Creating a VCD
After you have saved your story, you can create a of your story.
VCD is a CD format that contains both video information and traditional CD audio information. Photo Story VCDs can contain approximately 60 minutes of full-motion video.
Creating a VCD makes it easy to share your stories with friends and family because VCDs can be played on computers and most DVD players. For more information about playing VCDs, see Playing a VCD.
To create a VCD
- On the Completing Plus! Photo Story page, click Create a Video CD of Your Story.
- Insert a blank CD-R or CD-RW disc into the CD recorder (burner).
- In the Create a Video CD dialog box, clear the following check boxes if you do not want to include the project or picture files on the CD:
- Include project file
- Include picture files
- Under Drive, click the CD recorder drive you want to use.
- If you want to change the speed that is used to copy the files to the CD, under Select a write speed, click the speed you want the device to use to create the VCD.
If you want to conserve system resources, click a low speed.
- If you want to create more than one VCD, under Number of Copies, click the number of VCDs.
- Under Video Format, click a format for your VCD.
The appropriate format for your geographical area is displayed automatically if this information is available. Click a different format if your VCD will be played in a region that requires a different format. For more information about CD formats, see Choosing a video format for your story.
- Click the Create VCD button.
Photo Story copies the files to a temporary folder on your computer and then creates the VCD. If you chose to create multiple VCDs, you are prompted to insert blank CDs.
- When Photo Story has finished creating the VCD, the CD is ejected and a message is displayed. Click OK.
Notes
- Alternatively, you can create a VCD from an existing story by clicking the Play a Story or Use a Story to Create a VCD link on the welcome page of Plus! Photo Story. In the Play a Story or Use a Story to Create a VCD dialog box, click a story, and then click Create VCD. The options for including the project and picture files on the VCD are not available when you create a VCD by using this method.
- You must use a blank CD to create a VCD. You cannot use a blank DVD disc to create a VCD. Each blank CD must have enough free space to accommodate the story file and project and picture files, if you chose to include those files on the VCD. If your story is approximately 60 minutes long and you have chosen to include the project and picture files on the VCD, Photo Story might display an error message indicating that there is not enough space on the CD to create the VCD.
- If you experience any problems while creating VCDs, quit all unnecessary programs, and then try to create the VCD again.
- If the project and picture files are copied to the VCD, Photo Story renames and copies the project and all picture files to the Data folder on the VCD. The project file name on the VCD is 0.psc. Photo Story renames the copied picture files as sequential numbers; for example, 0.bmp or 2.jpg. Picture files with the file name extensions .tga, .psd, .eps, .pcd, and .pcx are converted to the JPEG format and are renamed on the VCD. For example, a picture file named Photo.eps might be changed to 1.jpg.
- During the VCD creation process, Photo Story copies files to a temporary folder on your hard disk before writing the files to the disc. Your hard disk must have at least two gigabytes (GB) of free disk space to store the photo story files in the computer's temporary folder. The amount of free disk space required varies depending on the length of your story and the number of files included on the VCD.
- If the path to the temporary folder contains characters that do not match the language specified on the Advanced tab in Regional and Language Options in Control Panel, an error message is displayed. To resolve this issue, specify a different path, such as C:\Temp, to store the temporary files. For more information about changing Regional and Language Options settings, see Windows Help and Support.
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