Slideshow module Exporting slideshows as video

[John R Ellis]

Lightroom Version Number

13

Operating System

1. Windows 11
2. macOS 14 Sonoma

I just learned something today I haven't seen documented: When you export a slideshow as a video, LR cuts the dimensions of the photos by half before inserting them into the video.

For example, if you include a 1600 x 1200 photo in a video and export the video as 1080p (1920 x 1080), the photo will be shrunk to 800 x 600 pixels when inserted into the video, and it will appear with a wide black border around it. Here's what the 1600 x 1200 photo looks like in the Slideshow module -- the photo looks like it fills the frame:

But here's what it looks like in the exported 1080p video -- the photo has been shrunk to 800 x 600:

I found scattered posts about these symptoms on the Adobe forums, but no one realized the general, underlying problem. It's usually not an issue, since the maximum built-in resolution for exported slideshow video is 1920 x 1080 (1080p), and most modern digital photos are at least twice that.

The workaround is to first export the smaller photos back into LR, enlarging them to at least twice the dimensions of the video to be exported. Then include the enlarged photos in the slideshow.

I'm not going to put the effort into reporting this as a bug. The Slideshow is very creaky and Adobe clearly won't invest any more effort into it.

 

[Rob_Cullen]

I tested with a few images 1600x1200px and did not get the same results as you.
And how do you see that the images in the video are 800x600?
When I view the video in VLC Media Player my images 'Fit' within the frame I have set in the Slideshow module.
With VLC screen ratio on my monitor set to 16:9 , I see the exact same as in the LrC SS module.

 

[John R Ellis]

I can't reproduce the behavior on Windows 11, just Mac OS 14.5, with LR 13.3.1, LR 12.0, and 10.4. I've tested LR 13.3.1 on two different Mac installations.

I measured the size of the image in the video by doing a frame grab, using both LR and Mac Quicktime, then cropping the frame to the photo in PS and observing the pixel dimensions of the crop.

You can see the files I used here: The 1600 x 1200 JPEG, the Slideshow video exported at 1080p, and the frame grab from LR:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1pk7...6.18.zip?rlkey=7ddowjhnkzqhqo30qb35zjquq&dl=0

This Mac person also reports that 1600 x 1200 images in an exported video are "way too small", whereas they should fill the height of a 1920 x 1080 video frame:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...-the-screen-in-slideshow/m-p/14658401#M367572