So, you're back from your summer hols and you took a ton of great pictures with your digital camera. Now you want to display your masterpieces to your friends and family. Of course everyone can huddle round the computer or you can print your pictures and hand them round - but wouldn't it be great if you could all view them at once on that great big telly in the corner?
In this tutorial, I'm going to walk you through building a DVD of your images using Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5. This package allows you to make all kinds of DVDs including clips from your camcorder with plenty of fancy techniques. We'll just look at a quick and easy slideshow but quick and easy doesn't mean dull! We'll be adding transitions, Ken Burns Effects and syncing the slides to music. If you want to follow along then you can get a free trial version of DVD Maker from Ulead or by dropping an email to Kathryn and mentioning our name. Make sure you tell us how things go in the forums because we have 3 full copies of DVD Maker to give away this month and our top prize includes a full photo and video editing suite too!
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When you open DVD Maker and tell it you want to start a new project you get a choice of disk types. We're going to be creating a DVD, which will play in most domestic DVD players. VCDs and SVCDs are special formats created on CDs rather than DVDs so if you only have a CD burner these are a good choice. As you can see there are various advanced choices such as HD DVD and Blu-Ray if you have the latest AV equipment.
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As I mentioned in the introduction, DVD Maker allows you to use various different media including movie clips and capturing directly from your camcorder. Since we are keeping it simple with a slideshow I clicked the 3rd icon - “add slideshow”.
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After clicking “add slideshow” I get this dialogue, which allows me to choose which pictures I want to include and set other options. Using the file navigator on the left I went to a folder containing my holiday snaps from a trip to Chamonix.
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I selected the pictures I wanted and chose “add photo”. If you want to add all the photos from your folder then you can just click “add all”. Change the slideshow title to something descriptive - I just used “Chamonix” because that's where I went. I wanted to apply a random transition to all the pictures so I selected them all in the timeline at the bottom, clicked on transition effect and selected “random”. This is a very quick way to add a lot of variety to your show. I also chose a tune from my music library and told DVD Maker to “match the slideshow duration with background music” by checking the box. This makes the pictures finish at the same time as the music and gives a professional look to your show. Whilst we are on music - using commercial music with your own slideshows is a bit of a grey area. Certainly if you are selling the disks then you must get permission from the copyright holder. If you are just playing the disk in your own home for your own amusement then it's less clear - some would argue it's the same as looking at the pictures and listening to the CD. Best bet is to play it safe and get some of the great royalty free music that's available.
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Next I wanted to add some of the popular “Ken Burns” effects. This is a technique where the slideshow pans over still pictures. There are two reasons why this is a good idea. First when used carefully they can bring the slideshow to life and keep your audience interested. Secondly, lots of TV and DVD player combinations have problems displaying still images. They either flicker very slightly or even produce a slight audio buzz. Keeping the pictures moving avoids this so I selected all of them and chose Pan and Zoom and picked a relatively subtle effect from the choices. The transitions and Ken Burns take time so my sideshow was now too long for the music - pictures would be on screen for a very short time. DVD Maker warned me about this and I simply selected an additional music track.
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That's the slideshow built! At this stage I could add other slideshows or a film but I wanted to keep it simple (and spare my friends a long evening). Hit the next button and you get to choose the menu. There are lots to choose from but I like the Smart Scene menu, which takes your slideshow and animates it as the menu. I changed a bit of text and then hit the next button.
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This is where you get to preview your masterpiece by pressing buttons on the virtual remote control.
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Here it is playing my creation - I caught it in mid transition from one slide to the next. PAY ATTENTION at this stage. Check carefully and make sure it's what you want and there are no glitches. If there are then use the back buttons to correct them. From the next step it will not only cost you a blank DVD it will waste a fair bit of time.
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There are plenty of options on the burn menu. Just select the drive and then speed you want. My Pioneer drive works fine with the disks I buy so maximum is fine here - if you get burn problems then slow the write speed down. To make sure I get a good burn I chose “buffer underrun protection”. This slows burning down slightly but should guarantee me a good disk. If you like you can add files containing your copyright information and another folder of data. This could be useful if you use the disk as a portfolio for clients - just include a folder of contact information and prices!
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OK, here's the render and burn process. I had plenty of time to screen grab this. I'm using a fairly slow PC but even on the fastest machine rendering a high quality DVD takes time. This isn't the fault of DVD Creator - it's doing a huge amount of processing in the background. Just under 9 minutes of DVD took around 40 minutes to render and burn. There's a reason why there's a “close down computer when done” option!
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Success! The default option here is pretty dumb because it exits the program without saving. Sure you have your DVD but there are plenty of other things ou might want to do with the project.
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Such as... create a label! Hit the little print button and the program will automatically design a label for you. You can change or move the picture, add text or even include a chapter list. Once you're happy you can print a sticky label for your disk. If you have a fancy printer with disk printing capabilities such as the Epson R220 or the Pixma 4200 then you could print your label right onto the disk for a first class result.
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And here is the finished disk all ready to go in Windows Media Player. I couldn't wait to see it on the computer though - I just took the disk down, dropped it in my DVD player, turned on the TV and cranked up the surround sound.
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