5 quick steps to make your home movie into a DVD

This tutorial is taken from the book Breakthrough Windows Vista (Microsoft Press). To buy the book at a discounted price, see our special offer!.

Okay, so burning a DVD sounds a little frightening if you haven’t done it before. But rest assured, this process doesn’t involve fl ames or smoke (unless you have a cigarette in hand). To get started, you need to have Windows DVD Maker open: click Start > All Programs > Windows DVD Maker. If you prefer, you can simply insert a blank recordable or rewritable DVD into your DVD drive. Give it a minute and the AutoPlay dialog box will appear (see right). Just click Burn A DVD Video Disc Using Windows DVD Maker and follow the walkthrough on the page opposite.

Burn your DVD

Now it’s time to actually burn your items to DVD. By now, you should have spent just about 20 minutes fiddling around with text, style and slideshow settings. It wouldn’t hurt to click Preview one more time to be sure everything is set-up the way you want, but that’s up to you. Ready? Click Burn in the Ready To Burn Disc dialog box. Depending upon the length of the items you have chosen to burn, this process could take a few minutes. Wait to be sure you have the proper disc inserted; if not, an error message will appear. But if you have inserted a recordable DVD, you should see a Burning dialog box that shows a status bar as it encodes your information to the disc. Have another cup of coffee and come back in a few minutes to grab your finished DVD.

Add pictures or video to a DVD

1. Location Scouting. Click Add Items in the Add Pictures And Video To The DVD dialog box. In the Add Items To DVD dialog box, locate the items you want to place on the DVD. Don’t worry about order at this point.

2. Add your favourites. You can add multiple items by clicking the first item, holding down Ctrl and clicking additional items. Click Add. The selected items will appear in the Add Pictures And Video To The DVD dialog box.

3. A place for everything. Now, think about the order you want these items to play in. If you need to move any up or down, click the item and use the Up and Down arrows in the toolbar. You can also drag items up and down. If you need to remove an item, select it and click Remove Items. Then click Next.

4. On the menu. Click Menu Text. Make changes as desired. Click Change Text. Then click Customize Menu. Make changes as desired. Click Change Style if you made changes; click Don’t Change if you didn’t. To see how your menu text will look on the finished DVD, click Preview. Click OK when you’re ready to exit the preview.

5. Show off your snaps. If you’re burning photos to your DVD, you need to set photo settings for the slideshow. In the Ready To Burn Disc dialog box, click Slide Show. You can add music with the Add Music button and change the slideshow length to match the length of your music selection. You can select the time your pictures will display, transition settings and add pan and zoom effects.