fotomagico 3: please help me with the export of slideshow that contains video!

The exporting process of fotomagico is too slow when the slideshow contain videos: sometimes, after 40 hours the process crash and it seems that there is no way to complete it (10 - 15 minutes of slideshow!!)
There is someone who can explain to me if i can resolve the problem with “elgato”?
I’ve read in this forum that someone bought a usb stick from elgato (“turbo.264”) to improve the process but in the elgato website i’ve found only a software called “turbo.264 hd”.
before i spend money, i’d like to know the experience of others users: what do i need? the stick? the software? both? Neither?
I’m not a professionist and i think that FM3 is a great app but it’s very difficult to share with “no-mac users”.
Sorry, but i’m a bit confused (and frustrated).
Thanks in advance for the advise.
Paolo (Italy)

Sorry for the confusion! The Elgato Turbo Stick once was directly supported by FotoMagico and was a big improovement on rendering H264 encoded video. We removed the native report because of the lag requests for it. However it may work if Elgato is providing a certain QuickTime Exporter component which you have to setup within the QuickTime Export option in FotoMagico (Choose “Compression: Customize” to dive into the QuickTIme Exporter setup and find the right export settings.)

My belief is that your videos in the slideshow are in a certain format that cost FotoMagico lots of stress in the render process because it shouldn’t take 40 hours to render a 15 minute slideshow. Can you tell me which codec you movies are in?

Dear Achim, first of all thanks for your answer.

The slideshow contain 24 clips (10 - 12 seconds average of duration) with the following characteristic:
Audio
Codec: MPEG AAC Audio
Frq: 44100 Hz
Video
Codec: H264 - MPEG4 AVC (part10) (avc1)
Res: 640x480
F.r.: 25
Format Planar 4:2:0 YUV

After I’ve read your advise I’ve discovered that I have a problem with my version of FM3.

I bought FM3 Pro on january 2011 but I haven’t the option “Compression Customize” between the option of the “share” command.

My version is 3.8.8 and i think it should be the last one before FM4: i checked the license status and the app is licensed with level “pro” but i don’t find the option that you mentioned.
Can you help me to resolve this problem? My license is registered with “Paolo Zaccagnini”
Thanks in advance
Paolo

Sorry, I assumed you are using version 4 already. In FotoMagico 3.8.8 you have to select “File > Share…” to get into the export options. Please select “QuickTime Movie” in the icon list (note: you may have to scroll down, it should be in the 3rd row). After clicking “Continue” you will get the export options for a QuickTime Movie with the “Compression: Customize…” button.

Dear Achim, the problem is resolved.
From 40 hours (with a final crash of the conversion process) to 50 minutes.
I’ve selected quick time movie (in two years I’ve never noticed the scroll bar of the share menu), I left the standard option for PAL and the process ended after 50 minutes.
But…the file is 2,5 Gb.
I’ve used QT to reduce it in the M4V format (20 minutes).
Now I know what to next time.
Any idea of what could have happened with the other share option I’ve tried? (apple tv, HD, DVD, …)
Thanks a lot
Paolo

Great to hear that this workflow works for you. The export is q bit fragile and highly depending on the source materia you are using. So I can’t really tell you whats going wrong. However in FotoMagico 4 we are going to change the export to a new technology and this will speed up the export process for sure.