Wow, you are still with me?
So now you are trying your own restorations and you are getting really good at it compared to when you started. You are watching YouTube videos and the wonderful Understanding Photoshop Podcast available on iTunes and you're feeling pretty good.
Now what? How about those DVD slide shows? Hmmm?
Guess what, a lot of the new DVD players will allow you to put in a picture CD or DVD and it will automatically do a slide show for you. Pretty cool.
If you want something fancier, you can buy a program called Roxio that allows you to easily pick out pictures and music to make a slide show.
Use DVD-R...for some reason it works better than DVD+R in the war to find the best DVD format that was carried out in the great competition for the winning format that was carried out by folks that make these things. I don't know why one works better than the other, but it does. This is tried and true information over a bunch of years doing slideshows for customers.
They don't have to be very long...in fact people will not sit down and watch anything longer than 5-10 minutes. 100 or less slides works great. 3 seconds is about all anyone can stand. The music needs to fit the length of the show and the transitions should be smooth. You can do lots of wipes and crazy stuff, but it won't make any difference to the people watching the show.
For those of you who are old enough to remember slide shows with a projector and a long winded person talking about their wonderful vacation while the bulb burned out at least once during the presentation. Waiting for the bulb to be replaced was just about the time I lost complete interest in any slide show. It's kind of like an Amway presentation. Feed me dinner first, though.
Roxio is easy to use and I like the express DVD portion where the slide show automatically starts when you put it into the DVD player and loops and loops and loops....great for putting it into the TV on holidays when the family comes over for dinner. There are lots of other programs...windows has a wonderful one too. Don't be intimidated by these programs. You just need to know that you have to convert the slideshow into DVD format at some point or else you cannot see them in all DVD players. Just follow along and you will get it. There are always user guides that you can buy from amazon.com or booksamillion.com. You will get some seat time while you learn these but you can do it. Then, people will want to see your pictures because they know that they are not painful.
Next time...YouTube to the rescue.
