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Thread ID: 148272	2019-10-08 19:37:00	Advice on making a DVD for an elderly relative	Tony (4941)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1464387	2019-10-08 19:37:00	I want to compile a DVD of photos and videos for a very elderly relative in UK. He has no means of viewing it, so will be calling on outside help. I have no idea how he will view it - PC, DVD player and TV or what, so it needs to be really flexible and easy to use. I've tried a few things, but they all seem eventually to come up against the "foolproof and easy to use" barrier. I'm happy and capable to do some IT-related work to set it all up if necessary. Any ideas?	Tony (4941)
1464388	2019-10-08 19:51:00	make 2 disks , so if one isnt viewable with what he has , the other will be 1) just a normal data DVD. Burn the photos to a DVD disk : viewable on a PC 2) make a DVD photo album, thats viewable on old TV's if they have an old school DVD player(box) home.bt.com 3) copy the photos onto a FAT32 USB flash drive : veiwable on PC's , newish TV's & TV DVD players , media players etc Make sure you format it as FAT32 first All assuming he has some from the 2000's , hes not still using an old valve B&W TV 4) copy into the cloud & share the link : someone here will have an idea of the best websites for this	1101 (13337)
1464389	2019-10-08 20:13:00	There's no foolproof for DVDs but if you use Authoring software to create a standard DVD as per 1101's option 2) above it will play in most DVD players and on a PC. Many older players didn't read burnt disks though, hopefully there's not many of those still around. But yeah do multiple options as suggested, disks are cheap. Flash drive is a great suggestion too, many modern PCs have no optical drive. Use a Verbatim or Mitsubihi or Taiyo Yuden blank disk if you worry about long term reliability (My research is many years out of date though, this may have changed). I used to burn a lot of movies back when Nero was the most common authoring tool, I found after a few years the number of disks that are still 100% readable is really poor. Even many namebrands you'd expect to be good really weren't.	dugimodo (138)
1464390	2019-10-08 20:33:00	The 2-DVD idea is a good one. I should have thought of that. Flash Drive/Cloud - I can see his eyes glazing over and hear the panic in his voice. :confused::horrified I don't know what sort of TV he has, but I suspect he doesn't have any sort of player. He will probably go to a neighbour or the local library, which is why I said I had no idea how he will view it.	Tony (4941)
1464391	2019-10-08 20:34:00	Adding to Dugimodo's post, dont use re-writable DVD's they often fail to work in other players and fail generally. There's plenty of creative software about to make a Standard DVD. One I just came across and it worked fine in Windows to sandbox is Microsofts Photo Story, rather old and limited to some options and the default creates the finished file as a .wmv, although the options may allow different profiles ?? 10038 BUT www.microsoft.com The other one I have used is Ashampoo Slideshow Studio, just looked and the 2019 version is free (used 2017 in the past) has several options / formats on saving. www.ashampoo.com The only problem with Ashampoo is you have to create a free account to get the licence key. No big deal, esp if like me you use a LOT of their software :) Edited: then of course theres a online option. Not to sure how well google is but ??? www.google.com	wainuitech (129)
1464392	2019-10-08 20:40:00	Thanks everyone. I've got several different authoring pgms that I've used over the years, so I'm sure I'll be able to sort that side of things.	Tony (4941)
1464393	2019-11-23 21:42:00	Bringing everyone up to date, after a lot of trying various free and trial apps, I ended up actually paying for Corel Video2019. For $80 you get the authoring software plus another menu creator called Corel MYDVD. The trial would have done the job, but at that price I thought it was worth paying the money so I would have it in the future. The software is OK, but there are bits where I wanted to start throwing things at the monitor. For instance it gives you all sorts of themes for the menu, which you can modify to a degree. but it doesn't appear to give you the option of a blank slate on which you can construct exactly what you want. All the themes have background music that you can change, but the only way I found to remove it was to download a clip of 30 secs of silence, and use that. Aaargh! I also now seem to be stuck with Corel advertising popups that I have not yet managed to suppress. You can burn the output directly to DVD, or save it as an iso. That led to a weird thing. If you burn directly to DVD it all works fine, but when I saved to iso and subsequently played it all the backgrounds had disappeared and the last second or so of the slideshows was truncated. This happened whether I mounted the iso and played it, or burned the iso to DVD. Any ideas as to why that might be happening?	Tony (4941)
1464394	2019-11-23 22:31:00	Bringing everyone up to date, after a lot of trying various free and trial apps, I ended up actually paying for Corel Video2019. For $80 you get the authoring software plus another menu creator called Corel MYDVD. The trial would have done the job, but at that price I thought it was worth paying the money so I would have it in the future. My decision was probably also coloured by the fact that I have been a Corel user since time immemorial (anyone remember Corel Draw version 1?) The software is OK, but there are bits where I wanted to start throwing things at the monitor. For instance it gives you all sorts of themes for the menu, which you can modify to a degree. but it doesn't appear to give you the option of a blank slate on which you can construct exactly what you want. All the themes have background music that you can change, but the only way I found to remove it was to download a clip of 30 secs of silence, and use that. Aaargh! I also now seem to be stuck with Corel advertising popups that I have not yet managed to suppress. You can burn the output directly to DVD, or save it as an iso. That led to a weird thing. If you burn directly to DVD it all works fine, but when I saved to iso and subsequently played it all the backgrounds had disappeared and the last second or so of the slideshows was truncated. This happened whether I mounted the iso and played it, or burned the iso to DVD. Any ideas as to why that might be happening?	Tony (4941)
1464395	2019-11-24 04:12:00	Bringing everyone up to date, after a lot of trying various free and trial apps, I ended up actually paying for Corel Video2019. For $80 you get the authoring software plus another menu creator called Corel MYDVD. The trial would have done the job, but at that price I thought it was worth paying the money so I would have it in the future. My decision was probably also coloured by the fact that I have been a Corel user since time immemorial (anyone remember Corel Draw version 1?) The software is OK, but there are bits where I wanted to start throwing things at the monitor. For instance it gives you all sorts of themes for the menu, which you can modify to a degree. but it doesn't appear to give you the option of a blank slate on which you can construct exactly what you want. All the themes have background music that you can change, but the only way I found to remove it was to download a clip of 30 secs of silence, and use that. Aaargh! I also now seem to be stuck with Corel advertising popups that I have not yet managed to suppress. You can burn the output directly to DVD, or save it as an iso. That led to a weird thing. If you burn directly to DVD it all works fine, but when I saved to iso and subsequently played it all the backgrounds had disappeared and the last second or so of the slideshows was truncated. This happened whether I mounted the iso and played it, or burned the iso to DVD. Any ideas as to why that might be happening? And finally we are back again - after how many hours?	Tony (4941)
1464396	2019-11-24 04:13:00	Sorry, multiple posts, thanks to the flakiness of the site.	Tony (4941)
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