Troubleshoot problems with creating a DVD-Video using Windows DVD Maker

The preview in Windows DVD Maker is designed to give you an idea of how your menu and video settings will look when you play your DVD, but sometimes a preview may appear choppy or slow, even if all of the files in your project are undamaged. It's important to note that the quality you see in the preview does not predict the quality of your final DVD because the quality of the preview depends partly on the speed of your computer processor and the capabilities of your video card, while these factors do not affect the video quality of your burned DVD. If your preview is not playing smoothly, you can try closing other programs to free up system resources on your computer. You can also burn a test DVD to make sure everything appears the way you intend it to.

Try one or more of the following:

• Verify that the DVD burner is connected properly to your computer and powered on, and that any necessary software drivers for the DVD burner are installed. You can check your hardware settings in the Device Manager by doing the following:

  1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

  2. Click Hardware and Sound.

  3. Click Device Manager.

• Make sure that the videos you're trying to burn are not corrupted. To see whether the videos you want to burn are corrupted, try playing or viewing them using Windows Media Player. If the files don't play using the Player, Windows DVD Maker cannot burn them.

• Choose a slower burning speed for your DVD burner by doing the following:

  1. Return to the Add pictures and video to the DVD page, and then click Options.

  2. In the DVD burner speed box, select Medium or Slow.

A DVD may not play properly in some DVD players or DVD-ROM drives for any of the following reasons:

• The disc type may not be compatible. Some DVD players or DVD-ROM drives can only play certain kinds of DVDs. For example, some DVD players only play DVD+R or DVD+RW discs, while others only play DVD-R or DVD-RW discs.

• The disc format may not be compatible. If you burn a DVD using the PAL format, you will not be able to play that DVD using a player that only supports the NTSC format, and vice versa.

• The disc quality may be too low. Some DVD players or DVD-ROM drives will not play DVDs if the disc is not in good repair or if it is not a high-quality disc. If your player can't play a DVD, you can try burning it again using a higher-quality DVD.

To determine what types of DVDs your DVD player or DVD-ROM drive can play, check the documentation that came with your device or go to the manufacturer's website.

Windows DVD Maker may not include some text when burning the DVD if the text is too long to fit on a TV screen. You can make sure all of your text will appear by previewing your DVD in Windows DVD Maker before burning your DVD. To preview your DVD, on the Ready to burn disc page, click Preview.

By default, Windows DVD Maker menus are displayed at a 16:9 (widescreen) aspect ratio. Therefore, some of the menu might not appear if displayed on a standard TV that has a 4:3 aspect ratio.

The DVD menu text color sometimes needs to be converted to a color that can be displayed on TV. A TV cannot display as many colors as a computer monitor. Therefore, some DVD menu text colors may be converted to a color that can be displayed on TV when creating and burning a DVD using Windows DVD Maker.

If a DVD cannot be successfully created when you choose the Import the entire videotape and then burn to DVD option in Import Video, try to first import the video from your DV camera to your computer, and then import the resulting video file or files into Windows DVD Maker to create your DVD as follows:

For more information about how to create a DVD using Windows DVD Maker, see Burn a DVD-Video disc.

For more information about changing Windows DVD Maker settings, see Change DVD-Video settings.

For more information about importing the video from the videotape in the DV camera, see Import video from a videotape.