[MacDV] Re: Creating Slide Shows Part II

[Chuck Kay]

Hey Guys;

I have been very successful in creating slide shows using the iApp's. 
Here is a question and some needed advice. I don't particularly care 
for the "Ken Burns" effect in iMovie. I use Gee3's "Slick Motion" to 
create pans and scans and then import the .dv files into iMovie. "Slick 
Motion" has a much better interface, it scales and displays percentages 
properly and accurately, and you can rotate the photos as well. Within 
"Slick Motion", because of the high resolution files I use, I never 
come close to scaling up to 100% of the images, much less over 100%. 
However, I still have not solved how to get smooth motion on my photos 
when I create the pans and scans. I always get "zebra patterns" or 
other artifacts when viewing the resulting .dv files on computer, 
digital video camera via firewire (Sony VX2000 and DSR250), DVD's, or 
VHS tape. I use photos from two sources: 1) scanned photos at high 
resolutions (300 dpi) or 2) my Canon 10D (6 megapixel) digital camera. 
The Canon D10 at its highest settings, uses a resolution of 180 dpi 
resulting in a file well over 3000+ x 2000+ pixels. When I import my 
photos, I use photoshop to bump the resolution up to 3 or 400 dpi 
without resampling (does not add any more pixels). Often times, I open 
up the .dv files created by "Slick Motion" in Quicktime Pro, convert 
the video track to "High Quality" and save. Then I import into iMovie.  
While this does help and enhance the quality of the .dv file, there is 
still too much of the "zebra pattern" in the resulting file. By 
contrast, when watching a slide show from within iPhoto, the photos I 
take or scan look sharp and beautiful (if I say so myself)-even the 
simple dissolve from within iPhoto looks smooth. I have used another 
slide show program in the past called Kai's Power Show that creates 
beautiful and smooth transitions. Is there any way to improve on this?  
Does Final Cut Pro do a better job of rendering .dv files from digital 
photos when creating pans and scans? I have Final Cut Pro but have not 
used it for photo slide shows. I know it can be done, because I observe 
this technique on TV broadcasts where still photos look very smooth and 
sharp using the "Ken Burns" technique. Any suggestions to help me out? 
Thanks a bunch!!!