATING DIGITAL SLIDE SHOWS ARE IN THIS PDF >
Posted by terry at January 17, 2006 08:16 AM
Comments
Congratulations for your thoroughness in presenting your Christmas photos, Mr. Lane. I'm sure your family enjoyed the slide show.
In the next few weeks I am creating a slide show for my brother. Just wondering whether copyright permission must be sought for the music when playing in a private home?
With thanks,
austplow
Posted by: austplow at January 17, 2006 03:56 PM
I read with interest the information about saving Christmas memories. When the DVD preparation was mentioned PAL was selected. Looking at the available options PAL and NTSC are available but no SECAM. My D70s and other cameras I have used are the same. So how do I preview my pics on the big screen when I am staying in France where all the TVs are SECAM? Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome.
Posted by: David Lloyd at January 17, 2006 09:22 PM
Re music copyright:
Australia has the strictest copyright protections in the world. We don't have any "fair use" provision on copying CDs, but I see that the Attorney General reckons that it is time to change the law. I am not advising here, I am guessing, that you will be able to safely use commercial recordings for private use in a slide show.
I am amazed that you ask the question! Most people just go ahead and do it. If your slideshow is really private who will know?
Anyway, the answer is that any copying of commercial music is forbidden. But everyone does it. And Mr Ruddock thinks that is fair enough. So go ahead and do it and if the copyright police come knocking on the door refer them to Mr Ruddock.
Posted by: Terry at January 24, 2006 06:23 PM
David:
That is a very interesting question. You are quite right that no camera or slide making program seems to include the option of SECAM. I don't know the answer to your question but perhaps someone can give us the answer from their experience.
Terry L
Posted by: Terry at January 24, 2006 06:26 PM