Photodex ProShow: Visual QuickStart Guide

Putting It Out There

167

Creating Shows for DVDs and Blu-ray Discs

Creating Shows for DVDs

and Blu-ray Discs

CDs and DVDs are popular output choices

for slide shows.  ey can be played on any

TV with a DVD player or on most computers,

giving you the greatest amount of  exibility.

Aside from the obvious advantage of space—

a DVD has the capacity to hold 4.7 GB of data

compared with 700 MB for a CD—using a

DVD for your output o ers other bene ts.

 anks in part to its better transfer rates, a

DVD allows for much higher image resolu-

tion and therefore more detail when viewed

onscreen. Table 8.1 shows the di erent reso-

lutions supported by the various DVD and

CD formats.

Another limitation to consider with CD is the

playback rate. It will be di cult to keep your

transitions and music in sync, so it’s impor-

tant to presize your images and simplify the

transitions and layers.

DVDs

To create a DVD, begin by clicking the Create

Output button in the toolbar and choosing

DVD, or choose Create > DVD. If you haven’t

saved your show yet, you’ll be prompted to do

so before you can create the DVD.  e Create

DVD dialogs in ProShow Gold (Figure 8.2)

and ProShow Producer (Figure 8.3) di er

only slightly. ProShow Producer adds two

tabs to the dialog: Branding, which was cov-

ered in Chapter 6, and Color, which lets you

set color management options by applying

speci c pro les for your show.

Figure 8.2 ProShow Gold offers the same output

options as ProShow Producer but eliminates the

Branding and Color tabs.

Figure 8.3 ProShow Producer adds options to use

color management for your shows and to brand

them with a custom startup screen, an icon, and

status text.

Media Resolution

VCD 352 x 240

DVD 720 x 480

Blu-ray 1920 x 1080

Image Resolutions on Disc

Table 8.1

continues on next page

Chapter 8

168

Creating Shows for DVDs and Blu-ray Discs

When you open the Create DVD dialog,

you’ll see the Menu tab. In the preview panel,

the  rst slide in your show will appear as a

thumbnail, along with the slide’s title place-

holder.  e  rst step is to change the name

to something that suits the show. In Figure

8.4, I’ve changed the name of this show to

Bodie (a ghost town in the Sierra Nevada of

California).

You’ll need to decide whether your show will

use a wide-screen aspect ratio or the stan-

dard TV ratio. Wide-screen, with an aspect

ratio of 16:9, is the default and, when shown

on a high-de nition TV or wide-aspect com-

puter monitor, will  ll the screen completely.

 e 4:3 TV aspect ratio is a better option if

you know the show will not be viewed on a

high-de nition TV.

At the lower left of the Create DVD dialog,

you’ll see the size bar letting you know

whether you have enough space on the

media for your show (Figure 8.5).

Use the Shows tab to add shows to or remove

shows from the DVD (Figure 8.6). To add a

show, click the plus (+) button and navigate

to the show you want to add. Once the show

has been added, you can change the order by

using the up and down arrows.  e size bar

will update to indicate the amount of space

now in use by all the DVD content.

For this show, I’ve also added a custom intro

show that consists of a single title slide (see

Chapter 6 for details on making an intro

show).

Figure 8.4 Be sure to change the name of your show,

if you haven’t already, to something more meaningful

than Untitled.

Figure 8.5 The size bar indicates how much space

your show will be using on the selected media. In

this example, I’m using about 400 MB of space.

Figure 8.6 The size bar is updated when you add new

content—in this case a second show—to the DVD.