DVD Slideshow

[Mark Smith]

I am trying to generate a disk that will play in a DVD player that is composed of still images.

My images are all 208 x 320. I have tried using VCD format and have created slideshows which work on my player. However all the software I have tried leads to a loss of quality in the images when creating the mpegs.

I require that the output is exactly the same as the source images with no loss of quality or scaling. However it does not seem possible to create mpeg's for VCD without losing quality.

Does anyone know of a solution? Failing that if I bought a DVD writer is there any software that will allow me to create a perfect quality slideshow of my images that will play on a standalone DVD player?

I've tried some trial versions of software for slideshows on DVD but it turns out they all create VCD's also.

Regards,

Mark.

[Burckhard]

Hi Mark,
a NTSC-resolution for a video CD (VCD) is 352 x 240. If your image is only 320 x 208 then your image was brought to 352 x 240 and then you lost quality and your image has not the same aspect ratio, that means 352 : 240 is not equal to 320 : 208 and therefore your image is as an mpeg-file not equal to your orignal image.
Best regards Burckhard
I hope you can understand my english. I can better speak german.

[Mark Smith]

Just spotted my error, my image is 208x320. However I tried VCD Easy which allows you to do picture VCD's that have a higher resolution. I created an empty image at the higher resolution (can't remember what it is off the top of my head) and pasted one of 208x320 images into the centre.

However it seems even on maximum quality setting you always lose quality. This mightn't be so obvious for photos but the images I have are screen grabs so things like text and icons look poor in comparison to the original.

Is there not any software I can use to author DVD's just to show my images without scaling and any change in the quality from the original images?

Regards,

Mark.

[Burckhard]

Hi Mark,
I don't know if there is a program like you want.
Regards Burckhard

[Shevsound]

Mark,

You could try Cyberlink's Power Director Pro. In the disc wizard it asks you if you want to include slideshows on the disc. I tried it with a couple of wallpapers and it looked quite good.
I think youre limited to the resolution of DVD which is 576 x 520 or something.
If youre choosing VCD because of the cost - bear in mind that several new DVD players are embracing the MiniDVD format (ie DVD video on CD-R) so you could burn your discs in that format (Powerdirector also supports this).

Hope that helps.