How to create a Photo CD with transition effects & music

fruitee · Member Joined: 02 Aug 2002

With PictureToTV (http://www.picturetotv.com/photovcd.htm), you can create a photo CD with transition effects & music from you digital photos. This CD can be played on all DVD players that support playing of VCD on CD-R & CD-RW (many are). Optionally, you can also produce higher quality slideshows using the external SVCD Plugin for PictureToTV. This requires your DVD player to support SVCD playback.

1. Launch PictureToTV

2. Add your digital photos to the album by dragging your photos from
either the built-in file explorer OR windows explorer as shown.

3. You can organize your photos into multiple albums if you
wish. You can rename your albums too.

4. Next, click on the MUSIC tab (as shown) to select the music file(s)
you want to play for EACH album. After adding your music files, you
can re-arrange them using drag & drop. Your music will loop if it's shorter than the video, and will be truncated if it's longer. To avoid truncation, you can choose AUTO SYNCHRONIZE, which will then end the music & video at the same time.

5. Next, click on the EFFECTS tab (as shown) to select the transition
effect you want for EACH album. You can also select RANDOM
transition effect for your album (default).

6. Next, click on the DISC MENU tab (as shown) to configure the menu
that will be displayed when your CD is first played in your DVD
player.

7. You can select different menu templates for your CD, or modify an
existing template with your own background picture.

8. If you want a music to be played when the menu is shown, click on
CUSTOM for "Menu Music".

9. You're almost done. Before you do the final CD burning, you may
want to preview how your CD will look like when played. Click on
PREVIEW (as shown).

10. When you're satisfied, click on the BURN CD tab.

11. To burn your CD in 1 single step, simply select
"Generate new video and burn into CD", and click START.
(On WinXP, you will need to have Administrator rights to
burn CD.)

12. If you want to burn your CD later, you can choose "Generate new
video" instead. This will generate a pair of BIN/CUE files
representing the CD image. To burn this file later, you can select
"Burn existing video into CD", or use a 3rd party burner like BurnAtOnce (Freeware), NERO or CDRWIN.

Note that you need to select the right video option before burning
(NTSC or PAL). US & Japan use NTSC, while most other countries use PAL.

Also note that if your CD-Writer is not supported by PictureToTV, you
can still depend on NERO (5.5 and above) or CDRWIN to do the burning.

13. You are DONE! Pop in your newly created CD into your DVD (or VCD)
player and enjoy! (most players should work, but not all).

proton · Member Joined: 31 Jul 2001

Looks cool, pity it ain't freeware....

susie · Member Joined: 03 Oct 2001 Location: USA

Has anyone created a photoCD with PictureToTV and tried it on their APEX dvd player ?

MOVIEGEEK · Make My Day Joined: 08 Mar 2002 Location: CA,USA

Looks like UleadDVD PictureShow with transitions.
Note to Ulead:Make a transition patch.

merkin · Member Joined: 20 Jun 2002

Well I created a picture CD with this program and I was adequately pleased with the results. The pictures, music and transition effects all came out fine and at a decent standard... in fact I was pretty damn impressed with the transition effects, very cool. Pictures were a little generated compared to the originals, but not too bad (still it would be nice to get perfect results like Nero though...). The music came out perfectly, no probs there. On the down side, the menu didn't work - it appeared for a split second but then the screen blanked. The music continued to play, and luckily it hadn't 'frozen' so I could still press '1' to continue to the piccies. Also, I prefer to be able to click through pictures manually, with this you can have up to only 10 seconds per picture and then it moves on. Also, the menu editing option isn't exactly flexible which is a shame. All in all, it's got potential, but I won't be paying to get that 'evaluation copy' sign removed just yet!! Will definitely keep an eye on this though.

On a side note, does Nero use a different method to create picture CDs then other programs? I know most other programs create a movie file from the pictures, but Nero seems to keep them as jpegs I think? Anyone explain this better for me? I'm really impressed with what Nero has produced, by far the best program I have tried for doing this. I think if they develop it and add extras such as music and transition effects, it will be the best program for this. Is it true it can only have 99 pictures though? I put 105 pics in the browser and it didn't complain, but removed 6 just to be safe... wish I had tried it out now.

