DVD of Pictures that Plays on your TV

 Picasa, Sharing Photos  5 Responses »
May 252010
 

Picasa makes it nice and easy to burn pictures to a DVD with it’s Gift CD feature, but that DVD will only play its slideshow in a computer, not in a TV or standalone DVD player.  That’s because Picasa is creating a data DVD, not a video DVD.

DVD Maker is Free

If you want to be able to play it in a TV, you need to use some other software.  Windows DVD Maker comes free with Windows Vista, or Windows 7.  Just click on Start and type DVD – you should see Windows DVD Maker in the list and you can click on it.

In DVD maker, you click on Add Items.  That takes you to your file system where you can find ‘My Pictures’ and select whatever pictures you want.  All the pictures you select will be added to one slide show.  Any videos you select will become separate items on the DVD.

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Prepare your Pictures First

Realize that this is using the picture files on disk, they won’t include your Picasa edits unless you saved those edits to disk.  My preferred method is to Export all the photos to a new Folder, then it’s easy to select all pictures from that folder. They also won’t be in your custom order, they will be in the order that they are on your disk.  See the article on keeping your pictures sorted.

When you have all the items added, you may want to change the disk name and/or change some of the options before clicking Next.  The question mark in the upper right is the help menu – read thru that for the complete process.

On the next screen there is an option to add music to your slideshow. image

 

When you’re done customizing, just click the Burn button in the lower right.  You should use DVD-R or DVD+R.  DVD RWs work in fewer players.  You may need to research the particular requirements of your player.  See this informative website on DVDs and DVD players.

The resulting DVD should play in either a computer or a DVD player.

Other Ways to Make a DVD with Pictures from Picasa

If you use Picasa’s ‘Movie’ feature – you will have control, in Picasa, of the slide order and the music.  The result is a .wmv file.  Then use your DVD maker to put that wmv file on a DVD. If you want to narrate your slide show as well, we highly recommend the free program from Microsoft called Photo Story 3 (Windows only).  See the Geeks on Tour Photo Story page for more information.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

 


 

Cover Slides and Collages

 Picasa, Sharing Photos  5 Responses »
Dec 102009
 

So you have some beautiful photos of your summer travels (after improving them with Picasa’s edit tools!) and you know how to play a slide show – even to accompany it with some music – but you need some section headings for each portion of your travels.  Like ‘Drive through Vermont’ and ‘Boston Harbor cruise’ and ‘Cathy’s Wedding.’  How do you do that with Picasa?

If you want to get fancy with artwork, gradient backgrounds, and curved text – you need something other than Picasa.  I recommend something like Powerpoint.  You create the slide in Powerpoint, then export it as a .jpg picture file and Picasa can use it like any other picture.

But, if you just want a Cover slides and some occasional titles, Picasa’s Collage and text features can fit the bill quite nicely.

I have a lot of pictures from our stays at the Thousand Trails parks around the US.  To make a cover slide for them, I’ll select several of the photos and then click on ‘Collage.’  Using the picture pile style, I’ll arrange the photos leaving plenty of space for the Title.

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After creating the collage, I add text using the Text tool.  That’s a pretty nice cover slide for my slide show.

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Now I want some simpler title slides for the rest of the show.  I just want a blank background, no pictures.  If you understand Picasa, you know that it *only* works with pictures.  So, we have to trick it into making a ‘picture’ with no pictures!  Once again, we start with a collage.

Select one picture in your library – any old picture – because we’re just going to get rid of it.  Then click Collage.  If you use the Picture Pile type of collage you know that you can move a picture anywhere on the slide … you can even drag it off the slide altogether!  That leaves you with a blank background.  And, you can make the background be any color you like with the Background options on the left.

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When you ‘Create’ this collage – you get a blank picture that you can now add text to.  Pretty slick.  Now you can arrange your pictures and your titles all in an album for a great slide show!

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This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

If you want to add narration to your slide show we highly recommend the free program from Microsoft called Photo Story 3.  Geeks on Tour has several ‘Show-Me-How’ videos on Photo Story.

If you need to learn Picasa, the best way is with the book ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa 3.5’  it includes Show-Me-How videos.