Adding my own photo to menu

[chirpy]

Am trying to make a slideshow with menu in Premier Elements 9 - why does my own photo inserted in the menu, not show when saved to DVD? The changed text is ok.

[Steve Grisetti]

Hi, Chirpy. Welcome to Muvipix!

But you may need to tell us a bit more about the steps you're taking in order for us to figure out what's going.

First, have you ensured that all of your photos are no larger than 1000x750 pixels in size, per the recommendations in our books? Using larger photos -- especially MUCH larger photos -- can often cause buggy behavior and program failures.

Second, when you set up your project, which project settings did you choose?

Finally, which menu template did you select when you set up your DVD?

[chirpy]

Thanks for your welcome, Steve.

I’ve made a slideshow with narration in PE9 organizer, and saved the project to PRE9 to prepare menu and burn to DVD.

The photos are all larger than 1000 x 750 pixels, being 1920 x 1080, saved as jpegs, for showing on widescreen HD.

The whole project burns ok to DVD (doing both PAL and NTSC), the only problem is with my chosen background photos for the menu and scene screens. I am reluctant to reduce the definition as the photos are of my recent overseas trip to 3 different countries, and they’ve been taken on my 10mp camera.

The project is set up with 5 sec static duration, with deviation up to 30 seconds depending on the length of my narration; it has 1 second fade; includes audio captions as narration.
I chose Burn to DVD, Pre-sets PAL (or NTSC as applicable) widescreen Dolby DVD; Quality, fit contents to available space.

I have tried 2 different projects — the first the DVD was about ¾ full, the second only about a third full. Neither menu accepted my own photos.

The templates I used were ‘Memory Box’ and ‘Pan and Zoom’.

Does this answer all your questions?

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Welcome to Muvipix, Chirpy.

It looks like you might be using a Widescreen HD project preset but you are outputting to a standard DVD which is SD only. So it could be that PrEl is choking on those 1920x1080 photos which, when output to an SD DVD, will be a maximum of 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL) for SD.

The recommended max size of 1000x750 for an SD project is to allow some space for panning and zooming.

As an aside, do you test burn to re-writable media? Saves a lot of coasters....

[Dave McElderry]

Just wanted to add that it's good to have you aboard!

[chirpy]

Thanks for your response, I wasn't aware that there were DVDs for HD. So now I'll have to go shopping, won't I? I'm a keen photographer so I do want to retain the HD if at all possible.

Will also get some rewritable ones too. Yes, have enough coasters !

Many thanks

[Dave McElderry]

Thanks for your response, I wasn't aware that there were DVDs for HD. So now I'll have to go shopping, won't I? I'm a keen photographer so I do want to retain the HD if at all possible.

Will also get some rewritable ones too. Yes, have enough coasters !

Many thanks

No such thing as special DVDs for HD. John meant DVD (standard definition) vs Blu-ray (high definition). It's possible to burn hi-def to a DVD for playback in a Blu-ray player if it supports doing that, but not many people go that route.

[chirpy]

thanks for that. I wasn't so ignorant after all then ! (I'm nearly 70). We do have a blu-ray player, but not a blu-ray burner.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Attached a link that gives some info on external and internal BluRay burners. Thought it might help(?).

http://www.bluraywriters.co.uk/

I have had an LG GGW-H20L burner for a while now. I think it may have been superceded.

Most BD burners are backwards compatible with the ability to read and burn CDs and standard DVDs.

With the price of BD discs still being relatively high, don't forget that BD-RE (re-writable) disc!