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Hello I am new to the forum and was wondering if you could help I have been enjoying making slideshow with video studio 11+ but was wondering if there was any way you can remove the black bars that appear on the final slideshow on a dvd especially on photos that are displayed on a portrait setting they have wide black bars either side of the image.

Thanks pink

The problem is that, of course, a video frame in a DVD is a fixed size (e.g. 720 x 576 in PAL and 720 x 480 in NTSC). And this can't be changed, so the only thing you can do is change the photo. Your options are limited. With a landscape photo whose size does not meet the 4:3 or 16:9 ratio, you will inevitably have black lines above and below. You could edit the photos in a photo editing program to ensure they are exactly 4:3 or 16:9. Or in VS you could apply the Crop filter.

But this is virtually impossible when the photo is in portrait mode. You could edit/crop it but that would result in only a small fraction of the centre or main point of interest in the photo being used to fit the 4:3 or 16:9 format.

But if you don't like the 'basic black' background, you can of course set any colour you like in File > Preferences > General, and second from top, is 'Background Color' where you can choose the colour you want.

Many Photos don't fit a TV screen properly due to one or more things such as the TV overscan area - also known as the TV safe area - so you can lose the tops of heads and the bottoms of feet. Also as you have discovered you can get black bars on the tops, bottoms and / or sides.

A good way round this which also adds life to the slideshow is to employ the "Ken Burns" effect.

Here is how I do it....
See This link
And this link

Click here for an example video (wait for the adverts to finish first!!)

Thanks very much for your replies and advice. It seems then that in portrait mode this is the way the photo will end up, so as i now know this is how it is i can get back to trying to be creative and enjoy myself.

Many thanks again

Oh and by the way great forum very helpful and lots of interesting thing to look at read and learn from