Distortion on Video CD

[DLS]

I am in need of some technical help.

I have created a video Cd to be played on DVD players with all of my pages. It will not play on my DVD player at all. When I tried it on two other friend's DVD players, it played but the pictures and words are greatly distorted. Is there a special setting I need to change? I have saved the pages at the highest quality.

Thank you in advance for your help.
Deanna

[*eng*]

I am in need of some technical help.

I have created a video Cd to be played on DVD players with all of my pages. It will not play on my DVD player at all. When I tried it on two other friend's DVD players, it played but the pictures and words are greatly distorted. Is there a special setting I need to change? I have saved the pages at the highest quality.

Thank you in advance for your help.
Deanna

I may be wrong here, but if I remember rightly you cannot do DVD's (YET!) . I had to do a cd as I ttried a DVD and found out you couldn't.

DESMOND: Am I right? If I am can we have this built into the software soon....please

[OnieRN]

My turn here

Yes you can do a CD and yes you can play it on a CD/DVD player....... However, the older CD players do not play DVD's on them. My parents CD player will not play but everyone else's does. They're DVD player is about 2 or 3 yrs old and would not recognize the CD. SBM does not do DVD's at this time.

What I discovered when I did my CD for my family is that it was better if I did pages/LO that have 1 good size pic rather than numerous smaller pics. Bigger the pic on the layout the better the image was on the CD. Also, keep the journaling to a minimal.

I love doing the CD's of my layouts and have changed my layout thought process in designing my pages. I design my pages now with the idea of putting them on CD's or printing them 8 1/2 x 11. I also put music to my CD. The family CD I did had about 130 + pages and the family loved it as much as I did.

Since this is so new to all of us, I'm sure as time goes on, we will see more and more CD's being done and the quality will get even better!!!!

[Karin]

Hi there, Deanna!

I'd just like to add this to the above comments - there is a helpful chapter (Chapter 6 "Publishing and Sharing") in the User's Guide about publishing and sharing in all the various formats. You can read it online at www.scrapbookmax.com/webhelp or in Scrapbook MAX! by going to Help > Scrapbook MAX! User's Guide.

I've pasted some notes below from that chapter under the "Video CD" section - I thought they may be useful to you (they're on the long side , but very detailed, and offer helpful information about DVD players and picture quality):

Note: Although most DVD players are able to play VCD discs, not all of them can. However, if your DVD player is relatively new, or if it was made in Asia where the VCD format has been very popular, the chances are very good that it will be able to play VCDs. Also, with some DVD players the type of CD-R can make a difference as well; you may need to experiment with a few different brands of CD media in order to find the one that works best for you.

Sharing on TV

One of the most comfortable ways to view a digital scrapbook with a group of people is to watch it on TV. There are a few ways to accomplish this with Scrapbook MAX!, ranging from very easy to very high on the "need a geek" scale.

(1) The easiest method is to use the built-in Video CD publishing option. All you need for this is a CD writer installed in your computer, and a blank CD. Just choose File > Publish to > Video CD, follow the instructions, and you'll have a slideshow that can be viewed on your home DVD player, right in the comfort of your living room!

The only downside to this approach is that the quality of a Video CD isn't always that impressive; to be compatible with the "low-res" Video CD format it involves scaling the pages down to a very low resolution which makes the images look a bit grainy and can make small text difficult to read.

(2) Depending on your DVD player, there might be a second "easy" method you can use that will generate higher-quality results.

Some newer DVD players are able to "play" CDs with image files on them, automatically turning the photos into a kind of slideshow.

If your DVD player supports this—and you probably won't know for sure until you try it—you can just publish your scrapbook as a Photo CD, by choosing File > Publish to > Photo CD. Pop that into your DVD player, and if you’re lucky, you'll see a nice high-quality slideshow.

(3) The third, and most advanced, method is to use the "Movie" publishing option, which will output your scrapbook as an MPEG video file. Once you have this MPEG file, there are two ways you can get it to play on your TV:

· you can hook your computer (or a laptop) up to the TV, so that you can play the video file on the computer and have it appear on the TV

· you can use a third-party DVD authoring tool to convert the MPEG into a compatible format and burn an actual DVD

Both of these options are too advanced for us to explain, so if you don't know how to do them you will either need to find someone who knows, or search for the information on your own. But it's worth mentioning in case you have a computer geek in the family. (They're precious, handy things those computer geeks!)

[*eng*]

Hmmmmmm......non techie will try and learn from this

[TerryW]

FROM KARIN -
(3) The third, and most advanced, method is to use the "Movie" publishing option, which will output your scrapbook as an MPEG video file. Once you have this MPEG file, there are two ways you can get it to play on your TV:

· you can hook your computer (or a laptop) up to the TV, so that you can play the video file on the computer and have it appear on the TV

· you can use a third-party DVD authoring tool to convert the MPEG into a compatible format and burn an actual DVD

I'm always wary offering advice on computer geek stuff because quite simply - I don't have a clue what I'm talking about but I have done this (produced a DVD using third party etc) and I used NERO - it was easy, quick, intuitive and the version I have was free to download off the net. I have no idea what happened inside the computer to make it all work but the result was excellent.

Terry.

[Karin]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Terry!

I'm not a "computer geek" myself (unfortunately), but I've learned a ton since working with the Scrapbook MAX! team and from folks here on the forums, of course!

I think it's very valuable to share our questions and also what has worked for us (even if sometimes we're not sure of the technical reasons why...). That's what's great about Scrapbook MAX!, in my opinion. It does all these neat and amazing things, and all I have to do is click my mouse. Now THAT I can handle!

Happy scrapping!
Karin