Photo VCD and Photo DVD manual

To share digital photos, Photo VCD is a very good and cheap solution. I have published a manual to create Photo VCD with Nero 5.5 in this website. If you have a DVD writer you might prefer to make Photo DVD.

What is a PhotoDVD ?
PhotoVCD or PhotoSVCD ?
PhotoDVD or PhotoVCD ?
Solutions and a labDV recommendation
Manuals

1. What is a PhotoDVD ?

A PhotoDVD is DVD-Video containing mainly still pictures. A fast and simple authoring process can make a DVD-R or DVD+RW with just photos. This DVD-Video can be used to store pictures at a perfect TV resolution to share as albums with your friends and families. The storage capacity of a DVD recordable (4.7GB) is appropriate to store years of photos in several picture shows and the original pictures from the digital camera on the same disc.

2. PhotoVCD or PhotoSVCD ?

VCD is certainly the best choice for stills because VCD and SVCD both offer high resolution and VCD has a higher compatibility on standalone DVD players :

3. PhotoDVD or PhotoVCD ?

PhotoVCD is much cheaper than PhotoDVD but the 650MB capacity allows the make a only couple of picture shows with their original copy at full rezolution (usually 1600x1200).

The choice depends on:

the availability of the media writer; DVD or CD
the usage: DVD is a large disc for a lot of pictures
the price: CD is cheaper ($1) than DVD ($20)

I would recommend PhotoVCD for professional slide shows and PhotoDVD for family albums.

4. Solutions and a labDV software recommendation

Fall 2001, the only consumer solution to make a PhotoDVD is the DVD Picture Show software from Ulead Systems.

We are striving to maintain the table below:

The labDV recommendation is to use Ulead DVD Picture Show to make PhotoDVD and interactive PhotoVCD, it's a best buy without any standard issues. If you already have Nero Burning ROM, it is sufficient to create non-interactive PhotoVCD.

You can read our article Ulead DVD Picture Show.

DVD is limited to 99 slide shows of 99 images each (total 9801 images)
VCD 2.0 is limited to 99 slide shows, a slide show is limited to 99 images and the total images is limited to 1900

5. Manuals

(...)