Here's a little geek speak about a project I envisioned earlier last week. I tried to figure out a way to take digital pictures, and make a slide show with music from my sister's wedding. My sister doesn't have a pc, (if you can imagine that) so I wanted to do it in .vcd so she could view it with her DVD player. Only problem is that I had never done it before, so I researched it and tried a couple of programs with no success. Then toying around with my new HP, I found one that actually worked and worked very well. It's the HP Memories Disc Creator program included with my new computer; with it you can do several things. You can make personal photo shows set to music or voiceovers, make photo albums, and make photo archives. You simply add images from wherever they are stored, add a title, and select no music, music from the included file, music from a cd, or music from your own files (we all know of my mp3 fascination <G>) Then select the settings for your cdrw burner and digital format, add a cd-r or cdrw disk, click make disk and watch it work. When the disk ejects simply put it in your DVD player (as long as it will play video cds a.k.a. .vcd format) and enjoy the show. This is among many neat features with the HP Toolkit, or it can be found under Start-->Programs-->Hewlett Packard-->Memories Disc plus, they have also included photo editing software.
Granted it's not the only program capable of doing said task, but in my opinion, it's just another reason to love HP. I personally use 3 different photo editors for various types of digital pictures, Polaroid Photomax, Ifranviewer, and Jasc Paintshop Pro 7. I store all my music and sound effects in mp3 using Music Match Jukebox. My camera is a Canon Powershot A-40. I made title frames using MS Paint then saved them in the same folder as the photos, and in doing so made the slide show a little more professional looking. Another timesaving tip I can give, put all the photos in a numerical sequence (in a specific folder) as you want them to appear. Not only does this save time, but possibly a few disks along the way. The other thing to keep in mind, when you select the time of display for the slides (3, 5, or 7 sec.) if you are adding music you'll need to calculate the length of track if adding your own mix. Otherwise, the same song will play over and over again cutting off at the end. It takes some practice to make good ones, but if it were too easy, what's the fun in that? I really look forward to making these disks for family and friends.
If anyone needs help or a walkthrough of the program look me up in chat.
You can find the HP Memories Disc Creator at http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpdirect/shopping/scripts/product_detail/product_detail_view.jsp?product_code=C8883A%23ABA&script_name=product.cgi
Here's to many happy "Memories",
Giant_One
a.k.a. Nate
© 2003 Nate Bodkin
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