IDVD 6 slideshow image quality

Still image quality in iDVD slideshows is a topic that comes up again and again on the iDVD forums.
Two and a half years ago, I made a test with an earlier version of iDVD. Now, with the release of iDVD 6, it was time to repeat the test.
Go to my page: http://homepage.mac.com/profpixel/iDVD_6size.html to see the test.
The results represent pretty much the best posible quality results you can get with still images in iDVD 6 because I used TIFF files and High Quality JPEG files (Photoshop level 10) in the test.
You can see just how much quality loss occurs in the iDVD 6 MPG-2 compression process.
Take a look and we can discuss the test further here.

I have updated some of my comments on the web page.

Similar Messages

IPhoto Slideshow Image Quality when export to IDVD

Aloha ... I have two issues that I am having problems with when I export to IDVD. My images look very fuzzy (originals are very high res and print quality images} when exported to iDVD and a DVD is made. Also in the show my vertical images look fine and fill the screen yet on iDVD they are made shorter/squatier and upper and lower parts of the original image are lost. The format is wide screen as is the show. I am using a LCD wide screen TV if that helps. Any ideas out there?

Welcome to the Apple Discussions. Are you cropping your photos to the 16:9 ratio before creating the widescreen slideshow in iPhoto and exporting them to iDVD for a widescreen project? Most digital camera images are in the 4:3 size ratio and don't convert well to the widescreen. Also check the aspect ratio that you're playing the dvd in as that can have an effect on how the slideshow looks.
Also remember that the images going to iDVD will be reduced to 640 x 480 (normal TV) and slightly larger for the widescreen version. So the pixel dimensions of the original image are not that relevant.
Happy Holidays
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 08 libraries and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Imovie slideshow image quality problems

I have created a slideshow in imove with music of a wedding my wife and I shot. For some reason the image quality is really poor. I tried going through idvd and I tried exporting it as a quicktime movie and burning it with toast but they both look crappy on the tv when we watch them. Please help because I need to get it out to the clients.
I have done this once before and I did have some problems but somehow got the quality we wanted. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Wayne Sawyer

If some slides show a lot of "jaggies" the project may have been affected by a long-standing bug in iMovie that adds jaggies to photos when you share the project with iDVD. If we grant permission for iMovie to render the images when sending the project to iDVD, it messes them up pretty badly.
If that's what happened, you'll need to re-import those images to replace the badly-rendered clips.
Lots more here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2105598&#2105598
Karl

Slideshow image quality/color rendering

I´m quite frustrated after discovering that some of my images look quite poor displayed by the slideshow module. My situation ist as follows:
LR 5.2 running on Mac OS X 10.8.5, 1:1 previews are rendered, preview quality is set to high, and I´m using a sample image showing a dark cloudy sky with some fine gradients; my slideshow preset doesn´t use any borders as I read this often causes quality issues.
When I´m in the Develop module, there is no problem at all, even in fullscreen display mode on my 1920x1200 display the gradients are perfectly rendered.
In Library module, when displaying fullscreen, quality is okay, but I can see some slight difference compared to the Develop module - which I understand after reading that in Develop the output is based on the actual raw data, and in all the other modules on rendered previews.
Now, when in Slideshow module, the image quality is significantly lower than in Library and I see some quite obvious banding in the gradients. I don´t have problems with blocking artifacts but the banding/posterization is considerably worse compared to a JPEG export with a quality setting of, for example, 75.
I can´t imagine LR´s slideshow tool would be working with a lower color depth than the 8 bit as in standard JPEGs, right? Did I miss any of LR´s parameters that influence the image quality of Lightroom slideshows or of the previews used therefore? Otherwise do you have some other explanations or hints for me in order to get this fixed? We do everything to capture our images in the best possible quality so we should also be able to present them properly after all...
Thanks a lot for any advice!
Toby

In-Lr slideshow images look like crap on my system too (dull contrast and de-saturated shifted color).
My guess is some issue with icc-profile/monitor-profile or something, but I'm not qualified for assessing.. - could just be a bug in Lr that only bites some, dunno...
I use ShowBiz instead, which works well on my Windows box, and it should also work on your Mac box.
Rob

IMovie 11 Slideshow image quality issue

Hi,
when I am creating a slideshow with iMovie from still images, I have a severe loss of image quality. I have tried to search forums up and down, but did not find any help or solution for that. The loss of quality is kind of dramatic. Any ideas, suggestions or solutions?
Regards
HEnnisch

Hi!
I'm loosing a lot of video quality when I transfer movie clips from my Iphone 4S to Imovie11.
Did you find an answer to your problem?
If so, maybe you could help me out?
Thanks!!

