"Dazzle" effect in slideshow DVD

I've burned an iMovie slideshow onto a DVD using iDVD. When I run the slideshow on my TV, I get a very annoying "dazzle" effect that spoils the photos. The problem seems focussed on horizontal lines. Also, it is worse when I use the Ken Burns effect than when I do not. To make the situation even more puzzling, some photos don't seem to have the trouble at all, and I can't imagine why they would be any different from the others.
I'd be grateful for any input.

Matti Haveri (iMovie/iDVD Guru) posted this a while back (sorry-I lost the link, just have the actual post):
iMovie slideshows tend to flicker with high-frequency images while "soft" images are OK.
So I did a quick test to see how the input image's resolution and blurring affects the output quality of those high-frequency images.
Test material: some 2048x1536 digital camera JPG images that had a lot of very sharp edges (buildings, thin wires, construction work scenes etc -- i.e. "high-frequency" images). I converted them to TIF so that there was no lossy JPG degradation involved. I manipulated the images in Photoshop as follows:
1. original 2048x1536
2. original bicubically resampled to 768x576. I guess also iPhoto bicubically resamples; at least the results are very similar. On the other hand, I believe Graphic Converter does not have bicubic resampling so I haven't got as good results with it.
3. original bicubically resampled to 640x480
4. original with 90° (vertical) 3 pixel Motion Blur. The idea is to blur only the horizontal thin lines which flicker on an interlaced TV. The vertical lines are unaffected by this filter.
5. original with 1 pixel Gaussian blur. This blurs horizontally approximately as much as the 3 pixel Motion blur, but it blurs the image also vertically.
In iMovie's 4:3 PAL standard DV project (720x576) I applied to each image a) no Ken Burns and b) 1-5x zoomed 10 second Ken Burns. I did not let iMovie render the non-Ken Burns images while exporting the project to iDVD because that is a well-known source for bad quality.
I burned the project via iDVD's Best Performance to DVD and checked the result via an interlaced 28" CRT TV.
The results:
#1-5 were all sharp with no Ken Burns as well as with 1x zoomed Ken Burns. But the higher resolution non-blurred input images were, in fact, TOO sharp and thus flickered on a TV:
1. 2048x1536 flickered very badly with and without Ken Burns
2. 768x576 flickered slightly less but also very disturbingly
3. 640x480 flickered only little. But both #2-3 tolerated the 3-5x zoom very badly because the input resolution was so small. The zoomed-in image was too blurry and the details were lost.
4. Vertical Motion Blur didn't flicker at all. But during the zoom there was some disturbing "living" in the vertical lines. Obviously the vertical lines must be blurred, too:
5. Gaussian blur didn't flicker and the zooms were beautiful and peaceful. The Gaussian blur lost some fine detail in the zoomed-in image but the quality was very good. And the loss of fine detail is just a trade-off for the flickerless image.
In fact, I have had very similar results to #5 with Photo To Movie's High Quality setting. Also Toast's slideshows are of good quality. A lot of people have also been satisfied with Still Life and PhotoMagico.
Conclusions:
- iMovie should blur the images so they wouldn't flicker on a TV. Applying a small Gaussian blur to the input images seems like a good workaround.
- Using Photo To Movie, Toast, Still Life and PhotoMagico and other 3rd party utilities are good alternatives, too.
Sue

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Message was edited by: MBarnwell

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