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showing movies with flashdrive

LuciWright
Contributor

I like to create movies with my digital pictures from my Canon EOS Rebel T3i and have put them on a flashdrive to insure HD quality when displaying on my TV.  However, there is often a shimmer that occurs in a few spots on an image---not every picture.  The movies also don't play well from the flashdrive and tend to stutter or freeze.  

 

Going directly from the camera to TV is fine in terms of quality.  This problem is not on every image with the flashdrive, but on enough to be distracting from the overall quality.  

 

Any solutions to this problem?  I'm using a Kingston Data Traveler flashdrive. Have tried a new flashdrive and still have the same problem.

 

Thanks!

11 REPLIES 11

cicopo
Elite

If you are using a USB cable to connect to the device that may be the issue. Not sure whether it draws a bit of the power needed for the jump drive but my TV warns not to use cables to see what is on a jump drive. I've seen similar warnings for other devices too. If you have a powered USB hub try using it.

"A skill is developed through constant practice with a passion to improve, not bought."

Thank you for your reply.  

I am sticking the flash drive directly into the TV.  I've tried 2 different ones and they both have the same problem----a noticeable shimmer in various spots on some pictures and the movies don't play smoothly.  It's not every photo, which is confusing.  I have a plasma TV (pioneer elite).  The pictures look great and the movies play well when connecting the camera to the TV via a USB cable.

 

I like putting the pictures in a movie format so that I can find them easily and title them as to various trips or events.  It's more convenient than going from the camera or the SD card.  It's frustrating and I'd like to get it corrected as I have lots of pictures in this format.

 

Thanks

Are you combining your still images into a single video file like an MPEG or WMV file and playing them back as a single "movie"? Or are you opening multiple JPEG still images and letting TV assemble them into a slide show?

Thank you for responding.  I am creating a "movie" with both still photos and movie clips into a WMV file and putting it on my thumb drive.  Then I insert the thumb drive directly into my plasma TV to play.  It does not happen on every still photo, but on some there is a small area of shimmer---not always in the same place on different pictures.  The movie clips will stutter and freeze when being played.

 

Neither of these things happen when I view my photos & movie clips directly from the camera to the TV via a cable.  The TV does stretch the picture to fill the whole screen, so I'm wondering if this is part of the problem.  It's very annoying as the pictures are good otherwise.  I'm just using the Windows Media Player program on my computer to create the "movies".

 

Any suggestions on how to eliminate this problem are appreciated.

Do you know if the movies you're making are .mpg or .wmv or some other video file type? Did you mean that you used Windows Movie Maker to make these movies? Do you have access to any other video editing software?

For your still images were you using full size jpeg images that might have been 8MP or 12MP or 18MP? Your TVs software might have trouble rendering full size jpegs down to the proper display size. You might try making another video file using still images that have been downsized to something like 1600x1200 pixels.

You might also see if you can save the finished video file in a different format, though your TV may not be able to open and play every file type you throw at it.

Thanks again for your reply.  The movies are .wmv and yes I did mean Windows Movie Maker.  I don't have another video editing software program.  The one that came with the Canon camera just burns to CD's and I have more pictures per movie than a CD will hold.  Plus that wouldn't be HD when displayed.

 

My still images are jpegs with a range of 6-8+MB and the dimensions are 5184x 3456.  What's puzzling is that it doesn't occur with every picture in the "movie".  I hate to have to downsize my images as I'm trying to have the best resolution possible.  The image looks great when going straight from the camera to the TV via cable.  I'm starting to think that my TV might need an upgrade or a setting changed to accomodate the images.

 

Thanks again.

I'm no expert at the inner workings of .wmv files but I seem to recall that they tended to make fairly large but good quality videos that played smoothly on Windows Media Player. But here's something that you might try if you're up for a bit of experimenting.

First off, the images you're using are 18 MP whoppers, the native size for your T3i. A great size for printing and if you need to do some cropping. But they're much larger than you need to display perfectly well on a monitor or TV screen. HD TV resolution is 1920 x 1080 which is effectvely only 2 MP. Most computer monitors are less than that. You might try downsizing  your jpegs to a maximun of 1920 pixels on the longest side while maintaining the original aspect ratio. Just make sure you downsize COPIES of your original full size images. You don't want to do anything permanent to alter the 18 MP originals.

At the very least the video file should render faster without having to deal with all the 18 MP image files. And the video may play more smoothly as a result. Or maybe not.

It's been a while since I worked with Windows Movie Maker, but I was thinking there was a couple options for file types that could be used when saving your work as a finished video file. See if you can save a copy as an MPEG or mp4 file of some type. Even at larger resolutions they tend to be smaller files than WMVs and tend to be more universally playable in a larger number of video players.

I wish I could see the "shimmering" effect you're seeing on your TV. I've had some videos that "stutttered" or looked "choppy" when rendering still images, but nothing I would describe as "shimmering". Have you maybe turned on some kind of custom transition or special effect in Movie Maker for adding the still images?


@LuciWright wrote:

Thanks again for your reply.  

 

The image looks great when going straight from the camera to the TV via cable.  I'm starting to think that my TV might need an upgrade or a setting changed to accomodate the images.

 

Thanks again.


It sounds like you are comparing apples tooranges, comparing unedited files to edited files.

Why would you want to play movies from a flash drive.  USB drives are not very good for real time data storage and retrieval.

 

If you have a Windows machine, then Windows Media Player can act as a DLNA server.  If your television is networkable, then all you have to do is connect across a network, and read the files from a hard drive.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

Well, I'm using a flash drive because  a CD doesn't have enough storage and a DVD doesn't provide sufficient clarity ie HD images.  My TV isn't networkable by Wifi---only acts as a monitor when connected to a laptop, which I don't have.

 

 I don't want to run my pictures from the camera or SD card in our blu-ray player as it's much easier to organize them as "movies" with a title.  We put our trip pictures together and usually have 1-300 at a time.

 

Do you have any other ways of showing a group of pictures that's HD and easy to organize?  We like showing pictures on our TV as it's 60" and good for a group.  I got started with the flash drive as I saw it being done at a local restaurant on a TV and the quality appeared to be good.  Maybe I need a cheap laptop to run the movies from to the TV?

 

Thanks

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