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Disk Creation The first thing to think about when creating a CD is "Where will the CD be used?". You can create CDs in different formats and they all work better in different kinds of players. - A computer CD or DVD drive - A home DVD player - Audio CD player (usually won't play graphics) - MP3 CD player (usually won't play graphics) For the CD format you have basically three major chioces. - A data CD with files and a viewing program - A video CD (like a DVD) - An audio CD (only for music) A data CD is in the ISO9660 or UDF format and contains files just like on a computer hard disk. These discs will play on a computer, but usually not a DVD player. You can create an "autorun" file to make the disc start a program automatically. One example is to create a PowerPoint presentation and have it start when the disk is loaded. You can put graphics files GIF, BMP, JPG, etc. and music WAV, MP3, etc. on the disc and use whatever software you like to display or play the files. You will probably need other programs like WAV file editors and graphics editors to create the files. If you want animated GIF files you will need software to create those. Some DVD players can handle a few data formats .. CDs. For example, a DVD player might be able to display JPG files or play MP3 files. You can't use an "autorun" file if you expect the disc to be played in a DVD, and you can't use any software like PowerPoint that has to run on a computer. Generally I would assume that a data CD won't play on a DVD player. A video CD is like a movie. You have to use some DVD authoring program and include all the material into a movie project. What you can do depends on the features of your DVD authoring program. You get the standard DVD features like menus and title/chapter searching. A video CD will play on a DVD player or computer. It might take more work to create this kind of disc because you will have to convert and edit the material, and then organize it into a movie. However, this is more likely to play on anything including a DVD player or a computer. An audio CD will play in just about anything, but it can only be used for audio tracks and only holds around 74 minutes of audio. This is obviously not going to do what you want for a graphics presentation but I mentioned it because it's another CD format that you could create. Here is some of the software that you might need. - A CD/DVD writing program - DVD authoring software - Graphics editor and converter - Video editing and conversion software - Presentation software (slideshow, PowerPoint, etc.) - Audio editing and conversion software Since you probably won't be making a large presentation, you can use mini-CDs. They hold around 200 megabytes and are a little smaller than a 3.5" floppy disk. I have also seen some very tiny CDs that fit in a paper sleeve. You can print on the sleeves and disc. The disc is actually not round. It's sort of like a disc with the top and bottom cut off. The last thing that I should mention is the unfortunate problem of disc standards. Computers pretty much can read any kind of disc, but DVD players and audio players are often more limited. These are the kinds of discs, and not all players can play every kind. Newer DVD players and computers have a better chance. - CD-R - CD-RW - DVD+R - DVD+R DL (dual layer) - DVD+RW - DVD-R - DVD-RW For playing in a DVD player, probably the DVD+R or CD-R are the most compatible. The "RW" discs are erasable, and less likely to work in a standard DVD player. The "R" discs can be recorded once (with a few exceptions that are hard to explain). A "DL" disc just holds twice as much data (between 8 and 9 gigabytes). The difference between a "+" and a "-" is just how the data is recorded on the disc and they hold around the same amount. Unfortunately not all players can play both "+" and "-" discs. Fortunately all of the different kinds of discs can be used to create either DVD movies or data discs. So you can make the decision about the type of blank disc when you are ready to record the discs. If you're not sure what someone will play them on you might want to record on a couple of different kinds, like DVD+R and CD-R. Since I gave you a lot of information to digest, here are a few examples of what you could do in the way of a presentation. Use a slideshow program or PowerPoint. Edit all the graphics files and create the animated graphics. Find some background music to use and convert to a format that you can play with the presentation software. Put it all together into a folder, and then create an "autorun.inf" file to start up the software and give the presentation. This will play on a computer but probably not a DVD player. Make sure that you include any special software required to "play" or display the files on the disc. Use a DVD authoring and recording program like Nero. Create a DVD project, add stills or create short videos. Create menus and use still photos for the menu display. Add background music. When the movie is done, record to a Video CD or DVD. This will play in any DVD player but is probably more work to create, and may be limited by the features of the DVD authoring software. Create a data CD or DVD (ISO9660 or UDF) and put some graphics files (GIF, JPG, BMP) or video files (WMV, MPG, MP4, etc.) on the disc. This can be read in either a computer or some DVD players but won't automatically give a presentation. The person viewing it will have to open up each picture or movie and view it. If you use formats like "MOV" or "RM" they will need the appropriate software like Apple Quicktime or Realplayer. This is the easiest kind of disc to create, but creating the data files might not be so easy. For example, making a video of your photos or making an animated GIF file might be difficult. There is some preperatory work no matter which kind of disc that you create. You will probably want to crop and resize some graphics, and possibly change color balance and contrast. You may want to combine some photos into an animated GIF file. You may want to create a movie file with a slide show or some video shorts. The three elements to work with are still graphics, music and movies. Depending on the software you have you may need to create these ahead of time, or you may be able to do it during the creating of the disc project. |