DVD Burning 101 – How to burn photo slideshow to DVD without hassles

It could be quite frustrating when hours of work turn out to be useless: the photo slideshow can’t be burned to DVD, Photo DVD Maker crashes or just hangs there when proceed to burning DVD, or the burned slideshow DVD playback with bad quality or even won’t play at all!

Symptoms

• Photo DVD Maker crashes or hangs when burning slideshow DVD
• Burned slideshow DVD will not play (bad disc or blank disc)
• Choppy pictures in the burned DVD slideshow
• Part of the slideshow is missing when playback

Before things getting bad or worse, prepare for the good by avoiding the mistakes and follow the best practices of burning slideshow DVD.

Solutions

Choose the Right DVD Media

There are five main types of recordable DVD media: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM

Early PC burners tended to handle only one format or the other, but most newer models are multiformat burners that can record to the +R/RW and -R/RW formats, if not to DVD-RAM as well.

Except for the comparatively obscure DVD-RAM format, most newer set-top DVD players will play -R and +R discs equally well. Older players have much spottier -R/+R compatibility.

Use Quality Discs – Choose Reputable Brand Name

Many of the DVD burning compatibility problems are related to the blank DVD media. Purchasing blank media made by a reputable manufacturer rather than going for the bargain basement specials greatly increases your chances of success.

Remember, DVDs are manufactured in massive quantities. Sometimes you end up with a bad disk or a bad batch. Try a new disk, or a whole new brand, and you may have more luck burning your DVDs.

Slow Down the Burning Speed - 4x or even 2x

In theory, you’ll save time and can get more DVDs burned by setting the burning speed at the highest.

In practice, though, higher speeds can result in unreliable burns, such as bad quality, missing files, audio does not sync with video, etc. In the worst case, you will get totally blank DVD after burning (which seems to be completed but nothing was written to the disc).

Slow things down and set your DVDs to burn at 4x or even 2x. This may eliminate errors.

Give More Power to the Burning Task

Most of the time your computer can handle many tasks simultaneously, but DVD burning isn’t necessarily one of them, because DVD burning requires much more CPU capacity and RAM (Random Access Memory) from your computer.

It’s recommend that you close all applications other than your DVD authoring software and your anti virus software. This will allow as much of the computer's power as possible to be dedicated to the burning task.

Programmers sometimes have bad days, and software does crash - taking your nearly completed burn with it. You'll increase your chances for success if you minimize the number of apps running while you burn your discs. Don't mess with your computer until the job is finished.

Prepare Enough Hard Disk Space – Up to 30 GB is the Best

Creating a DVD takes a lot of hard disk space. Although a blank, single sided DVD only holds 4.7 GB, it takes a lot more than 4.7 GB to create a DVD.

Why? Because there will be temporary files created during the encoding and burning processes. The source video will consume somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 GB of hard disk space. The computer will then use some more disk space for the rendering process and then write a 4.7 GB DVD image before it really burns slideshow to DVD.

Depending on the size of the slideshow that you are burning, it can take up to about 20 GB to 30 GB of hard disk space to create one slideshow DVD.

Perform a Test Burn

If you have been having trouble creating DVDs in the past though, then it's better to perform a sort of test burn before you waste a disc.

Photo DVD Maker allows you to write a DVD image to the hard disk that will allow you to try out your DVD. You can make sure that the video looks the way that you expected it to.

To perform a test burn, choose DVD as output format, and choose “Simulate Burning” under the “DVD/CD Recorder Options” in the “Burn Disc” step, and then hit the “Burn Now” button.

Once you are happy with your test image, you should be able to burn the DVD based directly on the image that you have created. This will save time because your computer won't have to render any data.

The Firmware's Gone Soft – Don’t Always Blame Photo DVD Maker

If your drive habitually stutters when burning DVD, you should avail yourself of those updates, which you'll find on the vendor's Web site.

With the intense pressure to get products out the door in a competitive market, your burner's firmware or software bundle may not have been exactly perfect when you bought it. Shocking, but the point is that the firmware or software has almost certainly been updated (or soon will be).