DVD Slideshow

Question

Hi
I have created a slideshow in iPhoto & exported to iDVD. I then burned to DVD, however when I watch on a TV or through computer DVD player the following occurs:
1. Pictures do not fit on screen and titles are only half visible;
2. The picture transition effects are not as per the original;
3. Picture quality is reduced - very poor compared to originals.
Any suggestions how to improve any of above?
Many thanks.

Answer 1

melzandsi:
That's to be expected because of the "overscan" that's created when playing a movie file on a TV. That's been with us for a long, long time. iDVD can scale individual image files to the TV Safe area but not movies.
If you can live without the KB effect you can import the stills into iDVD, add a transition, titles and comments and music. With the Scale photo's to the TV Safe area option selected the titles and comments will be visible on the TV screen. This way, IMO, also creates sharper images as the photos undergo encoding/compression only once instead of twice.
If you really need to have the iPhoto slideshow and have Quicktime Pro there's a way you can scale the movie to fit in the TV Safe area, place it against a black movie of the same length and combine the two. It takes some work but can be done.
Masking Movies to the TV Safe Area for iDVD
The mask should be 640 x 480 pixels and the movie 514 x 386 (I arrived at this figure by making a snapshot of the TV save area of an iDVD project with Snapz). You can set this size after you’ve joined it with the mask movie with Quicktime Player Pro.
Import the black mask jpg file into iMovie and and export it as a .mov file at the same length as your movie (there may be a way to not have to create a specific length mask for each movie but I haven't found it. If the times do not match the movie file will be synced to the length of the mask movie).
Open the mask movie in QT Player Pro and then open your regular movie and make it the front window of the two. Now you'll need to run a QT Player AppleScript titled "Merge Movie 1 into Movie 2". You can get it from this Apple site: Quicktime Player Scripts.
Then run the script. You can then run the merged movie to check it out. Your movie will be located in the upper lefthand corner of the window when played.
When you open the Movie Properties window from the Window menu for the combined file you’ll see the following:
Video Track 1: the black mask
Video Track 2 : you movie file
Tween track: Have no idea what this is.
Sound track: self explanaotry
Black mask.
To set the size of your movie to the correct size select it in the Properties window and click on Visual Settings pane. Then enter 514 in the first field and hit enter. With the Preserve Aspect Ration box checked the other size will automatically be set.
To center the video track in the center of the mask select the Video Track 2 item and plug in a offset of about: 60 & 40. You'll probably have to play with that to fine tune the centering. Doing the math and subtracting the movie dimensions from the mask dimensions and dividing by two just didn't get it perfectly centered. I'm sure I'm missing something here.
Now save as a new self contained movie after checking the High Quality box at the bottom right.
You can not import it into iDVD for preview and burning. One drawback is that you can't invoke the TV save area for a movie in iDVD to check it out. But you can mark it on the monitor screen while viewing a menu or slideshow and then play the movie to see how close you came.