[MacDV] Slide show approach

[Dominion Market Research]

>I have successfully transfer video tapes to DVD format and achieved 
>good results. Now I am getting set to transfer a large number of 35 
>mm slides to a DVD for a slide show. Before I get too far down this 
>road I feel that I should get some comments and suggestions on the 
>approach I have in mind.
>
>I plan on creating the slide show in iMovie HD and iDVD 5.0. I will 
>be adding sound to the slide presentation. I am scanning the slides 
>at 300 dpi and saving in the TIFF format. I then open them in 
>Photoshop CS2 and perform color corrections because some of these 
>slide are 45 to 50 years old. I then save them in the Photoshop 
>format and will eventually create an album for iPhoto and them 
>insert into iMovie. The image size of the scans are the same as the 
>size of the original slides. Does this sound like a reasonable 
>approach or should the scan resolution be increased?
>
>Jim

Jim,

Let me say right up front I don't claim to have much knowledge of the 
subject and asked a much more experienced person for advice before 
diving into a production that used about 300 stills. Most of mine 
were photos, but some were slides.

The advice I got was to not think in terms of dpi, but pixel width. I 
was advised that anything under 720 wide should be avoided. Any 
pictures which I planned to zoom in on were saved at a multiple of 
720 depending on the amount of zoom.

I scanned all my photos at 300 dpi because many of them were also 
going to be used in print. The video version of each was adjusted to 
720/1440/2160/2880/etc. pixels wide. At that point I was not paying 
any attention to dpi. I was satisfied with the results. The pictures 
I used from other persons, that were less than 720, are noticeable.

I know there are people on the list who understand this better than I 
and who have lots more experience, but the above worked for me.

Ross Hunter
Orange, VA
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