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I want to know what is the ideal format, for the best quality and smallest size for a screensaver project. The screensaver software I am using to make a screensaver from a movie that I created in Ulead (-Videostudio 11) is telling me to start with a .wmv movie because it is most standard on all computers.
In Ulead, my movie was created from about 40 frame PICTURES (not from film), and to each of these pictures I have added an ANIMATED TEXT (which is "I love you" in 40 different languages...). I first "rendered" these pics + texts, + a music MP3 track and that gave me an AVI movie of 1 GB (!)...
Then, because, there is only 1 "track/line" to add text/titles in the Ulead program, I added the main "sub-title" (which is the name of my website, as a "logo", which is "fillyourheart.com") at the bottom of my movie...

After receiving advice from the screensaver software company (=Screensaver factory pro 4) to render in .wmv instead of mpeg2 for example, the Ulead options ".WMV Broadband" had a very low quality output, and the ".WMV HD 720 30p" gave me a smaller frame movie and with my bottom title (fillyourheart.com) was going over the borders at the bottom of the frame... I tried last to render in the ".WMV HD 1080 30p" option, which was very slow to do, and which gave me still a 288 MB file!

I tried to get help from Screensaver Factory, who are very kind, but they have no experience in making screensaver with a movie only and entirely; I could have start the whole project in their program but could not have created any animated text then (unless learning about and adding Flash animations); also I was told that to get such a big file at the end just from images, it was not sounding very reasonable to them...

So, what should I do ? getting another software than Ulead ? trying every "share" option still in Ulead (below:)
-DV:
-NTSC DV (4:3)
-NTSC DV (16:9)

-DVD,VCD, SVCD, MPEG:
-NTSC DV (4:3)
-NTSC DV (16:9)
-NTSC VCD
-NTSC SVCD
-NTSC MPEG1 (352X240 ,29.97 fps)
-NTSC MPEG1 (720x480 ,29.97 fps)

-WMV:
-WMV HD 1080 30p
-WMV HD 720 30p
-WMV Broadband (320x240, 30 fps)
-Pocket PC WMV (320x240, 15 fps)
-WMV Zune (320x240, 30 fps)
-WMV Zune (640x480, 30 fps)*

Plus, If I chose the last option at the bottom which is *"Custom"*, this is what shows as one more option, I guess, in the 'after- save opening window':

*Save as type: Windows Media Video (*.wmv,".asf)
[Save options:
Windows Media Video
24 bits, 208 x 160, 20 fps
Frame-based
22.050 KHz, 16 bits, Stereo
Windows Media Video 8 for Color Pocket PCs (225 Kbps)]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... or is there another way to start in Ulead, with pictures, music and more than one title in all, with less size than a 1 GB .AVI file ??...

Thank you so much for your help !

I've never made a screensver, and I don't think I've ever seen a "movie" screen saver, so I don't know what kind of quality you can expect.

It's usually best to do all of your editing in DV/AVI format, rather than a more-compressed format. When you're done, you can re-render to your desired format.

Does the screensaver software use your video file as-is, or does it re-render to a different format? Maybe it will accept the DV/AVI file and compress it? If it's going to directly use your without converting it, you'll probably have to choose a WMV setting that's in-between "broadband quality" and HD.

The file size* is determined by the bitrate... Quoting myself:

DVDdoug wrote:Higher bitrate = higher quality = bigger file size = lower compression = less playing time. (I've seen still images, and I've seen animated graphics that are generated on-the-fly.)

Lower bitrate = lower quality = smaller file size = higher compression = more playing time.

The quality-loss with lower bitrates shows-up with motion. So, with a series of still pictures (like a slide show) you can get-away with lower bitrates. The quality-loss usually shows-up during transitions, and in your case the animated text may be degraded too.

...gave me a smaller frame movie and with my bottom title (fillyourheart.com) was going over the borders at the bottom of the frame...

I don't understand why that happened.


* File Size in MB = (Bitrate in kbps x Playing Time in minutes) / 140
(Use the combined audio & video bitrates.)

I have to say that in all my years on this Forum, this is the very first time I have *ever* heard of someone making a screensaver from a movie!