Adobe Muse Full Screen Slideshow image quality

Hi,
I have a question. Is it natural that if i add an image to my slideshow the quality of it in adobe muse or in my browser is worse than original size? My image is rather big 3400x and when it is exported to muse i see pixels and blur effect etc. Is it possible to not resample image quality in muse is there any option to stay with original quality??

Hi,
The way full screen slideshow is currently implemented Muse is resampling the hero images to the size they are in Design view. For most cases that will work fine, but there's no easy way to force a higher resolution image to be output. The only workaround that comes to mind would be to replace the image after publish/upload/export.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Aish

IDVD and poor image quality on TV

I imported old VHS/VHS-C tapes into iMovie via Elgato Video Capture, using standard 4:3. I then edited my project iMovie and "shared" it to iDVD. However, on TV, image quality is horrid. What am I doing wrong?

As Old Toad writes BUT
• Share to Media Browser - AND as Large - not HD or the other resolutions as quality will degrade.
• burn on high quality media - I only use Verbatim DVD-R (as they play on more DVD-players)
• Set down burn speed to x4 = Less burn errors
• Encoding quality matters - I use Pro Quality most
else read my long long list on this.
DVD quality
1. iDVD 08, 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities. (version 7.0.1, 7,0.4 & 7.1.1) and iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST (but not always for short movies e.g. up to 45 minutes in total)
• Best Performances
(movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD (Can be best for short movies)
• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6)
(movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above
Menu can take 15 minutes or even more - I use a very simple one with no audsio or animation like ”Brushed Metal” in old Themes.
About double on DL DVDs.
2. Video from
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not self-containing, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos and the Ken Burns effect NOT is used. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.
3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn as possibly e.g. x4 or x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)
This can also be done with Apple’s Disk Utilities application when burning from a DiskImage.
4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc). For SD-Video - if HD-material is used I guess that 4 to 5 times more would do.
5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )
6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW) - DVD-R play’s on more and older DVD-Players
7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD
(I use JES_Deinterlacer to keep frame per sec. same from editing to the Video-DVD result.)
8. Don’t burn more than three DVDs at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while before next batch.
iDVD quality also depends on.
• DVD is a standard in it self. It is Standard Definition Quality = Same as on old CRT-TV sets and can not
deliver anything better that this.
HD-DVD was a short-lived standard and it was only a few Toshiba DVD-players that could playback.
These DVDs could be made in DVD-Studio Pro. But they don’t playback on any other standard DVD-Player.
Blu-Ray / BD can be coded onto DVDs but limited in time to - about 20-30 minutes and then need
_ Roxio Toast™ 10 Pro incl. BD-component
_ BD disks and burner if full length movies are to be stored
_ BD-Player or PlayStation3 - to be able to playback
The BD-encoded DVDs can be play-backed IF Mac also have Roxio DVD-player tool. Not on any standard Mac or DVD-player
Full BD-disks needs a BD-player (in Mac) as they need blue-laser to be read. No red-laser can do this.
• HOW much free space is there on Your internal (start-up) hard disk. Go for approx. 25Gb.
less than 5Gb and Your result will most probably not play.
• How it was recorded - Tripod vs Handheld Camera. A stable picture will give a much higher quality
• Audio is most often more critical than picture. Bad audio and with dropouts usually results in a non-viewed movie.
• Use of Video-editor. iMovie’08 or 09 or 11 are not the tools for DVD-production. They discard every second line resulting in a close to VHS-tape quality.
iMovie 1 to HD6 and FinalCut any version delivers same quality as Camera record in = 100% to iDVD
• What kind of movie project You drop into it. MPEG4 seems to be a bad choice.
other strange formats are .avi, .wmv, .flash etc. Convert to streamingDV first
Also audio formats matters. I use only .aiff or from miniDV tape Camera 16-bit
strange formats often problematic are .avi, .wmv, audio from iTunes, .mp3 etc
Convert to .aiff first and use this in movie project
• What kind of standard - NTSC movie and NTSC DVD or PAL to PAL - no mix.
(If You need to change to do a NTSC DVD from PAL material let JES_Deinterlacer_3.2.2 do the conversion)
(Dropping a PAL movie into a NTSC iDVD project
(US) NTSC DVDs most often are playable in EU
(EU) PAL DVDs most often needs to be converted to play in US
UNLESS. They are play-backed by a Mac - then You need not to care
• What kind of DVDs You are using. I use Verbatim DVD-R (this brand AND no +R or +/-RW)
• How You encode and burn it. Two settings prior iDVD’08 or 09
Pro Quality (only in iDVD 08 & 09)
Best / High Quality (not always - most often not)
Best / High Performances (most often my choice before Pro Quality)
1. go to iDVD pref. menu and select tab far right and set burn speed to x1 (less errors = plays better) - only in iDVD 08 & 09
(x4 by some and may be even better)
2. Project info. Select Professional Encoding - only in iDVD 08 & 09.
Region codes.
iDVD - only burn Region = 0 - meaning - DVDs are playable everywhere
DVD Studio pro can set Region codes.
1 = US
2 = EU
unclemano wrote
What it turned out to be was the "quality" settings in iDVD. The total clip time was NOT over 2 hours or 4.7GB, yet iDVD created massive visual artifacts on the "professional quality" setting.
I switched the settings to "high quality" which solved the problem. According iDVD help, "high quality" determines the best bit rate for the clips you have.
I have NEVER seen iDVD do this before, especially when I was under the 2 hour and 4.7GB limits.
For anyone else, there seem to be 2 places in iDVD to set quality settings, the first is under "preferences" and the second under "project info." They do NOT seem to be linked (i.e. if you change one, the other is NOT changed). take care, Mario
TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER
• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk
• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver
• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)
• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off
• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)
• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set
pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show
Yours Bengt W

