Odysseus

Thanks to everyone for all their help: it’s saved me a great deal of time and provided much-needed clarification. Re various points / posts: @ Ken Cox: Nothing to do with black bars. I’ve been a writer and journalist for almost 50 years and never in that time have authored myself, or encountered from anyone else, a first draft of any nature -- be it a novel, an essay, a thesis or even a shopping list -- that’s perfect. Every creative effort can be improved upon. Ditto photography. I’ve been a hobbyist for almost 50 years, too, and with the advent of digital, swapped the darkroom for Photoshop post-processing, where out-of-camera images are the equivalent of first draft texts: to be edited, re-composed, re-thought and reviewed. I tried shooting originals in 16:9 widescreen but from the outset it seemed to me that this aspect ratio makes for a poor and unnecessarily restrictive first draft: 4:3’s image acreage is far more suited to widescreen cropping and, thus, image re-composition. But each to his / her own. @ davegee: That’s it: 1920x1080. Exactly the info I needed. Sincere thanks; your thoughtful notes re TVs are also much appreciated. Best of all though is the relief that stems from the newfound knowledge that no, resolution doesn’t matter. @ PGA: Really good advice, Peter: I’ll do a test run with DVDs and see what happens -- I have Panasonic players running DVD-R through Sony widescreens. (As for the maximum number of images in a project: doh. You’re absolutely right: the limiting factor is the standard DVD’s capacity. I suppose I could burn a double layer DVD now or even try Blu-Ray.) @ yachtsman: Will hither to the tutorials section now. Thanks for the heads-up.

My wife and I are retired now and are fortunate enough to be able to travel a lot. On those travels, we take two pocket-sized cameras: her Panasonic Lumix TZ3 and my Panasonic Lumix TZ25. The average TZ3 image file size is around 3.2Mb; the average TZ25 image file size is around 5Mb. Both cameras are used in 4:3 mode and output is sifted through afterwards for the best shots. These are then post-processed in Photoshop CS2 and cropped to widescreen 16:9. (Originals are never shot in widescreen for fairly obvious reasons.) I loved the Ken Burns Effect in Microsoft’s wonderful Photo Story, and learning how to use it in PTE is something I’ll be rehearsing thanks to the helpful videos this forum has flagged up, but right now my greatest concern is in trying to get some clarification of the following -- lengthy questions, for which I apologise now, but which to expert PTErs here will likely produce wry smiles and simple answers (hopefully): 1) What image dimensions should ideally be used for creating slideshows intended to be output to DVD video and watched on large screen televisions? I won't be using PTE to make executables, just for DVDs to be shared with friends on home TVs; 2) Image resolution. The subject is so complex that I hesitate to even get into it, seeing as how I’ve become bewildered by the sheer number of explanations on the internet of what-it-is and what-it-isn’t. Suffice to say Photoshop CS2 reports the out-of-camera image specs on my wife’s TZ3 as Pixel Dimensions 20.3M, width 3072 pixels / height 2304 pixels, document size 42.67 inches / height 32 inches, resolution: 72 pixels / inch, and the out of camera image specs of my own TZ25 as Pixel Dimensions 34.3M, pixel width 4000 pixels / height 3000 pixels, document size 22.22 inches / height 16.67 inches, resolution: 180 pixels / inch. There seems to be a massive difference in the output of the two cameras -- or is this just an anomaly caused by the way Photoshop is representing the image information? I’ve no idea. All I can think of is that the greater the wealth of detail in an image, the better it is when zooming. So: is there an “ideal resolution” which other Picturestoexe users employ themselves for slideshows to be output to DVD for screening on home television? 3) Finally: maximum number of images in one project. I guess the answer is that the maximum number depends entirely on the sizes of the images used, so I suppose this question might be better articulated as “maximum number of high definition / high quality images in a Picturestoexe slideshow project”. Sorry to have rambled on here but getting my head around image requirements is a key step for me: I don’t simply want to “load up” some pix and hope for the best but then be disappointed afterwards with the result. * PS: I’m a Microsoft Photostory émigré, as may’ve been gathered. Sadly, I haven’t used PS for a few years now and have forgotten all the workarounds I used to have to laboriously undertake in order to make functional a software designed in an era of 4:3 monitors when the home DVD player was still to be invented. I have only recently discovered PTE and am treading hesitantly here . . .