Photos

[LeoR]

I am thinking of switching from a competing slide file program and will download the trial version of PTE. To be able to properly evaluate the program, I would like some advice on the quality of files I should use. I always shoot in Raw mode and convert my photos using Lightroom. I am aware that higher quality output would be using Blu-Ray but for now I will be using standard DVD output. The slide show will be viewed on a HD TV with 16:9 format.

My camera has a 4:3 format so I can create any size jpeg files such as: 1280 x 960, 1900 x 1425, 2320 x 1736 etc. These can be 180 px/inch allthe way up to 330 px/inch.

So my question is what size and resolution do you recommend for DVD output and would that change when I burn to Blu-Ray.

Thanks in advance,

Leo Reinhard

[fh1805]

If you are outputting to a HD TV at 16:9 and the TV has a USB port and an internal media player (check the specification pages of its manual), I would strongly suggest you create MP4 video files at 1920x1080, copy them onto a USB memory stick and plug that into your TV's USB port. The quality will be superior to playing off a DVD.

regards,

Peter

[LeoR]

If you are outputting to a HD TV at 16:9 and the TV has a USB port and an internal media player (check the specification pages of its manual), I would strongly suggest you create MP4 video files at 1920x1080, copy them onto a USB memory stick and plug that into your TV's USB port. The quality will be superior to playing off a DVD.

regards,

Peter

I was hoping to burn DVD discs so I could loan or give them to friends and family members to view on their TV- most of them have HD wide format TVs. In that case what size and resolution photo files would you recommend?

Also i forgot to ask-Can PTE burn to Blu-Ray media?

Leo

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Leo

I would confirm Peter's suggested size of 1920x1080 pixels, I use a quality setting of 5 or 6 in Elements 10 & good 53% in NX2, if you go much above that, you will have large file sizes, and if you intend to animate your images could have resource problems. I use version 7.07 which is the current version on sale, however once purchased you could up-grade for free to the latest beta version which I believe is 10. I don't know if you can burn Bluray but think not. If you download a trial version I don't think you can burn a DVD with it & would have to buy the De-lux version. If & when you buy PTE check the screen shots which illustrate what you can "publish" as, & what setting to use to burn a 1920x1080 DVD disc for HD TV

Yachtsman1.

[LeoR]

Hi Leo

I would confirm Peter's suggested size of 1920x1080 pixels, I use a quality setting of 5 or 6 in Elements 10 & good 53% in NX2, if you go much above that, you will have large file sizes, and if you intend to animate your images could have resource problems. I use version 7.07 which is the current version on sale, however once purchased you could up-grade for free to the latest beta version which I believe is 10. I don't know if you can burn Bluray but think not. If you download a trial version I don't think you can burn a DVD with it & would have to buy the De-lux version. If & when you buy PTE check the screen shots which illustrate what you can "publish" as, & what setting to use to burn a 1920x1080 DVD disc for HD TV

Yachtsman1.

Thanks for the reply. I have been able to burn a DVD with the trial version but I did not know if I used the optimum file sizes so that is the reason for my query.Could you please explain "check the screen shots". I am sorry for asking what may appear to be dumb questions. I am still puzzled by what size I should convert mt camera files to. Are you suggesting that I make the width to 1920 and let the height fall where it may?

Thanks,

Leo

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Leo

You need to crop your original images to 1920x1080 or an aspect ratio of 16-9. My Panasonic FZ150 can be set to take pictures of various aspect ratios which is one of the reasons I bought it. So I start off with an image of that aspect ratio 16-9. I don't know if you can do this with yours, you mention 4-3 aspect ratio which most domestic DSLR's use. With bridge cameras & high end DSLR's the aspect ratio can be changed in camera. If yours can't be set in camera, you will need to crop your images to 16-9 aspect ratio. When I used DSLR's I had to change my photography technique to compensate for my images being 4-3 & allow for cropping in processing. The other alternative is to re-size your original image but you will see a black box or black bands when viewing on a widescreen TV. Hope that is clearer.

Yachtsman1.

[davegee]

Because you are investigating BluRay, 1920x1080 (minimum) would seem to be the obvious choice. It will not have any adverse effects when burning a standard DVD.

Regarding quality: the quality setting that you use when cropping and saving will depend on a number of factors and to give a fixed quality setting is inadvisable. If you have an editing package which allows "Save For The Web" you can usually see the quality you can expect before pressing the save button. For instance, I would quite happily try to go to 60-70% quality when saving a 16 Bit RAW Conversion to JPEG with my existing camera but when saving a 16 Bit RAW conversion from an older DSLR with a "smaller" sensor I would not go below 80-90% quality.

Please bare in mind that if you are using JPEGs in-camera (as opposed to TIFF or RAW), the file has already been compressed and cropping and saving is going to degrade the image even further (to some degree!).

