How to Convert Old Photos to DVDs

Scan photographs from traditional cameras to make the pictures digital.

Microsoft's Windows Live software package provides features that scan your old photographs on to your computer, then burn the pictures to DVDs for viewing on your television. The software lets you store thousands of times more digital copies of photographs on a writable disc in the same physical space that you store printed photographs. Additionally, with a digital copy of photos, your protect your memories with a back up system, preventing picture degradation.

Things You'll Need

• Scanner
• DVD writable drive

Instructions

How to Scan Old Photographs Using Windows Photo Gallery

1. 

   Flatbed scanners are often in the same device as a printer.

   Connect the scanner to the computer with a USB cable.

2. Open the Windows Live Photograph program from your computer's "Start" menu.

3. Click the "Import" option from the top left corner of the window once Windows Live Photograph opens.

4. Left-click on the scanner and select "Import" on the "Import Photos and Videos" menu that pops up.

5. Set the color format to color, black and white or gray-scale depending on how you want to scan the photograph.

6. Choose the "JPG" option from the "File Type" drop menu.

7. Set the resolution to 300 DPI, line up the photograph on the scanner and click the "Scan" option.

8. Click "Import" on the new window after the scanner is finished. Find the scanned pictures in the "Imported Pictures and Videos" folder under the MyDocuments/Pictures directory.

How to Burn Photographs to a Data DVD

1. 

   You can burn photogrpahs to writable discs for portible backup.

   Insert a blank DVD into the computer's DVD writable drive.

2. Open Windows Explorer, select the "Computer" directory from the tree on the left side of the window, and double left-click on the DVD writable drive.

3. Select the "With a CD/DVD player" option and press next.

4. Open a second Windows Explorer instance and locate the photographs to burn to the DVD.

5. Drag the photographs from their original location to the writable DVD drive's window.

6. Click the "Burn to disc" option from the menu and follow the onscreen instructions.

How to Burn Photographs to a Video DVD

1. 

   Most DVD players can read burned video DVDs.

   Open Windows Live Movie Maker.

2. Click the "add videos and photos" option.

3. Locate the photograph files you want to add to the DVD in the browser.

4. Highlight the pictures you want to add to the disc and click "Open." Batch highlight by holding shift and left clicking on the first and last photographs to add. Select multiple photographs, one at a time, by holding "CTRL" and left clicking on each photograph.

5. Left-click on the blue drop or "file" down menu, select "Save Movie," and choose the "Burn to DVD" option.

6. Choose a folder to save the source video to in the file browser and click save.

7. Follow the onscreen instructions to finish burning the disc.

Tips & Warnings

• You may have to download Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Live Photo Gallery from the Windows Live website depending.

• Video DVD writable discs will only play in DVD players that are equipped to play DVD writable discs.

• Single-layer DVD writable discs hold around 4.38 GB of data.

References

• Microsoft: About Picture Scanning in Windows Photo Gallery
• Microsoft: About Burning Video Discs
• Microsoft: About Burning Data Discs