ZenZen · Member Joined: 03 Aug 2002

The onscreen picture-quality of this program is pathetic compared
to Ulead PictureShow. I have spent some time comparing the two.
Even better (much better onscreen picture-quality) is XATShow
from http://www.xat.com
The downside of both Ulead and XatShow is no transitions. But what are
you looking for? EyeCandy transitions or onscreen qualitiy viewing? I know what I prefer.
Having said that, XATShow's next version will have all the bells and whistles mentioned above, including transitions, etc.

PS
No I don't work for XATShow....I'm just very impressed with the end
quality of their product

mdm · Member Joined: 26 Jul 2002 Location: Salem, OR

I don't think you'll find anything that includes both transistions and the best picture quality. Nero and PictureShow display the images directly from a JPEG, and I believe the resolution is/can be up to 702x480 (or maybe 720x480). In order to do transistions, there would need to be a video file of each transistion, and that video file would have to be at the standard VCD resolution.

If PictureToTV is creating transistions playable as a VCD, then it must be creating one large MPG video for each slide show. This would also explain not being able to advance or go back to individual pictures.

EricB · Member Joined: 27 May 2001 Location: Eric

Well I think "pathetic" is too strong a word for the quality.

It would be nice if there was a choice of using a higher quality format like xSVCD with 352x480 or even DVD.

I found the music would play correctly the majority of the time, but did break up at times.

In all, I think the authors did a good job and might be able to improve this to a great product.

huiwinsun · Member Joined: 27 Aug 2000

I agree with EricB. Having started out with the most painful methods of making a photo vcd couple years ago, the main objective then was juz to make one that works, nevermind the jerks, skips, or quality (I always blame it on the player!).

Then came Nero, WinoncdPE, Pictureshow that made things easier. And the latest PicturetoTV is definitely hearing us good. And I sure in the very near future good quality & great transitions will come as standard for us photo VCD fans.

Thks.

ijt7epn · Member Joined: 07 Aug 2002

It is greate and easy to use. However, It just show about 20 pictures and then blanked though the music is still ok. Does the trial version have limitation?

EricB · Member Joined: 27 May 2001 Location: Eric

It shouldn't stop after 20. I think the only limitation in the trial version is sign on each picture showing it is an evaluation copy.

ltc044 · Member Joined: 08 Aug 2002

A newbie question:
which is the resolution / type of the scanned images that we should choose ??

If I scan printed pictures or slide films, which resolution should I try to get ?
In another guide (how to make a slide show) was stated to get very big files (over 100 MB); but on the scanner panel, what is best ?Many thanks.

roberttz@attbi.com · Member Joined: 01 Jul 2002 Location: Nashua

I just tried the xatshow.
Really nice product.
I have yet to check out picture quality on my DVD player.
Howerver the PC slide show is excellent with nice transitions.
I believe there are no transitions in the VCD version.
I loved the picture enhancer and cropping feature.
It just needs a text field to add titles

thunes · Member Joined: 03 Oct 2001 Location: .no

But does any of the programs save the pictures in full quality.. ?
Lets say, I lend out my photo CD to a guy which wants to have a copy of some pictures. Will he be able to retrieve the pictures from the CD in full quality ?

ZenZen · Member Joined: 03 Aug 2002

>>Lets say, I lend out my photo CD to a guy which wants to have a copy >>of some pictures. Will he be able to retrieve the pictures from the CD >>in full quality ?

Well why not simply include the original jpegs on the CD as well ???
Besides having your pics converted to a Digital Slide Show, you can also
archive the original pics (jpegs, bmps, etc) onto CD. Blanks are cheap enough these days. Ulead Picture Show actually offers this option (if you download the upgrade patch from the Ulead site).

roberttz@attbi.com · Member Joined: 01 Jul 2002 Location: Nashua

thunes,
PictureToTV has a toggle which will create PHOTO folder with all the originals.

Robert

mixsurround · Member Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Location: Philippines

anyone knows how to create avcd

thanks

docfly · Member Joined: 10 May 2001

Another program that I stumbled upon in ComUSA that creates slideshows is called DVD PhotoPlay. Check it out at http://www.v-com.com/product/dp_ind.html. Have not tried it but my uncle might try it out real soon. It got my attention because it says/implies on the box and on the web site that it can also burn your Powerpoint presentations to be played on your dvd player. But then on the web site it mentions that you can Import PowerPoint presentation slides. Not sure if it can actually create a slide show from a PP presentation. That would be cool. I am sure that it can use individuall slides prom PP. Has anyone tried this program? No demo on the web site.

nick101181 · Posted: Aug 14, 2002 20:22

Just wondering, Do you have to resize your pics for photo cd's? I've done plenty of vcd and caps and etc etc, but never a photo cd. Just wondering cause I got some huge 800X600 pics and etc etc.