DG

[LeoR]

Hi Leo

You need to crop your original images to 1920x1080 or an aspect ratio of 16-9. My Panasonic FZ150 can be set to take pictures of various aspect ratios which is one of the reasons I bought it. So I start off with an image of that aspect ratio 16-9. I don't know if you can do this with yours, you mention 4-3 aspect ratio which most domestic DSLR's use. With bridge cameras & high end DSLR's the aspect ratio can be changed in camera. If yours can't be set in camera, you will need to crop your images to 16-9 aspect ratio. When I used DSLR's I had to change my photography technique to compensate for my images being 4-3 & allow for cropping in processing. The other alternative is to re-size your original image but you will see a black box or black bands when viewing on a widescreen TV. Hope that is clearer.

Yachtsman1.

Thank you Yachtsman1. Your reply definitely makes it much clearer. I just checked my camera settings and it does have several aspect ratios including 16:9. Unfortunately I had mine set to 4:3 and took all 800 + photos during my recent vacation to Germany at that ratio. I guess I will have to live with it for those 800 photos but I will experiment today with cropping some of them to 16:9 and see the result although I suspect that too much of the pictures will be cropped out.

Thanks, Leo

[LeoR]

Because you are investigating BluRay, 1920x1080 (minimum) would seem to be the obvious choice. It will not have any adverse effects when burning a standard DVD.

Regarding quality: the quality setting that you use when cropping and saving will depend on a number of factors and to give a fixed quality setting is inadvisable. If you have an editing package which allows "Save For The Web" you can usually see the quality you can expect before pressing the save button. For instance, I would quite happily try to go to 60-70% quality when saving a 16 Bit RAW Conversion to JPEG with my existing camera but when saving a 16 Bit RAW conversion from an older DSLR with a "smaller" sensor I would not go below 80-90% quality.

Please bare in mind that if you are using JPEGs in-camera (as opposed to TIFF or RAW), the file has already been compressed and cropping and saving is going to degrade the image even further (to some degree!).

DG

Thank you Dave. My camera has a 16 MB sensor so I will experiment today with the various quality settings.I was under the impression that I should save to the highest quality possible but perhaps that was wrong because the PTE rendering software would have to do a lot more resizing giving a lot more artifacts in the finished pictures ???

Thanks,

Leo

[davegee]

Leo,

There is nothing wrong with 1920x1080 and the highest quality level possible.

But it results in large project file sizes.

You can reduce the project file size by reducing the quality to a level at which you cannot see any JPEG artifacts. That's why I suggested "Save for the Web" which allows you to SEE any artifacts when viewed at 100% before saving.

If you intend to zoom into an image (or rotate) you will need to have a larger resolution image (e.g. 3840x2160 will allow a 200% zoom) and then the use of lower quality (artifact free) images is advisable.

Shooting in RAW and post processing in 16 Bit gives a lot more leeway.

DG

[cjdnzl]

Hi Leo

You need to crop your original images to 1920x1080 or an aspect ratio of 16-9. My Panasonic FZ150 can be set to take pictures of various aspect ratios which is one of the reasons I bought it. So I start off with an image of that aspect ratio 16-9. I don't know if you can do this with yours, you mention 4-3 aspect ratio which most domestic DSLR's use. With bridge cameras & high end DSLR's the aspect ratio can be changed in camera. If yours can't be set in camera, you will need to crop your images to 16-9 aspect ratio. When I used DSLR's I had to change my photography technique to compensate for my images being 4-3 & allow for cropping in processing. The other alternative is to re-size your original image but you will see a black box or black bands when viewing on a widescreen TV. Hope that is clearer.

Yachtsman1.

Just a small correction, Eric. Compacts are generally 4:3, as are the odd-ball Olympus Four Thirds system cameras. Regular DSLRs - Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, etc., specially the high end versions, are all 3:2 ratio, and I don't know any that has variable ratios. A 3:2 ratio image is 16:10.6, so a crop to 16:9 isn't all that drastic, much better than cropping a 4:3 image.

Regards,

Colin.

[LeoR]

Just a small correction, Eric. Compacts are generally 4:3, as are the odd-ball Olympus Four Thirds system cameras. Regular DSLRs - Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, etc., specially the high end versions, are all 3:2 ratio, and I don't know any that has variable ratios. A 3:2 ratio image is 16:10.6, so a crop to 16:9 isn't all that drastic, much better than cropping a 4:3 image.

Regards,

Colin.

Thank you but I belong to the "ODD BALL CLUB" with an Olympus EM5 16 MP camera.

Cheers anyway,

Leo

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Just a small correction, Eric. Compacts are generally 4:3, as are the odd-ball Olympus Four Thirds system cameras. Regular DSLRs - Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, etc., specially the high end versions, are all 3:2 ratio, and I don't know any that has variable ratios. A 3:2 ratio image is 16:10.6, so a crop to 16:9 isn't all that drastic, much better than cropping a 4:3 image.

Regards,

Colin.

Hi Colin of course you are correct, senior moment, all my past DSLR's were 3--2 aspect ratio, as are the majority of current ones, however, there are anomolies where the manufacturers are trying to get into the 21st century & offering a variety of aspect ratios, as with my FZ150 bridge & Leo's Olympus.

regards Eric

PS just joined the 7am club

Yachtsman1.