Share photos or video by creating a professional-looking DVD easily

Thanks to cheap digital cameras, more and more of us are shooting video clips of friends and family and taking photos. And, with great free software such as Windows Movie Maker, joining these together into a great home video is surprisingly easy.

The question, of course, is what to do with the footage once it’s complete – there is little point spending time on it if no-one’s ever going to watch it, after all.

Services such as Youtube make it possible to share videos online simply, but unless all your friends and relatives have broadband internet access some could be left out. And, after all, not everyone wants to watch videos on the computer screen rather than the television.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution: DVD players can be found in almost every home, and enable people to view your photos or videos in comfort. All you need to do is convert the video file into a professional-looking DVD with menus and chapters. And in this article we will explain how to do just that.

Getting started
Burning files to DVD in recent versions of Windows could hardly be simpler. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have all the tools you need built-in, while free software can be added to Windows XP that will burn files to DVD in minutes. We won’t dwell on the process here, but if you would like a quick refresher go to page two of this article.

On the other hand, creating multimedia discs with home videos or photo slideshows is more complex, and if the videos were filmed in high definition, the job becomes trickier still (see page 2 of this article for more information about high definition).

The main problem is that you cannot simply save a video file or folder of photos to a blank DVD and expect it to work in a DVD player. This is because most players understand only one type of video format. 

To make a playable DVD, you will have to ‘author’ a disc, which means converting your photographs and video into the type of files that a DVD player will expect, and adding any menus or titles that you want.

This doesn’t need to be an expensive job, though. DVD authoring tools such as those sold by Nero and Roxio provide a wide range of tools. But for basic tasks try DVD Flick, a free DVD editor that lets you start from a collection of video files, add menus and chapters, and then burn a disc that will work with household DVD players.

To get started, visit DVD Flick and click the big ‘Download DVD Flick’ link. At only 13MB the application should download in less than 10 minutes on most connections. It’s free, but consider making a donation to the authors if you find it useful. Double-click the downloaded file and follow the instructions to install it.

Creating a photo slideshow
If you don’t have a video clip that’s ready to write to DVD, you can get started with a photo slideshow using Windows Movie Maker.

Photo slideshows can be relatively complex, with a range of caption, transition and audio options, but we will keep it simple. Open Windows Movie Maker, and find a folder with the images you want to include. Drag the images into Movie Maker’s main window and drop them. They will appear automatically, and you can click and drag the thumbnails around to change the order.

It’s important to note that DVD Flick is purely for creating DVDs – you can’t, for instance, add an audio track once your video file is finished. So treat creating a DVD as an entirely separate part of the process and ensure your video file is ready to go by adding any background music you want in Movie Maker – or if there is a microphone connected to your computer you could record a narration track.

There are plenty of other tools available, but for now click Save Movie in the toolbar at the top. Give the movie clip a name you will remember and save it in the default location – this means it should appear on your desktop. Finishing the final file will take a while, depending on how many images you have included, so leave the PC alone until the task completes.

Creating the disc
Once your video is saved, start DVD Flick. The initial screen is not very user-friendly, but it will make sense soon enough. In DVD Flick the video files that comprise your final DVD are called titles, and the menu bar on the right-hand side is where you add, remove and re-order them.

To get going on your slideshow, click ‘Add title...’ and choose your desktop as the place to find the video file you just created in Movie Maker. Double-click it and it will be added to your DVD, appearing in DVD Flick’s main window.

Before burning your first disc, ensure the project is suitable for the blank discs. Although DVD Flick’s name suggests it’s only compatible with DVDs, it can in fact work with CDs as well, so we want to ensure that it’s set up to use the right type of disc.

Click on Project settings in the top menu bar and give your project a name, and in the dropdown menu headed 'Target size', choose the kind of discs you are going to use.

Standard DVD-R discs are usually the best option as they are cheap and will play in almost any household DVD player. DVD+R discs are similarly cheap and can be found in most supermarkets, for example, but generally the DVD-R type are more compatible with older household DVD players.

Once you have checked that DVD Flick is set up to burn a DVD disc, click Accept and look at the vertical progress bar on the left-hand side of the screen. This shows how much of the space available on that kind of disc will be filled by the video files you have selected to burn. If it turns red you may need to use a double-layer disc, which gives more space, or remove some video clips to free up space.

Make a movie
If you would like to add video clips to the DVD rather than, or as well as, a photo slideshow, the procedure is exactly the same: find the video clip, which should be stored somewhere on your computer’s hard disk, and add it to DVD Flick’s project windows with the ‘Add title...’ button. However, there are a few tricks that will prove useful when dealing with clips, as well as making your finished disc look more professional.

If you double-click on a title in the main project window you will see its properties. By and large, you are safe to leave these alone. By default, DVD Flick will automatically adjust the video to ensure it fits on your chosen disc format without losing too much quality.

Of more interest is the Chapters tab. Adding chapters to the video means you can allow people to skip through video clips, rather than having to fast-forward to the parts they like.

There is a slight limitation in the way DVD Flick handles chapters: you can only set up chapter breaks at regular intervals. That means rather than placing a chapter break at a logical point – a scene change, for instance – you will have to set them apart in 10 or 15 minute intervals, but these are still helpful and worth adding if your video is longer than 10 minutes. To set chapter breaks whenever you want, you will need to buy a DVD creation tool.

To give your project a professional sheen, a set of DVD titles to greet viewers after they have loaded the disc is an excellent idea – otherwise your clips will simply start playing once a disc is inserted.

To set up a menu system, click Menu settings, and choose from one of the included templates. Bear in mind that DVD Flick will take the names of clips and the overall project from the titles you chose in the Project Settings and Title Properties boxes, so be sure to change those to the ones you want shown on screen.

DVD Flick’s has a limited range of templates for menu styles but we like the simplicity of the Simple Black option. Use the controls on the right-hand menu bar to move the video clips up or down the running order until they’re the way you want them.