I have no idea what formats your screensaver program works in, and that would be important to know before giving any advice... Is there anything in its Manual or Help files which might give details?

Also, you say you have 40 images in the timeline with the titles and music and logo etc. But how long do you have each image playing for? I mean, if you just insert an image it will normally only play for whatever time is set in File > Preferences > Edit as the default. I can't recall what this default normally is, but suspect it is only a couple of seconds. I normally changed this to 6 for a slideshow (which is what in effect you are making -- which is then converted to the screensaver...) You might want to think about that before you go much further too.

Finally, it is clear you have made an uncompressed AVI. They are HUGE! On average, they will consume about 65 GB for one hour of video or more. So in fact, unlike your software company, I am not at all surprised that your AVI took up 1 GB -- depending on how long it runs. I have a program, for instance, called Bluff Titler which makes excellent animated titles which I insert in my Video Studio projects. It too produces uncompressed AVIs, and with my High Definition sized ones, it takes 1 GB for a 12 second title!

Thank you for trying to help me.
As I could not add animated text really over my pictures to make a screensaver of with Screensaver Factory (from Blumentals.net), I loaded my 40 original images into Ulead, added the transitions (fade in effect the same for the whole project) and to match my piece of music that is about 5 minutes long, I made every picture lasting 8 seconds each...

For what I understood from Blumentals.net support, their screensaver takes any format of movie but they advised me to use a .wmv movie just because most of computer will be able to play it in their windows player, but like I explained before only the .wmv HD 1080 in ulead gave me a good quality output but with 288 MB of size; the other .wmv HD option in Ulead was giving me also a nice quality but the frame of my movie got divide by 2 but not my bottom title, which background was going over the borders of the movie frame at left and right... (although its size got much smaller than 288 MB)...

I'm wondering, maybe I should have rendered only once my images in Ulead with transitions + music + animated texts only, + a logo/main subtitle (=name of my website) made as an "overlay" (?), although I still don't know in WHICH FORMAT, and then, OR:taking that first rendered movie (without the name of my website other title) into the Screensaver Factory program and then make the bottom title/logo in it, as I can add one text with it also.

Any more thought to help me would be greatly appreciated,
Kind regards,
Patrice.

I think that the Screensaver Factory softw. uses the images, or in my case only video as is indeed. I was told by Blumentals.net that I should use a .wmv movie just for the reason that it will open easily on most computers... You say to chose a quality between Wmv Broadband and HD Wmv, which one/how do I do this in my Ulead, please ?

I started in SS Factory with a movie, instead of directly and only my original images, for I liked to have these animated texts that are pretty neat and easy to do in Ulead first, which the screensaver softw. doesn't allow me doing... I'm wondering if I lost a lot more of the original .avi movie quality because I had to render twice in Ulead: a first time for the animated texts, then from the resulting movie (that I rendered in mpeg2), I had to render a 2nd time after adding my website name at the bottom... do you think I should better render only once ? that would mean, replacing the bottom title by an image, maybe with the overlay process (that by the way never used yet, sounds a little difficult to understand for me) in Ulead and then I would add it instead within Screensaver Factory ?...
Thanks again,

I'm wondering, maybe I should have rendered only once my images in Ulead with transitions + music + animated texts only, + a logo/main subtitle (=name of my website) made as an "overlay" (?), although I still don't know in WHICH FORMAT, and then, taking that movie into the Screensaver Factory and making the bottom title/logo in it, as it is possible...

Any more thought to help me would be greatly appreciated,
Kind regards,
Patrice.

You say to chose a quality between Wmv Broadband and HD Wmv, which one/how do I do this in my Ulead, please ?

I can't tell you what setting to use, because I don't know much about WMV files, and I don't know anything about your file size requirements, the playing-time of your video, or what kind of quality you are looking for.

You can find more WMV options with the following menu/selection sequence:

- Share
- Create Video File
- Custom
- WMV
- Options
- Profile

- If you then click on the profile-drop-down arrow, you will see several options, and most of these will show you the bitrate, so you can get an idea of the file size/quality.