Adding audio to the dvd slideshow
Now this was a surprise to me. I had the option to add some music to my slideshow, so I selected one of my favorite MP3’s and drag and dropped them into the blank list. It gives you the slideshow length compared to the audio length, and the audio will be looped if necessary. In my case the audio file is longer then the slideshow, so the audio will be cut. There is an internal audio preview function as well, so you can check if the file(s) you added are the ones you intended to add. You can add MP3, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, Musepack and Monkey’s audio files.
Now that I have added the photos and the music to accompany those photos during the slideshow, it is time to burn this compilation to DVD. Simply click the “Next” button to take you to the next screen.
This screen is likely the least simple step for most users, including me. My knowledge on the various DVD output formats is limited so I didn’t know what option to pick. The “Help” button was no good, because PhotoDVD doesn’t come with an offline manual included. It does supply you with a link to “online help”, linking to the VSO homepage where a set of links to 3rd party forums can be found, including our very own cdr-zone.com forum. People on all of those forums probably would have had the answer to my question, but it takes a while to get the answer, and I wanted to burn this disc right now.
Pal vs. NTSC
A quick search in Google taught me that the PAL format is more commonly used in Europe, and NTSC in the United States and Canada. Since I live in Europe, I went with PAL. And, since I have a widescreen TV, I selected the 16:9 version of it since that will display the final DVD in widescreen mode. 4:3 is the normal ration used by older TV’s. (Note that 4:3 will play just fine on a widescreen TV as well, but you’ll have black sidebars).
Other options
OK, time to move on. I’ve selected PAL 16:9 and since I have only one recorder installed on this PC I can only select one recording device. The other option, Hard Disk Folder is probably used to save a compilation for me to record it at a later time, but I’ve got some media ready and inserted to I’ll burn my compilation directly to DVD.
The checkbox “Store Source Files” is used to, well, what it says it does. I’ve got my images stored already, so I don’t want to waste unnecessary hard disk space by making a copy, so I decided not to select this option. You can change the speed of your recording to speeds supported by your burner, or simply set it to “Max”. This last option will automatically select the fastest recording speed available. Since I want this DVD done by yesterday, I’ve left it to “Max”. For a more secure burn, set it to lower speeds. You can also select the “Volume Label”, which is shown as your drive name when the DVD is inserted into a PC. It doesn’t do anything when used in a DVD player. I left the “Working Folder” set to what it suggested, who cares where PhotoDVD stores its temporary files.
Clicking the “Next” button gave me the above nice and simple textual representation of the compilation I just made. If I had made a mistake, the “Back” button would have allowed me to back to any step in the process and correct these mistakes. Since my compilation seemed to be all right, I clicked “Next” again, immediately starting the encoding of my images to a DVD slideshow.
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