[MacDV] Creating DVD slideshow

[Dennis R. Cohen]

On 5/16/08 at 2:43 PM, Brian Olesky <brian4 at sbcglobal.net> transmitted
the following electronic message:

>I need to create a slideshow on DVD for a friend's wedding.
>
>Is my best bet to import all 250 slides from iPhoto (plus the music)
>into iMovie '08, build it in iMovie, then export to iDVD and burn the
>DVD from there?
>
>I've used older version of iMovie, but not the latest, which I now
>have.
>
>Or is there a better way? Such as building it in iPhoto, then
>importing it as a finished product in some form into iMovie, then
>iDVD?
>
>Any other hints or tips?
>

Well, you're going to need to break it up into at least three slideshows
unless you use something like iMovie to actually turn the collection
into a single movie -- the DVD standard places a 99 image limit on a DVD
slideshow's content.

iMovie is the most flexible solution employing software you're likely to
already possess, although it also requires the most effort on your part.
Using iMovie, you can vary the duration from slide to slide if you wish,
insert titlecards or other commentary/credit, customize background
audio, and so forth. The newest version of iMovie is, imho, not the best
for this task as a number of the capabilities present in iMovieHD (i.e.
from iLife06) now require a trip to GarageBand with the movie
(customizing audio levels, setting chapters, etc.). iMovie is also the
solution that allows you to have all the images in one movie since you
aren't actually creating a slideshow, but a movie. The downside here is
that unless you do an awful lot of work setting markers, you lose the
forward/backward an image controls available to a slideshow (and then,
you still  run into limits on the number of chapters allowed).

The easiest solutions are to use either iPhoto/iDVD in combination to
make and burn your three or more slideshows or to use the companion
programs which come with Toast 7, 8, or 9 to create your slideshows and
then burn the DVD with Toast.

You can get around the 99 image limitation  for the most part by
creating the slideshows and authoring the DVD to automatically advance
to the next slideshow when one completes (but you will still lose the
slide-by-slide control at the "breaks").

-- 
Dennis R. Cohen