Photo montage help please
 

I want to start offering this to my clients, but I've got a few questions.

So they give me a stack of photos and I scan then in to the computer. What's the best format to save them in? (I'm using FCP3)

Will I really need to open them in pshop and resize?

After they are scanned in, do I just drag them into my time line and maybe change the durations?

Is there a setting that I can set that deafults what the duration is just in case there's a ton of photos and I wnat them all to last longer?

How about a fancy slow zoom in on each picture before a disolve to the next?

Mark,

I'm not sure how complex a production you're making. But if it's simply a "slideshow" of photos...with various backgrounds, transitions, music, etc...I'd look more closely at iDVD, iMovie, and iPhoto.

Don't get me wrong...I love FCP. But if another simpler tool can achieve the result, why bother with the big gun?

Thanks John -- Sometimes I get so wrapped up, even the simple things become a big deal.

I hear ya, Mark. I'm in the same boat. That's pretty much standard with these types of gizmos and pursuits, don't you think? The wizzes here at DVInfo.net often slap me back to reality.

Good luck. Let us see one of your creations if you get a chance.

An option I discovered for making a slide show of pictures is "Image Surfer". It can be downloaded from "http://lqgraphics.com". It's inexpensive at about $15, but it does the things you asked about. It can take a series of pictures of any resolution, resizes them to fit a standard DV picture size, do a slow zoom, user configured display time, and user defined cross fade. It has a preview mode where you can easily delete the pictures you don't want in the show and rotate any pictures with incorrect orientation. It can output any QT format, but I usually output in DV format for direct use into iMovie (it even cuts the series into 9 minute chunks to avoid the HFS+ 2GB file size limitation).

I hope this helps ;)

If you're in OS X the 2 gig limit is gone. The 2 gig limit is for those in OS 9xx.

>If you're in OS X the 2 gig limit is >gone. The 2 gig limit is for those >in OS 9xx.

Ohhh, you really got to be on your toes in this group, I see.

I admit it. I cheated. I gave a simple answer to the 2GB limit issue. In fact, Jeff is absolutely correct. And in fact, iMovie COULD read/write larger files but is still crippled in OS X for backward compatibility. This backward compatibility is the reason the application "Image Surfer" limits the export size to 9 minutes chunks.

You could also try the freeware Still Life (scroll down):
http://homepage.mac.com/grantedsw/Menu6.html

I've given it a quick test and it seems like it might come in useful. It is not limited to just one image but can cut/fade from one to another while panning/zooming. I did have some quality problems with one of the export options, can't remember which one. Choosing the other one fixed it.