Making a DVD NTSC slide show of some Christmas pix. Opening photo is outside of house with snow on the ground. It's in vertical orientation (taller than it is wide). To show the entire house photo results in a video image of the house with black areas on the left and right of the photo. No problem.
As it fades in from black, thought it would be cool to have actual snow falling over the photo. Fine, fired up Cool 3D PS and made a particle overlay avi file of 720x480 of snow falling.
I insert snow avi into overlay track #1 over house photo. Of course, since the house photo is not 720 wide, the snow also falls into the black (border?) area outside the house photo. No problem. I just adjust the overlay avi so that it's the same dimensions as the house photo. Okay, the snow looks a little too distorted that way.
So, I return the overlay avi back to it's original 720x480 size and insert a black jpg into overlay track #2 to cover the snow on the left side of the photo. Insert same black jpg into overlay track #3 to cover the snow on the right side of the photo. (Creating a two track, pseudo mask?) For the most part, it works. In the preview window it looks great (doesn't it always?). When I render it, though, there is snow falling just outside the left and right edges of the house photo. Not much, but enough to be noticeable. The pseudo mask idea works, but not 100% for some reason.
Been moving the black jpgs in overlay track #s 2 & 3 more and more onto the photo, but when I render each version it doesn't seem to make any difference. What am I not seeing here to fix it? Just want the snow to fall on the photo and not outside of it.
Summary . . .
Video track: House photo (and other images)
Overlay #1: Snow particle avi
Overlay #2: Black jpg covering the area left of the photo
Overlay #3: Black jpg covering the area right of the photo
Appreciate any suggestions!
LGO
P.S. - Think it would matter since I did not resize the house photo, leaving it in it's original 3000 x 4000 file size?