I've spent a lot of time trying to learn this and am about to give up.

I wanted to create a menu-based DVD from digital pictures taken on a father/son baseball trip. I created several video/audio movies, then created a menu-based DVD. The menus look good and function great....but the pictures on the TV flicker very badly. I am running Windows Vista with 4MB RAM and a quadcore processor. Here is what I did:

1. In Adobe Elements 5.0, I created a slide show where I added pictures and musical audio.

2. I output the slideshow and I had to chose between .wmv or .pdf. I chose .wmv. I did this for several different sets of pictures.

3. I imported the 8 .wmv files into Sony DVD Architect 3.0 and created menus. All menus work well.

4. I prepared the video. It created a Video_TS folder with a bunch of .vob, .ifo, and .bup files. It did say it was going to compress both the video files and audio.

5. I tried using "Express Burn" from imgburn.com, but it said it didn't support menus. And I couldn't figure out which files to drag because it kept saying that it didn't recognize the file type. I couldn't find any easy instructions.

6. So I used the Sony DVD Architect to create an .iso file. Sony doesn't recognize my DVD drive for some reason.

7. Then I used Roxio (which I know you say sucks...but I couldn't figure Express Burn out) to create the DVD from the .iso file.

The settings on Sony DVD Architect were NTSC (720x480) for video format, PCM Stereo for the audio format.

I am flying to see my son at college on Thursday and really wanted to have this done. Please help.....

Thanks.
Steve

I'm a bit confused with your STEP 1. Adobe is a company with many products. The stripped-down consumer versions are currently called "Elements" (used to be LE for "Limited Edition").

I have Adobe Premiere Elements, but it only goes up to version 4, which is the latest and current version.

I'm downloading the trial for Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is currently on version 6. I'm not aware of PS Elements having the ability to create slideshows (it's an image/photo editing software), so I'm downloading to see what it can do.

Can you confirm what Adobe software you're referring to? I'll test your method and see what I can find.

I use Adobe Photoshop Extended CS3 and Adobe Premiere 6.5 and Premiere Pro CS3 for my photo/video work. So lately I've been trying/buying and learning the Elements consumer versions, because they've become vastly different from the professional packages.

I've got several of your videos converted over to digital files, need to do a few things to them before returning the file chunks on DVD data discs. Will e-mail you more on this before shipping.

My Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 finally downloaded, has been installed, and I've run some tests. Neat features for consumers, having the ability to build a slideshow and export. Odd that it can export to PDF, not sure I understand the logic from Adobe on that one.

When you exported the file to WMV, did you change the video output size to 720x480 DVD-sized video? Or did you leave it at the default size of 320x240 (or whatever it was) that was really tiny?

Hi,
I'm sorry for the lack of info. I have Adobe Photoshop Elements, version 5 (5.0.2). I had it at the DVD 720x480 size.

Also, I look forward to the DVDs of my VHS videos. Let me know when they are ready to ship and I can ship some more.

Thanks.
Steve

My test machine developed an issue with some recent installs of software. It will be several more days while I work on it, get it back up into shape, and re-install PS Elements 6.

Do you have the ability to put just 3-4 photos in a slideshow, encode out to 720x480 WMV, and then FTP it to me? I can provide FTP account and information. I want to check the interlace status of the video.

Also consider visiting Adobe.com and being sure you've got the most recent patch/update to PS Elements v5. There may be a fundamental flaw with the on-disc software you've installed. It happens. Adobe MC CS3 had some serious errors in Photoshop 10, that were fixed in the 10.1 patch. I couldn't even print in 10.0 shipped version.