Creating a Video CD

If you've created some slide shows (using the Slide Show feature mentioned earlier in this chapter), you can take those slides shows and transfer them to a video CD, which will play on many DVD players (so you can play them directly on your TV), and you do the whole thing right from within Elements 4.0. Here's how it works:

Step One

First, you need to create your slide shows, so go ahead and do that, because essentially what you'll create is a CD of slide shows with a default menu that's created by Elements. So if you don't have slide shows first, you can't create a CD, so start there (see the slide show tutorial earlier in this chapter). Once you have your slide shows created, go to the Organizer and click on the Create button.

Step Two

When the Creation Setup dialog appears, in the list of creations on the left side of the dialog, click on VCD with Menu, and then click OK. Note: If you have a DVD burner in your computer, you can choose DVD with Menu and follow the steps here, as the options are basically the same. (I probably don't have to tell you this, but if you have Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0, choose this option and then edit the output file in Premiere.)

Step Three

©SCOTT KELBY

This dialog is where you choose which slide shows will comprise your video CD. To add slide shows to your list, click the Add Slide Shows button in the top-left corner and a dialog will appear, where you can choose which of your saved slide shows will appear on your VCD by clicking on their checkboxes. Then, click OK to add them to the main dialog.

Step Four

Once your slides appear in the main window, you can insert a blank CD into your computer's CD burner, then click the Burn button on the bottom right-hand side of the dialog to burn your slide shows to disc. In the resulting Burn dialog, just click OK, and then Elements will create a WMV file and burn it to an empty disc. (Note: Be sure that NTSC is selected in the Video Options section of the Create a VCD with Menu dialog.) Now you can insert your VCD into your DVD player and watch your slide show on your TV.