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Chapter 10: Making Video DVDs and Movies

8. Click Add to close the Add Music to Slide Show dialog box and add your

selected songs to the “Music for slide show” list. You can repeat steps 2–5 to add

songs by other artists or from other albums. Each time you add songs, note the

music length and the slide show running time. When the music length is within

a few minutes of the slide show running time, you can select the “Change slide

show length to match music length” checkbox to sync the soundtrack and the

slide show running times.

9. When you are finished customizing the slide show, click Change Slide Show to

save your changes and return to the “Ready to burn” page.

Previewing and Finishing Your Video Project

After you’ve customized the DVD menu and slide show, you can click Preview to get

a preview of what the finished DVD will look like (see Figure 10-16). You can always

choose a different menu style and different customization options if you aren’t

pleased with the results. Keep in mind, however, that the way the DVD looks on

your screen probably won’t match what the DVD will look like when it’s finished.

This is because processing and fully encoding a DVD requires a great deal of process-

ing power, and Windows DVD Maker doesn’t fully process or encode the DVD to

generate the preview.

Figure 10-15. Adding your music

Creating Video DVDs with Windows DVD Maker

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When you are ready to continue, you can save your video as a Windows DVD Maker

Project. Project files are saved with the file extension .msdvd. Unlike your video,

which may be multiple gigabytes in size, project files are relatively small. They con-

tain the settings for the DVD menu, menu text, and slide show. They also contain a

file manifest that has the file paths to all the items included in the video.

You can save as a project file and then burn your DVD by following these steps:

1. Click File and then select Save As.

2. In the Save Project dialog box, shown in Figure 10-17, type a descriptive name

for your video and then click Save.

By default, your project is saved in your personal Videos folder. If you

don’t want to use this folder, click the Browse for Folders button to

expand the dialog box and include additional folder browsing fea-

tures. You can then select a folder in which to save your project.

3. If you haven’t already done so, insert a blank disc into your DVD player. If the

AutoPlay dialog box is displayed when you insert the DVD, click the Close button.

Figure 10-16. Previewing your DVD

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Chapter 10: Making Video DVDs and Movies

4. When you click the Burn button, Windows DVD Maker will begin to encode

your DVD. As shown in Figure 10-18, you’ll see a Burning dialog box that tracks

the progress of the encoding process. Encoding and burning your DVD can take

several hours. During this time, you shouldn’t perform other tasks on the com-

puter that might cause burn problems, such as trying to rip or play a CD or DVD

on a different drive.

The total time required to burn a DVD will depend on the speed of

your DVD burner as well as the speed of your computer’s CPU and

the amount of RAM on your computer. If you haven’t already used

ReadyBoost with a USB flash device, as discussed in Chapter 3, this

may be a good time to do so because it may give your computer a

needed boost. On a computer with a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM,

and a 4 × DVD burner, I found that burning a DVD took about one

hour per gigabyte of data.

5. When encoding is complete, Windows DVD Maker will eject the DVD and dis-

play the “Your disc is ready” message, as shown in Figure 10-19. To make

another copy, insert a blank DVD and then click “Make another copy of this disc.”

Otherwise, click Close to return to the Windows DVD Maker main window.

Figure 10-17. Saving your video project

Figure 10-18. Creating your DVD video