I’m banking on the axiom “there are no stupid questions.” I have Toast 11 Pro and the 3.8 version of Fotomagico that came with it (bundled). I also have Fotomagico 4 (latest version). I’ve seen some comments about burning to blu-ray disk for the highest quality. I have a blu-ray burner/player connected to my Mac. Can anyone advise on the best format to create the slideshow in (in each version of Fotomagico) to burn with Toast (blu-ray plugin) to achieve the highest quality on blu-ray disk? I’m assuming this is the best way to go to play on an HD TV. Thanks so much!
Sounds like I have a similar set up. I really got frustrated with the quality of burning to DVD slideshows. I got a blu-ray burner and used Share > HD video for the format to export to. I also used Toast Titanium to burn the blu-ray disc and the results were nothing short of stunning on a 52 inch Sony LCD TV with a Sony blu-ray player. Hope this helps.
With Fotomagico 3.8.8, I used Share>HD Movie as KeithFlood suggests. This produces a Quicktime file which you can drag into Toast in order to burn the blu-ray disc.
Fotomagico 4 does not have an HD Movie option (this seems like a backwards step). If you use the DVD option, your output will be downgraded to fit on to a DVD and this defeats the purpose of using blu-ray. I would try using the Quicktime option and set the Encoded Size to 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720, depending on whether you want 1080p or 720p. I would leave the other settings unchanged because you need to know what your doing if you change Quicktime settings (I don’t!!). You can then drag the Quicktime file into Toast and burn your blu-ray disc.
I would be interested to hear how you get on because I will need to follow the same process soon on a slideshow that I’m producing.
Thanks guys for all of the very helpful comments! It is very much appreciated - muchas gracias. Have you tried creating for Apple TV, then burning that .mov file with Toast? It’s large file, but was wondering on the quality (especially since version 4 has no HD Movie option).
I have exported to Apple TV but haven’t yet tried burning the .mov file to Toast. I have an Apple TV so have imported the .mov file into iTunes and then played it on to my TV via Apple TV. The results were excellent.
I did run into one problem in exporting to Apple TV. Right at the end of the rendering/compression process I get a dialogue box saying that the Quicktime file generated was damaged and should be moved to the Trash. In fact, Fotomagico moves the file automatically to the Trash. However, if I move the file out of the Trash and into iTunes, it seems to play perfectly well. I’m not sure whether this is a bug in Fotomagico or whether it is something to do with the configuration of my iMac. I would be interested in your experience if you try it.
Harrib:: Thank you again for the comments! In version 3.8 (the one that came with Toast Pro), the burn to HD Movie continues to crash. No specific error message is given. Tonight, I’ll try Quick Time with the settings you suggested and will most certainly let you know. I’m tiring of trying the HD Movie option the version 3.8 that came with Toast. If anyone knows of an issue and solution in this regard, it would be appreciated very much. Regards, DVDJR
I had problems with crashing of Fotomagico 3.8 burning to Toast Pro at the start but found that two things seemed to affect it. First, you must not let your machine go to sleep during the rendering/compression stage. I just simply went to System Preferences>Energy Saver and set the machine never to sleep. Secondly, I found that, if Time Machine started up during rendering/compression then, almost inevitably, the burn would crash. I turned backups off while burning. Hope this helps
Harrib: Thank you again for all of your suggestions! I was able to do your Quicktime suggestion in FM4, and was finally able to get a file without a crash. I’ll be burning the file tonight via Toast T Pro, blue-ray. I’ll let you know about the quality of the end product. Great suggestion about not letting your Mac go to sleep while rendering. Since it took about 4 hours for my project to render, it would have gone to sleep. Cheers.
I have now produced a Blu-ray disc myself by exporting to Quicktime using the default settings, except that I changed the frame rate to 25fps (I live in the UK where the mains frequency is 50Hz) and I also clicked the customise button next to compression. In the Video section I clicked on settings and then changed compressor quality to best. The export worked well, although it produced a very large file, and I used Toast to burn a disc. The result was excellent. It would be useful if Boinx could add a Blu-ray button to the list of export options so that the result could be sent directly to Toast.