Video cd problems - Help !!

[cutes6]

Hope this is the right Forum

Hi - I use Ulead DVD picture show to create video cd's. It's a great programme and so far I have had no problems creating the disk which runs perfectly on my PC. However when I try to play it on my DVD player (Pioneer 636d) it plays so far and then freezes.

Has any one else had this problem ? I have tried different disks and tried burning at different speeds but no luck.

I believe it might be the DVD player but I am curious as to why it starts off ok. Any suggestions would be helpfull as it took ages for me to persuade my better half to splash out on a digital camera only for us all to sit down and watch it on my projector and it freezes.

I have a second question - using this programme you can specify the time delay for pics to be displayed before moving onto the next one ie 5 secs. However it does not seem to allow you to stop on a particular pic of interest using say the pause button, is there software out there that would ?

You also have to start at the beggining of that chapter to watch all the pics in the sequence they were burned, you cannot go straight to a particular picture - again is this possible with other software ?

Thanks

[Duncan Harvey]

This is a subject relatively close to my heart as I had around 2000 pics taken (pre digital) on my honeymoon last year.

To save lugging the photos to my wife’s family (they live in Guernsey) I’ve put them onto VCD, using Ulead DVD Picture Show.

I’ve had a couple of dodgy burns using this and solved the problem by using slightly less disc space. IIRC I was up to about 600 mb so when I trimmed it down to 550 (basically by losing some music) this solved the problem.

As for navigation – IIRC Nero is more flexible but has a problem (or at least had a problem when I was using it) in the sense that you can only fit one “album” of up to 99 photos onto a VCD. With a greater bulk of photos, Ulead was the best program for me. I’m sure you can pause it however.

If you are dealing with a load of photos, it might be a good idea to get Ulead’s “photo explorer” which allows you to make slideshows and save them in a format readable by DVD Picture Show. My routine now is to scan into my graphics package, trim, edit and generally polish, then use photo explorer to make the slide shows before finally exporting them into Picture Show. Works a treat.

Of course I just wish I’d bought my digital camera before getting married – would have saved me a bomb in developing costs and scanning time!!

My camera is the Sony one with an onboard 8cm CDRW drive – a really nice piece of kit.

[nwgarratt]

A great program for creating photo albums is winoncd 3.8/5 PE.

You can have pictures in different photo categories (albums). Not sure about the number of photo's on a cd though.

Have a look at FlipAlbum® 4.2 it automatically creates a photo album from photos in your PC. Simply open a folder of photos to create a page-flipping photo album complete with thumbnails, table of content and index.

1 - You can also share your beautiful photo albums on the Internet.

2 - It has full page layout capabilities with multiple photos and images and annotations per page.

3 - MP3 music fans will love this as it supports MP3.


4 - It also lets you create your own custom albums using a selection of book spines, background, front page and clipart.

5 - It has integrated themes (covers, page and book backgrounds, and separators) to spice up your album. You can now play MPEG or AVI videos on the album page. There are more slide shows transitions effects to choose from.

6 - photo albums are extremely easy to use - just click on the page to flip to the next page it will also shows photos as centrefold which realy look great.

The flipalbums can only be viewed on a computer, but its worth doing as the quality of the photos are great and always a joy to watch with music playing in the background.

You can find more info at www.flipalbum.com

Have fun:)

[cutes6]

Sorry I have not responded earlier ,I have been away. thanks for those replies. I guess no one has experienced these problems with the software I am using.

I am going to try my burnt disk on someone elses dvd player to see if it runs ok.

[nwgarratt]

You also have to start at the beggining of that chapter to watch all the pics in the sequence they were burned, you cannot go straight to a particular picture - again is this possible with other software ?

With winoncd and nero you can view the pictures by cliking on the pictures number and then it will be shown. But nero cannot do separate albums on a CD.

Also, does your player actually play CDR's properly and what about CDRW's? My sony plays both so I can do a test CD first.

[cutes6]

hi nwgarret

yes I have made many music "backup" disks on both cdr and cdrw and all have played well, but this is the first time for pictures, maybe I should try and make a vcd of some film from my camcorder and see how that goes - it is dissapointing to have so many pics on my pc which I cannot watch on my 8ft 4/3 crt system.

[nwgarratt]

it is dissapointing to have so many pics on my pc which I cannot watch on my 8ft 4/3 crt system.

That would be very nice

Have a look at PictureToTV it lets you archive your digital photos into a dvd/VCD playable disc (CD-R or CD-RW) accompanied with cool transition effects and music.

With PictureToTV, you can organize your photos into multiple albums, each with its own unique customizable title. When played on the TV, the software will auto-generate a DVD/VCD menu for you to select the album to play.

more info here www.picturetotv.com

PS: burn at low speed for best results;)