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Photos,
Transitions, and Tradeoffs
So here’s the dilemma. If you use the VCD 2.0 still picture mode, you can get excellent resolution…at least for still pictures. What about transitions, though? Transitions are essentially movies – full screen, full motion movement of images on the screen. Many software products – either photo or video creation tools – choose to drop down to low (movie) resolution if transitions are used. With these products, still pictures and transitions are both encoded at low resolution. Other products such as PhotonTV can encode still pictures at high resolution, and switch to lower resolution motion encoding when the transitions are being displayed. The result is that the slides are excellent quality, and the lower resolution of the moving transition is less noticeable. If you’re following this so far, you’re probably wondering why XSVCD isn’t just used for everything. The reason is that even though products like iZotope PhotonTV can create discs in this format, not all DVD players can play this extended format. If your player doesn’t support XSVCD, though, you can still create excellent quality VCD 2.0 shows that combine high resolution still pictures with lower resolution transitions. In general, keep the following in mind: 1) Create the highest resolution discs that your player and software will support. At XSVCD resolution, for example, the quality of a disc created by PhotonTV is essentially the same as a DVD. 2) If your player only supports VCD, you can still make great quality photo shows. Products like PhotonTV that make use of still picture mode can display them at 704x480 resolution. 3) If you use transitions with your still pictures, make sure that
the product isn’t encoding your still pictures at the lower
“movie” resolution just because you’ve used transitions.
Only a few products, such as iZotope PhotonTV are able to have transitions
and high quality still pictures in the same show. |
