Can I make a photo CD that works in a DVD player?

[Graham Samuel]

Friends have given me CDs containing photos which have been produced commercially by photo processors, i.e. they took their digital camera data card(s) to the local processor and got back a CD along with their prints. When you put one of these CDs into a modern commercial DVD player (I'm using a Sony DVP-NS36 but I've seen it work on other players), you get an automatic slide show. Looking at the disk in the Finder, I see JPGs in folders called 'HIRES' and 'LORES'. There are a good deal of other files (PC executables, perhaps) and icons etc. I think these are to do with a PC application that allows you to order more photos - I'm not interested in this side of things.

 

Using Toast 8 on a mac with Tiger (MacOS 10.4.11) I can't find a format that has this slideshow effect on a DVD player. I tried Photo CD, but my DVD player just thinks it's a badly formed DIVx disk and rejects it. I don't know what format to use, and the Toast Help isn't helpful.

 

Can anyone help with this, or should I go direct to Toast support?

[tsantee]

Choose DVD video as the Format in the Video window. Add groups of photos to the video window either by using the Media browser, the Add button or dragging to the Video window. Toast will make DVD slide shows where there are up to 99 photos in each title and up to 99 titles on a disc. The default is for the slides to advance every 5 seconds but you can change this in the set up. To advance (or go back) when playing the DVD slide show you use the chapter advance or reverse key on the player's remote control.

 

Each time you add a group of photos Toast creates a new title in the Video window. When there are more than 99 photos in the group Toast has to create additional titles for the overflow.

 

If you choose continuous play in the menu set up the the photos in the next title automatically play when the previous title's photos reach the end. If you want it instead to return to the menu uncheck the continuous play box.

 

I believe Toast automatically makes a Photo Disc along with the DVD slide show if you check the Add Original Photos box in the Disc tab of the window that appears when you click More in the Video window.

[Graham Samuel]

Friends have given me CDs containing photos which have been produced commercially by photo processors, i.e. they took their digital camera data card(s) to the local processor and got back a CD along with their prints. When you put one of these CDs into a modern commercial DVD player (I'm using a Sony DVP-NS36 but I've seen it work on other players), you get an automatic slide show. Looking at the disk in the Finder, I see JPGs in folders called 'HIRES' and 'LORES'. There are a good deal of other files (PC executables, perhaps) and icons etc. I think these are to do with a PC application that allows you to order more photos - I'm not interested in this side of things.

 

Using Toast 8 on a mac with Tiger (MacOS 10.4.11) I can't find a format that has this slideshow effect on a DVD player. I tried Photo CD, but my DVD player just thinks it's a badly formed DIVx disk and rejects it. I don't know what format to use, and the Toast Help isn't helpful.

 

Can anyone help with this, or should I go direct to Toast support?

 

Thanks for the reply - I've done some more research and I find that what I'm after is the Kodak Picture CD format. AFAIK this is not a proprietary format like Kodak's earlier Photo CD - it certainly uses JPEGs. I think it's just an ISO 9660 disk with some particular directory structure which so far I have been unable to imitate. The thing is that there are literally millions of CDs with this format loose in the world, so it shouldn't be much of a problem. Maybe this format isn't used so much in the USA - I don't know - but it is popular in Europe. It is frustrating to actually have CDs like this in my hand and yet not be able to create the same kind of CD myself. By the way, I will try your method to see if it helps, but it looks like it generates DVDs and I definitely want to generate CDs.

[tsantee]

You could do the same as I suggested except choose SVCD as the format instead of DVD. The burn it to CD media.