How to Burn a DVD on a Dell Vista Computer

Dell Vista computers come preinstalled with DVD-burning software.

If you want to watch the videos that you have stored on your Dell computer's hard drive on your television, you can burn the videos to DVD. As long as your Dell Vista computer has a DVD drive, you can burn DVDs from your video files. Although many free DVD-writing applications that work on Dell computers can be downloaded online, the Windows Vista operating system provides a preinstalled DVD-writing program that can be used to burn DVDs on your Dell computer.

Instructions

1. Launch Windows DVD Maker. Windows DVD Maker is the DVD-burning application preinstalled on Windows Vista computers, including Dell computers. To launch Windows DVD Maker, click the "Start" orb, click "All Programs" and then choose "Windows DVD Maker" in the program list.

2. Click the "Choose Photos and Videos" option on the first screen, then click "Add Items." In the "Add Items" window, locate the video file or files that you want to add to the DVD and double-click each item to add it to Windows DVD Maker.

3. Rearrange the videos in Windows DVD Maker by clicking on any video, holding down the mouse button and dragging the file up or down in the list of videos on the screen. If you want to remove a video once you have added it, click on the video file name and press the "Remove Items" button.

4. Put your cursor into the box by "Disc Title" by right-clicking in the box. Type a name for the DVD project into the box and click the "Next" button to move to the next screen.

5. Change the look of the menus and the text in your DVD project by clicking the "Customize Menu" button. To alter the appearance of the font, click the "Font" or "Font Color" button and select a text style and color. To choose a background video or image for the menu, click "Background Video" and "Browse," locate the video or image file and click the "Open" button.

6. Click on "Preview" to view the DVD project with the customized menu. If you want to save the DVD menu you created as a menu style for use at a later time, click the "Save as new style" option, enter a name next to "Style name" and press the "OK" button.

7. Place a DVD into the DVD drive of your Dell computer. Click the "Burn" button and the Windows DVD Maker project burns to the disc.

References

• Microsoft: Burn a DVD-Video Disc