help please with media source moviefactory 4

shankory · Post by **shankory** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:57 am

Hi.
Last year I made my first DVD slide show. My PC became painfully slow while trying to put approx. 1,000 pics onto the slideshow, since I had them stored in my pictures. I have windows xp. This year I thought I'd put all desired pictures onto a dvd rw and then get them from that, so it wouldn't slow my PC down, but I keep getting an error message from MF saying an error has occurred and needs to shut down. This happens when I try to "add media" from the E drive (DVD). Where do people store their pics so it doesn't slow it down while you're making these DVD's?
Appreciate any input, shankory

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:04 am

How do you expect your PC to prepare these images for DVD? It will be quite a task. We don't know what sort of a PC you have or what the source files were like.

Putting the images on a DVD/CD is Not going to speed things up, on the contrary, you added another bottle neck.

shankory · Post by **shankory** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:12 am

So you're saying that you have to have all your images on your pc? You cannot get them from a cd or dvd? This wouldn't make sense as that is an option on MF. Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying. I have a compaq presario and I'm not sure what you mean by "what the source files were like".
Thanks.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:22 am

Well, what size were your images in px by px, what format? What are the project settings for the output?

I'm not saying you can't have your images on a CD. What I'm saying is that this won't speed up the process.

Your PC has to, possibly, resize all your images to make them suit the frame size of your relevant TV standard, NTSC = 720 x 480 px, PAL = 720 x 576 px. That will take time and processing power.

shankory · Post by **shankory** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:01 am

If I'm understanding how to find the size right, the size is about 677 kb and the format is jpg...I'm still learning all this stuff....not sure what the project settings for output are...do you mean NTSC? The more pics on our pc the slower it gets, so we've always stored them on cds and now recently dvds (trying to keep things less cluttered). I did weed out all the pics I dont' want to use this time, so maybe I will try making it from "my pictures" instead of from the dvd. Thanks again. shankory

Post by **Ron P.** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:52 pm

First we need to take at look at your PC (system).

Please complete your System Information found in your profile. Clicking on this button -->

will take you to the instructions on how to do that. In your case this seems to be very crucial.

Next, the size being talked about is the pixel resolution of your images. This is dependant on where you live, either in a location where PAL is the standard or NTSC for viewing television. Heinz-oz provided the correct resolutions for their specific areas. When you insert pictures into a video project, they need to be resized to a compatible resolution. If your images are say 1024 x 780 px and you want to use them in a video being produced in a PAL region, then they should be resized to 720 x 576. To do this they will need to be copied from your CD to your harddrive. You can not resize an image on your CD. Even if you don't copy them, the program such as PI or DMF does, by using Temp folders.

Also be aware that the thumbnails in DMF are just shorcut thumbnails to where the actual images are located. The program does not import the original images/clips. So if you choose to insert images from a CD or DVD, then until you complete that project you must keep the disc available in the drive. All those images/clips are going to be copied to a Temp folder if changes need to be made to them.

What I would do (and I do indeed do) is copy the images that I'm going to use to a folder on my system, example: My Documents\Vacation Slideshow. I then do any tweaking/editing of those images, such as resizing. Once I have the project completed, I can then delete the folder.

shankory · Post by **shankory** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 7:46 pm

Thanks for explaining it all out to me. I did my profile. I used Belarc's download for that, so if any info is missing, let me know. The pixels are 2304 width and 1728 height. NTSC is the tv standard here. Last night I did try doing the slideshow from "my pictures" but it had the same problem as when I tried using dvd as the media source (MF gives an error message and has to close down).
So, are you advising me to resize my pics before using the MF? How would I do this?
Thanks for your help!
shankory

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:27 pm

You need an image editor to do this. There are free ones available. Google for IrfanView.

shankory · Post by **shankory** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 10:19 am

I just wanted to send a quick thank you to those that helped me figure this out. I used Picasa to edit the size of my pictures which helped tremendously. I think adding music from other sources slows it down, but atleast it isn't locking it up and closing down. Thanks again.