Slideshow image quality poor

When I build slide shows and burn them to dvd, the image quality is really bad when viewed. Looks great while being built though. Sometimes need to do this for clients, so it needs to look great.
I start with jpg images that are pretty big. Have tried various resolutions. Have plenty of room on my drive.
Any advice appreciated as well as thoughts on 3rd party software.
Thanks

Welcome to discussions!
Read F Shippey's response in this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5330130&
:-)Sue

Slideshow Image Quality Problem

This problem is visible when creating a slideshow from Canon 300d crw images using a dark gray background with light gray wash at 90 degrees and 100% opacity. The background looks good when in 'play' mode in Lightroom. When exported at 1024x768 with 80% quality and played back in Acrobat reader, the background has a number of thin stationary horizontal lines that appear in each slide at the same locations. They look like banding that occurs when viewing 24-bit color gradient test patterns on an 18-bit monitor. I am using a 19" Mitsubishi Diamondtron CRT running 1248 x 960 with 24bit color. These multiple lines look similar to the two lines every Trinitron CRT exhibits, but are unrelated. I have used this CRT for years now and have never seen anything like this before with a 24 bit color image. Anybody else seeing this?

To expect every photo to conform to a ratio of 4:3 would be unrealistic.
Sorry, but that is the way iDVD works!
'Standard' TV (and iDVD is designed to produce TV content) uses a 4:3 aspect ratio. (With iDVD 6, you may also create a 16:9 project.)
See Preparing images for DVD slideshows at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iDVD/6.0/en/17.html

Need help with full screen slideshow image quality

I am looking to display some images with full screen slideshow. The images I add are very large, over 5000 wide. When I publish the site some images retain their quality while others lose it and look like crap. Why would this be and how can I fix it. I tried to resize them to the 2560x1707 that muse does, and then add them. This doesn't change the end result of poor quality.

Go to Assets Panel and locate the image you want to use at original size. Right click the image and chose 'Import Larger Size'.
See if that helps retain quality for that image, since Muse does not resize/interpolate that image for you.
Cheers,
Vikas

Slideshow image quality

I edit photos with I Photo and they look fine in the albums. When I run a slideshow on my computer, however, the images show considerably darker, with more intense colours. It becomes impossible to know how to edit for this. Is this usual? Is there something I am missing?
Thanks.

