Slideshows
 

I find inserting a slideshow into a fcp movie problematic. There a number of approaches but they all have draw backs. Anyone have any tips or better methods?

My first choice is iPhoto. The benefits are its built to assemble many pictures, easily change the order or length of each slide. The problem I have with it though, it doesn't tell you the total length of the slideshow. To figure this out I have to multiply the number of slides by time but its a pain and not precise. The export largest option 640x480 which isn't SD size, instead you have to send it iDVD and then when you import the movie into FCP it needs to be rendered in the FCP timeline. This whole process takes a long time and if you need to make a change you need to repeat the whole process.

My second choice is to import stills into FCP. Anything over a 15 slides and it becomes trouble some. It requires stills to be rendered, its difficult to change order, length, and transitions.

Final option is to use DVDSP. This is by far the easiest method but only works if you don't need the slideshow in the movie. Each slideshow can only take 99 pictures, making you need to split up longer slideshows.

iPhoto
 

I use iPhoto (09)

I find it really handy, you can sort, edit and manage all your photos, send them to a sideshow, add music and/or effects (ie Ken Burns) and export it right up to 1280 x 800.

On a PC Microsoft has one called PhotoStory, which (like everything Microsoft) is what i photo slideshows may have been like in 1998...

anyway, i would give iPhoto a go, i;m not sure what the older versions can do but i '09 is great.

In my original post I meat iPhoto instead of iMovie. Its a 2 versions older (version 6). So does the new version tell you the total length of the slideshow?

I wondered, but i have heard of people using iMovie to make sideshows... We all have those days.

I Can't find anything that tells you the total length of the sideshow or even how many photos are in it... Sorry I can not help you there.

As for rendering in 09 (not sure about previous versions) it is possible to do a custom export where you can pretty much specify everything about the render.

custom export only works for the photos, as soon as you put them in a slide show that option goes away (at least in vers 6). if you roll over the slide show icon on the left a pop up will tell you the total photos which then you have to multiple the seconds for each slide, however if you use different varying amounts of time for each slide then it be even harder to figure out.

What problems do you have creating slideshows in FCP? I am not a FCP expert so I asked my wife who is & she says that it's simple & straightforward & allows you to animate the slides using Ken Burns effect & use neat transitions. Changing the order is just a question of drag'n'drop & changing the length is just as simple.

One thing I found about FCP and slideshows is that it does not like overly large files. You have to think a little about your resolutions, and how much extra you need for zooming and panning over photos. I set them up in iphoto, and export them to be only slightly larger than I need for my purposes on the time line and with that am OK. If you have a bunch of high resolution stills in the timeline , FCP will choke on them. I like using FCP because it gives me a lot of control, and I am comfortable with its tools and techniques.

fcp isn't easy because its inflexible and nothing is automated. try making a slideshow with 80 stills. drop them in the timeline easy! drag a transition in between every photo. not so easy. opps i need to adjust the time... you need to remove all the transitions to do that and then re-appy them. reorder photos remove the transitions again. what? oh don't forget to drop deinterlace filter on them and render it for an hour. hey you haven't even done the ken burns effect. lol. iPhoto is about 100x easier.

Here's your ticket Pete:

LQ Graphics Photo to Movie

You can output a Quicktime up to 422 uncompressed if need be and it's frame accurate.

thx I'll check it out.

While I agree that the latest version of iPhoto is great for slideshows,
I think you might want to get out the manuals, and learn your editing app a little better, because what you have just described is the workflow of someone that does not know FCP very well.
And why would you apply a deinterlace filter to a still pic that does not have fields?

Pete is correct, while key-framing stills in FCP isn't difficult it's far from "drag-n-drop" easy which is what most people are looking for when having to use dozens of images in a sequence especially when they have motion/Ken Burns effect used.

And, many people have complained about stills with motion in HDV sequences, where the final output comes out blurry or has jittery motion. This is a well-known bug with FCP and it requires either using the de-interlace filter to "fake" FCP into thinking it's not interlaced or, sometimes even a slight 1-degree rotation is used to also force FCP into handling the file properly. Even some AVCHD sequences have had this issue and it's all about the long-GOP format not handling this type of work properly.

FWIW, we have found that adding a tiny amount of motion blur (65 points, not enough to notice) fixes the problems in the "Ken Burns" effects with stills in FCP... / Battle Vaughan / miamiherald.com

Keyframe motion is easily paste-able in FCP, but you're right, people in this day and age want an easy button for everything. Long gone is the day where simple math and prior planning would rule in the edit suite. All to common now, the new guard, that can't read a waveform monitor or vector scope, don't use a calibrated video monitor, couldn't print a proper audio level to save their life, and bitch and moan when they actually have to do some work because of the lack of a built-in auto function button.
In the end, I think that is what distinguishes the work of editors that go the distance,
from those that use stock out of the box settings. I think all of us have seen a video where you go... OK yet another iPhoto slide show to sit through, or seen a commercial on TV where you said to yourself... Oh get rid of that tired LiveType Gold font move already.
But I digress.

You don't have to edit in HDV or AVCHD, there are other codecs available that would be a better choice for photo style projects. As far as the blurry photo thing, sometimes a nudge or 3 up or down will take care of it. Watch your positioning in the motion settings.
Or as Battle Vaughan mentioned, a little motion blur, I find that sometimes with some pics that a little directional blur will fix things.

Or...

Core Melt ImageFlow.

Feed it a folder full of images, give it a time frame, play with the duration on-screen, maybe kick it with a new random seed...

It will handle images or movies, be as calm and restrained or as exuberant as your job requires, handle retimes, loops, and so on.

I find it ideal when the client wants a motion graphics job without the wherewithal or the budget for a motion graphics job and the edit is fast approaching overtime.