MOVIEGEEK · Make My Day Joined: 08 Mar 2002 Location: CA,USA

jdn · Member Joined: 15 Aug 2002

Well why not simply include the original jpegs on the CD as well ???
Besides having your pics converted to a Digital Slide Show, you can also
archive the original pics (jpegs, bmps, etc) onto CD. Blanks are cheap enough these days. Ulead Picture Show actually offers this option (if you download the upgrade patch from the Ulead site).[/quote]

With this option (having both a VCD slide show and the original jpeg files on the CD), has anyone seen this on a DVD player that can play jpeg's directly, like the Apes AD-1100W (see detaile on this site)? How would the quality compare? What playback functionality might one format provide over the other?

jdn · Member Joined: 15 Aug 2002

Oops.

Let me try to fix that quote...

alpha314 · Member Joined: 22 Aug 2002

I was tried PicturetoTV, it is easy and good program, but the problem is -- it can not burn on CD.
I had three good PC with good CD-RW with Nero and easy CD program, but this program was refused burn anything into CD.
Is anyone know how to PicturetoTV burn on CD ?
Is there other Photo on TV program ( it can make tansition effect, put into many music and muen) ?
Thank you.

John
alpha314@hotmail.com

bayee · Member Joined: 28 Aug 2002

John, you can use Nero to burn the resulting BIN/CUE image generated by PictureToTV. See their FAQ.

talami · Member Joined: 17 Oct 2002

I tested PictureToTv. Handy tool, but the output quality is a disaster. Maybe the price to pay for the transitions.
I would rather recommand Ulead Picture Show. No transition effects, but much better quality picture : I only tried in VCD mode and I would say the quality is closed to Hi8.
_________________
Tatami

plk · Member Joined: 29 Sep 2002

I recently purchased Magix Pictures to CD & DVD. I’m very pleased with the results, you can add music or wav files, it has 10 transition effects. I liked the idea of adding my own narration on my picture show. The only bad thing is they don’t offer a demo to try the product out.

jpedpilot · Member Joined: 05 Nov 2002

I have a new RCA DRC500N DVD Player.
36 inch TV
Tried Uleads program first - easy to use, no transistion effects, good CD burns, but the music (mp3 files) were choppy. And the image files began to get distorted after the first 10 files or so...
Tried several times - all with the same results.
Tried PictureToTV, versions 1.01 and 1.2. Picture quality seems much better to me. The menu popped up and the music began without a problem. But when I pressed a menu option (1 or 2 etc), the screen would just go blank with no music.... Pressing PAUSE, then PLAY would reset to the Menu screen and music...
Tried several times - same result.
Used Nero 5.54 to burn from image file .cue
PictureToTV CD plays fine on my computer's DVD player. Again quality seems better than Ulead..

Tried xatshow with about 200 pictures and music (.wav) and that works fine, picture quality was good too. Music was clean, no skipping. Pictures got choppy for about 30 seconds, but then cleaned up again.
No menu feature for the TV though:(
It just auto-plays one song and one set of pictures..

jpedpilot · Member Joined: 05 Nov 2002

Still having problems with this..
My brand new DVD player will play VCD movies great, but not the Picture VCDs...
Every program I try! Ulead, PictureToTV, etc.
Most will load fine, but the music and pictures become choppy at times - a bit annoying.
PictureToTV won't load at all on the DVD Player for my TV - it seems to play, but the screen is blank. If I hit pause and then play, it'll reload the main menu. I've been using the menu without music (incase that was the problem). The VCDs I create work fine on my computer DVD player though - at least better.
I'm using Nero 5.54 to burn and my burner is a USB Iomega 4x speed. I've tried burning at 2x and 4x.
I've been burning for NTSC (USA), my DVD player says it won't support PAL.
Any thoughts on this?? I think I need to try my disks on some different DVD players... HELP