I know this sounds unrelated but try deleting the iPhoto preference file, com.apple.iPhoto.plist, that is in your User/Library/Preferences folder. It will get recreated when you launch iPhoto. Damaged preferences files have cased a lot of seemingly unrelated issues with many applications. It's worth a try.
Do you Twango?
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've written an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Slideshow's quality

why my slideshow have a terrible image's quality? My photoes have big resolution
What can I do?
Scuse me for my terrible english...

Welcome to the forums.
If you do a search, you'll see there are a number of complaints about slideshow image quality -- some because the DVD format is natively lower resolution than your computer, some because the DVD standard is compressed video (mpeg-2 format). You'll see a variety of solutions, including downsizing your images for the slideshow, so you do the image size reduction rather than iDVD.
John

Idvd image quality problems??

Will the length of video on a dvd created with idvd affect the quality of the image? I have just created a dvd which is pretty packed 3.7 GB are used on the dvd. Most of the video looks great. However some sections later in the movie (which when shot at night were much darker anyway) are pretty pixelated. I have created a DVD with a main movie, chapter selections and an extras folder which contains a bunch of 3 minute clips. The only place I really see teh pixelated image problem is while viewing these 3 minute "extras" clips.
I am wondering if by creating a "packed" disk, the overall image quality was degraded. And, is it a general rule of thumb that you should not try and cram in as much video onto a disk as possible?
Thanks for any help.
Pete

IDVD looks a the length of things ... technically you can put two hours total video on your dvd (this includes motion menus, slideshows, music, etc) You select Best Quality to do this
And yeh, generally a longer video will affect the quality of the DVD. In general, tho, you need the "strongest" video you can get to stand up to the MPEG2 compression
DVD Studio Pro with Compressor, gives you more encoding options and you can become adept at "fudging the numbers"
But in my opinion, with iDVD, anything longer than 90 minutes total can lead you to potential probs

Poor image quality elements 12 slideshow preview

As I can't find any reference to my original post I thought I'd re-do it. I created a slideshow in elements 12 and found the image quality to fall far short of high definition. The source folder for the images used is contained in Windows Pictures. The pictures were taken with a Canon t4i camera with the image quality being excellent. For whatever reason the quality of the slideshow images are poor. Any help would be appreciated.

Don't purchase a video editing app to work with just still images. They are meant to be used with DV and really don't do a still image any justice.
The final source format should determine the software used. You are suggesting a DVD distribution of your work.
iPhoto is meant to be used on still images (not iMovie, in my opinion).
You don't really want to convert a single frame into multiple frames if you don't need to.
You may want to try the Photo JPEG, Motion JPEG or Animation codecs from iMovie and see if they improve the visual appearance of your work.
Since you want to use a DVD as the distribution method then iDVD may not be the best option either. It is meant for set top boxes using a poor 720X480 dimension in MPEG-2 video format.
You may want to consider a bit different approach and use a "data" DVD and use QuickTime Player as the playback engine. These will only play on a computer but your could use the higher dimensions to your advantage and also the visual quality of computer displays to showcase your work.
Since HD DVD players are not yet ready for mass use it may be a better way to distribute your work.
There is no 720X480 dimension limit (only the limit set by the viewer on the display size when viewed on a computer monitor).
Your "still" images would remain "still" except for transitions.
Heck. You could probably put the whole file onto a CD and save even more in production costs.

IPhoto slideshow to iDVD gives poor movie quality

Hello,
I would like to take an iPhoto 08 slideshow and turn it into a DVD disc.
iPhoto's feature: "Share > Send to iDVD" is really great, except that it converts my slideshow to a compressed QuickTime .mov file.
I really, really do not like what the QuickTime compression is doing to my image quality.
I seem to recall that iPhoto was once able to export as an uncompressed .DV file. But I can no longer find that feature or workaround.
Does anyone know of a way to turn an iPhoto slideshow into a .DV file? Or, at least some kind of video file that iDVD will recognize and which does not use compression (like AVI or something?).
Thanks in advance!

Another 3rd party slideshow application with many export options is PhotoPresenter. It has Full Quality option for exporting which is 768 x 576. It also has over 25 animated themes. This demo page has examples of some of them.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 6 and 7 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. Just put the application in the Dock and click on it whenever you want to backup the dB file. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.
Note: There's now an Automator backup application for iPhoto 5 that will work with Tiger or Leopard.

IDVD 6 slideshow image quality

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