Insignia Photo CD

[digby]

I bought the photo $29.95 CD from the photo shop on the Insignia with all the pictures they took on the 12/17 cruise. I have not been able to get it to open on my MAC. I've heard from another passenger on the same cruise who is having the same problem on his PC. Anyone else having the same problem? Any suggestions as to what we should do? (I was able to open the photos I downloaded from my camera in the computer lab, and I would assume they are the same format.)

[digby]

The other passenger (with a PC) has been able to open up his CD after downloading an update for PowerPoint. I still have not been so lucky. I found a PowerPoint 98 for MACs which I downloaded, but it did not open the pictures. I also found I could buy the complete program for about $240.00 which I am not willing to do. Since I asked at least three times at the Photo shop if it would work on a MAC, and they said it would each time, I feel either they lied or didn't know which they should have admitted. Is there a way to email them directly on the ship or should I just call Oceania directly? I think they should either refund my money or better yet send me a version that will work. Any suggestions?

[phlewt]

Digby,

I talked to the guy at the photo center and he told me the resolution of the photos on the CD was 800x525, which might be OK for a powerpoint presentation, but not much else. I didn't realize the CD would use PowerPoint for the slide show format -- there are much better products available for such a purpose.

I don't have a MAC, but looked at the Microsoft web page and found that they offer a PowerPoint viewer for MAC -- is that what you downloaded? Maybe the CD uses a later version of PowerPoint that is not backwards compatible.

In any case, if you can't get it to work, you should definitely contact Oceania and tell them you want your money back.

Good luck, and let us know if you are successful.

phlewt

[digby]

I talked to a person at Oceania today. She has already heard from 3 or 4 other passengers on the same cruise with MACs. None could open the pictures. She is trying to contact the photo shop on the ship to see what can be done. I appreciate her effort. I really want a CD that I can use more than my money back.

[digby]

I talked to a person at Oceania today. She has already heard from 3 or 4 other passengers on the same cruise with MACs. None could open the pictures. She is trying to contact the photo shop on the ship to see what can be done. I appreciate her effort. I really want a CD that I can use more than my money back.

[noel07]

Very misleading sales pitch onboard. I, and others who took some Photoshop classes, mistakenly believed that the photos on the CD, even though of lower resolution than most, could be extracted and merged with our own photos. I guess we all assumed (without asking) that the format would be jpg (j-peg), as used in most digital cameras. Wrong! The photos were recorded as one file in the PowerPoint Slideshow format (file extension pps). I happen to have PowerPoint, so I tried opening the file in PowerPoint, thinking I could save it as a regular PowerPoint file, which could then be edited slide-by-slide. Guess what! The file could not be opened this way without a password!! I tried writing to Oceaniaatsea by email and asked for the password. So far I have received no reply. As far as I am concerned the CD was money down the drain, and at the end of a less than perfect voyage. :(

[meow!]

I am not good at computers and I am confused. Are you folks talking about a VCD you have bought from the ship, or pictures you have taken with your own digital cameras which you asked the photo shop on the ship to transfer onto a VCD for you? Last April, we took 800 pictures at 5mb resolution on our two-week Barcelona to Venice cruise, and asked the Regatta's photo shop to transfer 400 of them (two sticks of 256mb each) onto one single VCD for us, which they charged only $12 or so (after which we could re-use those two sticks). That VCD seems to work well, and while we don't know which "system" it is and at what resolution, the pictures look fine on our PC, and prints well on our HP deskjet. At that time (April), those 256mb sticks cost some $70 each. Eight months later, the price came down so much that a 1Gb stick only cost $70 (good for 800 pictures at 5mb resolution with "normal compression"). So for our Silver Shadow Mexican Riviera one-week cruise last December, we only used a small portion of that one new stick, let alone needing any VCD transfer!

[noel07]

We're talking about a CD made available by the ship's photographer, containing photos taken by the ship's photographer. On the 12/17 Insignia cruise (and maybe on others), he had access to photo sites that the rest of us didn't, such as from the ship's rescue boat right next to an ice berg or glacier. Therefore, he got photos no-one else could possibly get, even with a very long zoom lens. At $30 or so, it seemed like a good deal to get these pictures and possibly combine them with your own. We didn't know he was going to combine them in a password-protected single file that could only be opened in read-only format as a slide show.

 

CDs were also available to those who wanted to download their camera memory cards to CD. I don't think anyone had any complaints about those because the photos were all saved as separate jpg files and it was a useful service.

[meow!]

Now I understand what you folks were talking about. Thank you kindly for the quick explanation.

[digby]

I spoke last week to Diane Salazar at Oceania's office. She is still waiting for new CDs to be sent from the ship to her. She will then send new ones to those of us who have complained. I wonder if the new ones will be any better?

[WalkOnDeck]

Wow, I'm shocked to hear that all of you have received such service, that is just moronic to put them in a powerpoint slideshow at all. I hope that Oceanic cruises photographer does it like a proper photographer and put them organized day by day with at least 4mp quality in jpeg format. I would sure be ticked if I bought a cd that was pps and even more especially ticked if they lowed the resolution. I bet the guy just took the cheap way out to burn many small size pps files rather than good quality jpegs.....they should have a cd burning tower though for all the people that order them on the ship. I hope all of you get what you paid for and Oceanic changes its ways.

[phlewt]

I was on the 12/17 sailing of Insignia and thought it might be nice to get the ship's photos on the CD. When I stopped by the photo shop to inquire about the photos, I first asked the photographer how many photos would be provided and what resolution they would be. He told me that there would be slightly over 100 photos and that he thought the resolution would be 800x516. I realized at that point in time that I was not interested in getting the photos at such a low resolution, so I decided not to purchase the CD.

 

The experiences of others have reinforced my belief that my decision to forego purchase of the CD was right. With all the inexpensive "slide show" software now available, its almost beyond belief that they would choose PowerPoint to embed the photos. And why do they reduce the resolution of the photos? If each original photo has a file size of 4MB, they could still put 150 on a single CD.

 

I also asked the photographer if it was possible to get the digital files for the photos taken of my wife and I during the cruise. He told me that they could be put on a CD for $99. Now I'm wondering if such photos would also be reduced to 800x516 resolution and put in a password protected PowerPoint file.

[digby]

I got a call from Oceania yesterday. The new CDs have arrived in Miami and are being FedExed to me and others now. I'll let you know if it is usuable on my MAC.