Advice for a new user

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Advice for a new user

Postby chadman » Sat Nov 21, 2015 2:48 pm

Hello! I have used Proshow Producer version 7 to make a video of all of my digital pictures. I use a 55” 1080P LED TV as a large active picture frame to play the video from Proshow. I’m looking for some advice on how to get the best picture quality for a show with over 8000 pictures.
Here is what I did.
1. Copied all the pictures to a folder
2. Re-sized all of them to 1920 X1080
a. Used Infranview
i. Save quality was 80%
ii. Kept aspect ratio
iii. Used resample function for better quality
3. I tried to make one long show with Proshow, but it kept crashing with memory errors so I ended up having to make 4 shows with around 2000 pictures each.
4. Exported to an .mp4 in 1080P
5. Took the 4 shows and used Adobe Premiere to make one long show
So this seemed to work great, but I wonder if I could have done something better. One thing I noticed is Proshow’s output was just over 5 gigs per 2000 slides with an .mp4. When I combined them in Adobe I expected the total show to be around 20 gigs for the 4 files. Instead it was around 160 gigs with the .mp4 file. I tried to use the Proshow setting “Video for Archiving and Editing” but it would always seem to crash before the show would finish.

So what can I do to make the quality of my show better? Disk space is not an issue. I also have a nice computer with 32gig ram/ 5960X processor running at 4.2ghz. Any setting I should have changed that might help?

Thanks, Chad

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Re: Advice for a new user

Postby gpsmikey » Sun Nov 22, 2015 3:27 pm

I have not done one anywhere near that size, however a couple of things come to mind. First, I tend to use a bit higher quality when saving jpgs (90 or better). You don't indicate exactly what you mean by "making the quality better", but if you are talking more detail/sharper, you may very well be running into aliasing which happens when you look at the grid of the tv pixels through the grid of the camera pixels - you can get some very strange patterns if things are too sharp (if you are not familiar with that issue take a look at this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing - especially the comments about "spatial aliasing") The next thing that comes to mind is that unless all those images are being combined into some sort of time-lapse video, there is no way you are going to get people to sit through an 8,000 slide show (or even a 2,000 slide show). You don't say just how you are playing the show, but what I do these days is put the mp4 on a usb flash drive and plug it right into the TV - most of the newer TV's can play direct from a flash drive (makes life easier). You might want to give Photodex support a call tomorrow - I think you are going where most people have never been before with 8,000 slides (even with the 2,000) - most shows tend to be under 2-300 slides, which at 3 seconds/slide gives you about 15 minutes. Even 2,000 slides would be over an hour or so - unless you are passing out those chocolate covered espresso beans, your audience is going to fall out of their chairs typically.

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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Re: Advice for a new user

Postby chadman » Sun Nov 22, 2015 7:08 pm

Thanks Mikey! This of this more of a picture frame and not a movie you force your friends to watch for 13 hours its on :D The slide show runs on the tv 24/7. I'm going to go back to the .jpg's and resize again, but use 100 instead of 80%. I dont mind breaking up the slide shows into smaller sizes and using Adobe Premeire to combine them. I was just suprised Proshow was not able to do this. I would understand if I hit the 4gig 32 bit limit, but it normally would crash with a memory error at about 2 gig after runnign for a couple hours. When I run Adobe it runs up to 25+ gig in memory and will bring my processor up to 100%. Proshow seems to cap the CPU at around 20%, but wont go higher.

Also the text on irfranview had a check box is called "Resample (better quality)". I was not sure what it meant either, but checked it since it said "(better quality").

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Re: Advice for a new user

Postby gpsmikey » Sun Nov 22, 2015 10:34 pm

I'm not sure exactly how the memory usage works with Proshow, but the 4GB file size limit is typically only if you are still running FAT32 for the file system on your disk. If you are running NTFS, then the limit is much larger - from the wikipedia article on NTFS - The maximum theoretical file size on NTFS is 16 EB (16 × 10246 or 264 bytes) minus 1 kB or 18,446,744,073,709,550,592 bytes. With Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, the maximum file size implemented is 256 TB minus 64 KB or 281,474,976,645,120 bytes so even with your 8,000 slides, you should be safe there. That said, I would talk to Photodex - there is also the .pxc working file that Proshow creates/uses and that may also be getting you. If you are interested, here is the wikipedia article I mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS I should add that Proshow is still a 32 bit app in spite of the number of us that have pressured them to build a 64 bit version :evil:

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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Re: Advice for a new user

Postby chadman » Mon Nov 23, 2015 3:59 am

I'll give them a call and see. I was referring to the memory used on the application, not the file size it can create. I was just surprised to see a 32 bit video editing application.

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Re: Advice for a new user

Postby gpsmikey » Mon Nov 23, 2015 7:43 am

The thing to keep in mind is that Proshow is NOT a "video editing application" (although lots of people would like that feature added - personally, I prefer a video editor as a separate application). It is a slide show creation program that can output video. If you are going to do much with video, I would suggest something like Sony Movie Studio, or Premiere elements etc. Those will let you do all sorts of things with the video that you can't begin to do in Proshow. For my own use, I have Sony Vegas Movie Studio Suite (as well as an older version of Sony Vegas Pro) for working with video (and those are 64 bit apps) and several audio editing programs (Audition 3 etc.). If you try to put too many features (video editing, audio editing, slide show creation) into one application, you end up with bloatware that does not do anything well (except use memory). Typically, when I have been working with video segments (back when I was doing a video for the kids soccer teams etc.), I would create the slideshow in segments, output those segments in uncompressed avi files then go into my video editor, put those pieces together as well as other video clips I had from other parents etc, do some additional tweaking then create a DVD from that. It worked quite well although those uncompressed avi files can get big fast (even though I have about 10 TB spinning behind me) !!

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

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