Digital beginner basics?

lightyear

After 40+ years of film shooting I recently swtched to digital, D200. Steep learning curve with camera operations, now easily handled with aid of several guides, DVD.

Problem now: computer. After transferring images from CF card to Nikon Picture Perfect (software), I am unable to even make a a video DVD, even with LightOn DVD/CD writer and Nero burning software. There is no Nero manual, their telephone customer service is costly and awful, since their people do not know how to explain how to use the software, saying "Do this..."without telling me how to "Do this". I have visited the usual bookstores looking at various digital photography guides, but all assume a computer level of manipulation and knowledge I don't have. Local camera stores with knowledgable peiple are gone. Nikon offers no guidance to third party software, since they no longer offer their own, although they were helpful with the camera. I am sure there are some basic books/ references, or perhaps the best idea is to buy a photo software program (Photoshop? which one?).

Maybe others have similar problems and some Dgrinner can point me in the right direction. YOu can email me direct @ size1@sbcglobal.net. Thanks.

Stan

Art Scott

are you trying to make a movie from still photos? Did you shoot jpg or raw??

I dislike Nero a lot and I use for all of my burning Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.0 current version is around 10 or 11...go to their website and see if there is a trail to try out......

Scott_Quier

To echo Art, "Are you attempting to make a DVD slide show that will play on your TV/DVD player or are you attempting to burn a DVD with to store/backup the image files?"

I really like Nero software, but it's a tool like any other and there are somethings it will not do, somethings that it does only marginally well, and some thing at which it excells.

Backing up files and/or writing files to a CD using Nero is a simple drag and drop operation.

It is, however, not my tool of choice for making DVD slideshows. That having been said, I found this page of instructions on how to do this with Nero. One drawback to the Nero s/w is that I've not found anything to indicate that you can include a music soundtrack with the slide show and a lot of indications that this can't be done.

There are lots of tools out that do allow you do build a DVD slideshow with a soundtrack and I'm sure if you look around you'll find them. My tool of choice for this task is MemoriesOnTV.

joeinmiami

I am no expert in DVD burning, but I do produce some fairly decent slide shows with music and burn then to a DVD that plays on a TV. Granted they are far from professional looking but for my use (showing the pictures to friends and family ) is sufficient.

I use Adobe Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements. The learning curve on these programs are stiff (They are difficult for me and I happens to be a Systems Engineer) But in addition to have several excellent tools to enhance you photos it also allows you to make slide shows that can play on TV.

You will need a rather powerful PC with plenty of memory (I have 4 gigs on my PC) because the rendering process for the DVD can take a long time (Sometimes overnight)

Hope this help

Joe

Scott_Quier

My machine is an old AMD 3800+ processor (dual core, obviously) and 2GB memory. I use Memories On TV and createslide show DVDs with approx 300 photos; music; fade-in, fade-out, fade to black, and other special effects; chapters (I do weddings, so "Reception", "Ceremony", "Getting Ready", etc). Doing so requires, at most, about 1.5 hours to render the disk image and another short poriod of time to actually accomplish the burn process.

I'm not saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, but it does do the job and does it quite nicely. The interface is easy to use and wrap you brain around. And, unlike at least one other application, you pay for the software and that's it - you don't have to pay for each DVD received.

lightyear

Reply-= Burning DVD
Thanks to all of the above for their information. I hesitate to buy the Nero upgrade since I am so displeased with their basic system, and worthless telephone support. My computer may not be up to the job since it only has about 64 MB of RAM, ;and is not dual core. I downloaded the Nero "How to..." from above and will try it. Do the Adboe various Photoshop programs easily permit making a photo slide show w/DVD, bypassing the Nero system?
Thanks.
Stan

Scott_Quier

lightyear wrote:

Thanks to all of the above for their information. I hesitate to buy the Nero upgrade since I am so displeased with their basic system, and worthless telephone support. My computer may not be up to the job since it only has about 64 MB of RAM, ;and is not dual core. I downloaded the Nero "How to..." from above and will try it. Do the Adboe various Photoshop programs easily permit making a photo slide show w/DVD, bypassing the Nero system?
Thanks.
Stan

With 64MB of RAM, I have to ask what operating system you are running. I didn't think WinXP would even run on such a configuration.

ziggy53

lightyear wrote:

Thanks to all of the above for their information. I hesitate to buy the Nero upgrade since I am so displeased with their basic system, and worthless telephone support. My computer may not be up to the job since it only has about 64 MB of RAM, ;and is not dual core. I downloaded the Nero "How to..." from above and will try it. Do the Adboe various Photoshop programs easily permit making a photo slide show w/DVD, bypassing the Nero system?
Thanks.
Stan

Stan,

I'm doubting that you will find any modern software to run at 64MB of RAM.

I did produce an informational video using Win 98 on a 256MB machine and IrfanView to do a simple slide show to video and then add a sound track with older video software. The process is fairly manual and far from intuitive.

The minimum Windows machine I would recommend for a modern video slide show is 1GB RAM and Win XP.

In addition to the software Scott mentioned, another popular software is ProShow and their Gold version is fairly simple and powerful to use.

I worked with a funeral director a couple of weeks ago and he used ProShow Gold and he made a wonderful memory video, with music, for the family.

cmorganphotography

FYI the nikon software that comes with the camera is complete crap. It's better served in the trash than mucking up your computer's hard drive, consuming precious electrons that could power better sofftware.
PS elements is realitvely cheap at 75-80 bucks. YOu can also find a bunch of limited tool downloads of PS which I have been using on my thirty day trial.

cmason

I suspect as others have said, your PC needs to be upgraded to start. The photos from your camera will be 8-10MB each if you shoot in RAW, taking up over 15% of your computer resources if you load them in a photo editor, which must be strained as it is.

You may want to look into a program called Adobe Photoshop Elements. It will handle your Nikon's images and it also provides a simple way to create slideshows and burn them on DVD, all from the same program.

jpl

Hey Stan,

As others have said, you probably need a new computer. Are you sure your computer has 64MB of RAM and not 64MB of video RAM? A computer with 64MB of RAM probably don't have a DVD burner. At best it would have a CD burner if not a plain old CD-ROM.

Anyway, you don't need a wizz-bang computer. To echo Scott, you can edit photos and make videos on any modern computer. Since computers don't sound like your strong suit, don't waste money on more computer than you need. Get the cheapest computer you can get from a reputable brand with at least 2GB of RAM. A good way to judge what computer to buy at the store is getting one that is on the low end of middle 1/3 which should cost between $700 and $1000. The cheapest 1/3 of computers are junk (unless you really know how to spot a bargain) and the most expensive 1/3 are priced to gouge customers who just want "the best" (people who really need the best aren't going to buy retail). Also don't look at buying a computer as buying a TV or car. A computer won't last forever. Plan on upgrading every 2-5 years and remember a computer that costs $4,000 today will cost less than $1,000 in a year so only buy what you needed.