Guide: Make a DVD slideshow with a menu

Claire

This is a guide to make an animated slideshow on a DVD that will read in any DVD player.

1) Download and install PhotoDVD 3

2) Add the photos to your to project by dragging and dropping your photos into the window, using the icons on the bottom left of the screen, or via File | Add file(s) or Add complete Folder.

By double clicking on your photos in the list you can access the additional editing window where you can rotate your images, change them to black and white, change the animation and more... Press the Save and close button when you are finished editing photos.

3) If you right click on a picture you will see that you can insert a chapter point.

These chapter points will be the basis for menu Creation. In PhotoDVD You will get a menu that looks like this (the top half of the screen will show the first image of your slideshow):

Selecting Chapters with your remote control brings you to a Menu section that looks like this:

Each chapter point becomes a thumbnail in the menu and a place from where you can begin playing your DVD. You can also change the way these thumbnails are labeled.

4) Go into the settings and click on DVD Menu. Here you can select different menu templates for your menu, and or choose No MENU, in which case no menu will be generated. If you create chapter points with No Menu selected they will be, nonetheless, navigation points on your DVD, that you can skip through when watching on your DVD player by pressing the >> button of your remote control.
Examples of the different menu templates:

You can specify the behavior or your DVD with various settings:
Auto-start playback makes your slideshow play immediately when inserted into your DVD player. Not checking this item shows your DVD menu upon start (if you have included one).

Loop playback plays your slideshow in a loop cycle, when the end of the slideshow finishes playing, the slideshow starts playing automatically from the beginning again.

Display subtitle on start will activate/display a subtitle channel if you have written comments to your photos in the additional editing window. Even if you did not add subtitles you may see the filename appear on the screen as it too is considered a subtitle channel. Subtitles / comments can be activated or de-activated via the Settings menu of your DVD or by pressing the "subtitle" button of your remote control.

Chapter text format allows you to choose 1 of 4 ways to label the thumbnails in your chapter menu.

Chapter Text:
Once you have defined your chapter points, by right clicking on the same photo you can define your Chapter Text which will be used as the title of the chapter thumbnail in the DVD menu:

Type in the text and press ok.

Looks like:

Photo Comments:
By double clicking on your photos you have added to your project you access the Additional Editing window. Here you can add comments to your photo slideshow as subtitles. On the final DVD you can activate your comments via the Settings Menu or by pressing the subtitle button on your DVD players remote control. If you select Photo Comments under Chapter text format, the title of your chapters in the menu will be the subtitle comments you wrote for that picture.

Looks like:

Time in slideshow:
Will display the time in which this particular slide will appear in the slideshow as the title of the chapter thumbnail in the DVD menu. You can see each time for each chapter point in the the photo list:

Looks like:

Chapter number:
Will display the chapter number as the title of the chapter thumbnail in the DVD Menu, i.e. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc.
Looks like:

5) Once you have defined your chapter points, and have added any other settings to your project in the additional editing window, click on next. Add music files to play along with your slideshow. Click on next.

6) Choose the Output format: PAL (for Europe; Africa, Middle-East, Asia, Russia, Australia, Brasil, Argentina . . .) or NTSC (for United States, Canada, Japan, South America, Mexico, Caribbean area . . .) and full screen (4:3) or wide screen (16:9).

Select the Target Device: either compile the slidehow to your Hard drive/disk (you change the default location under the target folder section) or you can choose to burn your slideshow directly by selecting a DVD burner and inserting a blank DVD. If you choose to burn a DVD directly a copy of your slideshow will still be stocked on your hard drive in the target folder.

SAO options are different burning options, best to leave this on automatic.
Click on Next.

7) You are presented with a summary of your project. Read it and click on Next.

8 ) Your project will begin compiling. The burning will begin automatically if you chose to burn a DVD and you inserted a blank DVD.

That is all there is to it!