DVD Maker - Ready To Burn

Ready to burn your DVD? Not yet! There is still a couple of things that need to done before you start burning your DVD.

Any professional DVD you put into a player will have short intro and a menu. Now you got to decide what sytle and the text layout for that menu. Windows DVD Maker gives you several options. If you don't like them you can make your own.

Left clicking on Slideshow along the top, takes you to another window allows you to add music on start up, just like the professionals.

Oh, yes you can preview your production after each edit. This way you will not have to burn several DVDs, just to find out to need to change something. Because I don't but together a DVD presentation, very often, this makes it easy for me to get it right the first time.

Now got to File and Save your production. Put a DVD in your DVD burner. Last, but not least, left click on the Burn button in the bottom right corner of Windows DVD Maker.

DVD Maker - Options

Once you left click on the Options link in the lower right side of the main window in DVD Maker another windows opens. This window give some more options, just like the links says.

The top section lets you tell DVD Maker how you want the DVD to play when you put it into a DVD player. You can have it open with a menu, or close with the menu from the DVD. You can even have it play in a continuous loop. This is great if you are having a presentation at a trade show booth.

The middle section has to deal with the what kind of screen or monitor it is going to be seen on. The 4:3 is for a regular square computer monitor. The 16:9 is referred to as the wide screen setting. The 16:9 looks best on LCD wide screen monitors or televisions.

The bottom section has to deal with the format for burning the DVD. The main difference between PAL and NTSC is screen resolution. PAL has a higher resolution. If you want more information you can click here for the details.

Below the that is speed and the location for temporary storing your DVD before it gets burned on the DVD. I would set burning speed to its' slowest setting, and leave the location to its default.

DVD Maker - Main Window

Windows DVD Maker is straight foward in it's layout. In fact it is quite simplistic compared to other program that I have seen.

Along the top is title of the program. The next row lets you know what step you are at when it comes to making a DVD. Then you have File menu and the Add media files to the DVD you are planning to make. At the far right is letter of the drive you have your DVD burner.

Along the bottom you have a pie chart that shows you how long your media clips will play in comparison to a 150 minutes. In the middle of the bottom section is the title of the DVD. This is the current date by default. Then off to the far right is options button. This I will cover in detail tomorrow.

DVD Maker - Intro

What I can not understand is why buy specialize software when Windows already has a program built into its' operating system that will the same job. This is true with Windows DVD Maker. Here is a program that is bundled in with Vista. Most all new computer, that are sold today, have a DVD burner.

Access to the DVD Maker is accessed by

• Left clicking on the Start Orb
• Go to All Programs
• Then left click on DVD Maker

Why burn to a DVD instead of a CD?

1. You can share pictures, music on most all DVD players.
2. A CD will hold just under 700 Megabytes of information, where a single layer DVD will hold 4 Gigabytes; a dual layer DVD will hold almost 8 Gigabytes.