I have some MP3s I'd like to burn to DVD, plus have a looped video or screensaver as a backdrop. Does anyone know what program/s to use and how to go about doing this so that it would play automatically?
You need authoring software, but DVD (mpeg2) does not work with mp3 sound. You need to author DivX (mpeg4) for that. In authoring you just need a motion picture, import sound and tell it to loop.
If you want to make a DVD compilation and put it to a disc that would play in a standalone player, you can use DVD Flick or Nero Vision to do that.
I've tried several different programs for making a slideshow with my own photos and *.MP3s - some that create Flash files, others that do *.AVIs - and the best one I found was VSO Photo DVD. It does simple fade transitions, as opposed to most other apps that have all kinds of neat (and cheesy) swipes, but it will work with many types of image and audio files. You can adjust the length of time each picture is shown, as well as how long the transitions take, to get the slideshow to match the music. If you just want a way to easily put a bunch of audio onto a DVD, just for listening purposes, you could create a handful of all-black images to use for the slideshow. In this way, you'd be able to put an entire multi-CD audiobook or your favorite band's whole discography onto one DVD. Unlike some other similar programs I've tried, the output files are recognized by ConvertXtoDVD, TMPGEnc DVD Author and Nero. This makes it easier to make the files smaller (ConvertX) and do a nice menu (TMPGEnc). To use video, there are several solutions, from muxing the new audio to the old video to using something like Premier to fully edit your video clips and stills into a new video. If you can get it to run long enough (without crashing) even Windows Movie Maker will do the job.
Thanks for the great tips, everyone! Sounds like this will be a really involved process, but should be fun.
