hi...I have to produce a DVD with a big pack of stills for a friends funeral on Friday. I need a fast solution. I am scanning the pics now at 300 dpi so I can zoom and sometimes rotate.

Whats a fast but nice looking (I know thats a personal thing but tell me anyway) transition set to use. NewBlue Fx perhaps?

Any advice on speeding up the process and making it look good would be appreciated.
Thx

I use a plug in, Ultimate S that does zillions of things, including making relatively instand photo montages. It will fit the photos to the length of the music or vice versa, customize the transitions as you wish, and do it all in 5 minutes of clicking tops, then you just get in an tweak it a bit. But you have to figure it out, and unless your really quick, the whole deal might take a chunk of a day, if you have lots of photos.

Edward's plug in for Vegas named Excalibur will do the same thing and is very popular also.

Edward has mentioned a special photo montage program out there that sounds really great, but I forget the name of it, and as I recall it was expesnive, but seemed amazing.

The advantage of Excalibur for you would be that Edward is around a lot and can help walk you through it right here, if needed. I'm not speaking for Ed, but he's very helpful so it's a safe bet he could/would help you get started.

Ultimate S may or may not be as popular, I've been using it a few years, but I rarely see it mentioned anymore, and there support is good, but not as quick as Ed, since he's around here already.

Well done Jeff. thx for the prompt reply. Sounds good. I'll have a look at Ultimate S. Right now I am still scanning pics so will deal with that soon. cheers

It just occurred to me that Edward might be tied up at NAB. But I believe Excalibur, and possibly Ultimate S have fully functioning trial versions! I'm almost certain Excalibur does, not so sure about Ultimate S, it's been awhile. Edward would certainly suggest to try it, use it, and if you don't want to buy it, just uninstall it later.

wow thats good news Jeff. I'll check out Excalibur. Thx

Good luck!

Jeff, yes I'm at NAB! Was a long day yesterday.

The montage specific script you're thinking of is Montage Magic - www.jetdv.com/mm

Excalibur can be found here: www.jetdv.com/excalibur

Ultimate S and the other Vasst tools can be found here: Sony Vegas Pro training, plug-ins, camcorder and video production tutorials - VASST (http://www.vasst.com)

Edward, have a blast! Montage Magic is only $50, I thought it was much more, my mistake. I might give it a go!

Thanks you both Jeff and Ed.

I've had a look at Excalibar adnam exited about the prospects... and now I need a tutorial to get to where I want to go.Here's the deal - 63 still images (jpeg) so at the head I will have a title, then disolve between the pics. Zooming in on the last frame would be a bonus. How can I do this seamlessly in Excalibar.
Thx

I'm sure someone will come along to help. As we know, Ed's away, but at some point he might pipe in. I've never used it, so sorry!

No worries Jeff. Im searching the net for tutes soon...after dinner here:)

Here's what I typically do: Drop all the images on the timeline, use Excalibur to adjust lengths of the images if needed (I usually just add them to the timeline at the correct length), and then use Excalibur to determine the length of the crossfades between the images. I used to use the Video Scrapbook tool in Excalibur to randomly add Pans and Zooms but now I use Montage Magic for that.Then I'm basically done! Of course, you'll want to then add your title at the beginning and any other changes you want made.

Ultimate S lite, quick & easy.

I once did a montage with 250 stills. Most had to be scanned. What a PITA! BUT!!!!!!! I used Excalibur Scrapebook (Montage Magic wasn't out then) and within a very short period of time had it just the way I wanted.
Gotta love scripting and anything Edward does is first class and works as advertised.

The funeral is over and the video was shown at the ceremony.

I was running out of time and found the easiest way for me to get the job done was to simply use the disolve tools in Vegas 9. It was a synch. I am yet to use Excalibar but will now the heat is off. I'm sure the zoom capabilities will be a bonus along with other well laid out tools by Ed.

Just a thanks to all for your advice. Now there is another question coming up in another thread related to this.

Geoff, for montages definitely check out Montage Magic. It's definitely easier than adjusting everything by hand in Pan/Crop but still gives YOU control instead of just randomly adding whatever pan/zoom.