Use a CD or DVD?

[pnutmnm]

Last weekend I took pics from Homecoming. I want to share all of my pics with some of the other parents. What would be better to use - a CD or a DVD?

Also...anyone use Litescribe? I have it on my computer and have never used it. I thought it would be neat to burn a custom label onto each disc. Is it easy to use? Does it effect viewing by others (if they don't have Litescribe)?

 

[C&B Young]

DVD is the way to go for the sheer storage space, a DVD can hold around 4.7 gigs of data whereas a CD-ROM can only hold 700MB. I would check with the other parents to make sure they have a DVD drive on their computer though. I once burned some pictures to DVD for a friend only to discover that they only had a CD-ROM drive. As for Lighscribe, that I can't help you with as I usually employ the "Sharpie written on the disc" labeling method!

 

[YesDear]

I agree with the DVD. As far as lightscribe goes it works well. You need lightscribe burnable disks. The image is done on the back side of the disk and does not affect the data burned on it.

 

[creativeamanda]

I agree about using the DVD--just make sure everyone has a DVD drive. We also have Lightscribe on our laptop and desktop. Make sure you buy the disks that are for lightscribe, or it won't etch. HP of course makes some, but other manufacturers do, as well.

 

[Groucho]

Definitely DVD! A DVD holds almost 7x as much data but costs maybe 2x the price, so it's much more cost-effective. Plus, you end up with a lot fewer discs lying around!

Lightscribe is fine but is just for appearance, it goes on the front face of the discs (the data goes on the back, the "down" side - which is why you should always place bare discs with the back side up.) The blanks are quite a bit more than regular blanks.

................

Actually, I just re-read this. If you are making discs of a specific amount of photos for parents, go with CD unless you have too many pictures to fit on a single CD, then you'll need to go DVD. The extra space of the DVD will go wasted if you're only burning, say, 200 megs of photos. (Unless you use multisession and the parents add more of their own stuff later, but that's unlikely!)

The initial stuff I wrote is for when you're burning discs for your own storage/backup.

 

[C&B Young]

Fun fact (albeit ) - Here in Canada, because the Canadian recording industry levies a tax on blank CD's (but not DVD's), DVD-R's actually cost far less than CD-R's - DVD-R's cost around 25 cents each, CD-R's cost around a DOLLAR each! So unless I'm burning an audio disc specifically to play in a CD player, everything goes on DVD, no matter how much space is wasted. You've gotta love the Great White North...

 

[dmccarty]

Besides Lightscribe, if you have an inkjet printer that will print on CD/DVDs, there are CD/DVDs that have labels ready for printing in an inkjet printer.

If you REALLY want to go the extra effort make a photo slide show that can be played in a DVD player. I tried a bunch of photo slide show software before buying ProShow Gold. For me its was the easiest to use and did an excellent job. I bought a couple of CDs of Disney music to be played along with our photo from our last WDW trip. It came out very nice.

Later,
Dan

 

[MICKEY88]

I'm going to buck the crowd here, I almost always use DVDs for my needs, however if you only have a few hundred meg of pictures a cd would work just fine,

another issue with dvds that hasn't been mentioned even if people have a dvd player, there can be a problem if they have dvd-r and you use dvd+r, or vice versa,

with cds that is not an issue,
so if your pics wil fit on cd, that is what I would recommend

 

[pnutmnm]

another issue with dvds that hasn't been mentioned even if people have a dvd player, there can be a problem if they have dvd-r and you use dvd+r, or vice versa,

That was a thought that I did have. If not played specifically on a DVD player, would their computer be fine for viewing?

 

[MICKEY88]

That was a thought that I did have. If not played specifically on a DVD player, would their computer be fine for viewing?

it depends on the dvd player/burner in their computer, newer pcs play both,, older pcs would have either a dvd-r or dvd+r

I ran into that problem when I did dvds {dvd-r}of photos for our HS volleyball team, half of the players couldn't view the pics at home so I burned new disks for them using dvd+r

as far as dvd players go, newer ones will play either disk,, some older ones won't even play a burned disk..