How Do I Know If My DVD Player Will Be Able To Read Your Disks?

Most DVD players manufactured in the last three years have no problem playing the VCD format. This is especially true for DVD players included with your PC. DVD players that can play this format are very inexpensive. To verify that your player can play DVD-r or VCD formats you should look at your manual, labels on the DVD player itself or call the manufactures' support lines i.e. telephone, e-mail or internet site.

If you would like, we can do this for you, just e-mail your DVD players name and model number.

Which DVD should I buy?

The new DVD players let you scroll through your images with the remote or they can run in slide-show mode where it changes the picture every few seconds.

Here are a few models that support this feature:
Philips DVP642/37 player supports JPEG files. It retails for $70 - $100 CDN.

RCA
RCA DRC212N This DVD player supports every disc type but only JPEG files smaller than 5MB. It retails for about $70US.

Apex Digital's DVD Web site
APEX AD-1200 (recently on sale at Circuit City for $39)
APEX AD-1100W
The Apex models support every disc format. They work very well.

Panasonic's DVD Web site
Panasonic DVD-F65K
Panasonic DVD-S35S
(The Panasonic's don't support JPEG files on DVD discs, only on CDs)

What is the difference between a DVD player that plays VCD vs. VCD 2.0( sometime called VCD with playback control) and will it work on my DVD player?

The VCD format is similar in quality to a VHS tape whereas a VCD 2.0 format is DVD quality. We can either use VCD format or VCD 2.0 format (the later offering slightly higher picture quality). Your photos will be put on CD-R or DVD disks. CD-r disks will play on most computers and DVD players manufactured in the last 3 years. Please check your DVD manual to make sure it can read either CD-r disks and or DVD-r disks. If your player can read JPEG files then at the very least it can read CD-r disks.

Some of my photos have scratches and mold, can you digitally repair these problems?

We can repair/enhance your photo but this is part of our Restoration Service and is not included in any Slideshow package deal. Minor repairs start at $2 and increase in price from there depending on the severity of the problem. There are times when a handheld picture looks fine in certain lighting conditions but when scanned all the imperfections come out. Only upon closer examination will you actually see the imperfection. We will e-mail you examples as they occur. You decide what you want done with them.

I would like to put my photos and slides in a certain order. How should I do this?

Please use our order form to guide you and make sure that you clearly label the order in which you want your photos and slides to be shown. Some people will use elastic bands with an enclosed post it note. Others will use envelops or corrugated boxes to label the order. Include any special instructions and place it inside the box. Please use our order form to guide you.

I would like my photos put on DVD but I don't know what you mean by Shows, Chapters and Menu's?

When you purchase a commercial DVD, i.e. a movie. The first thing that you see is the main menu. The main menu is like the Table of Contents in a book. The table of contents contain chapters, your DVD Main Menu will also contain chapters(sometimes referred to as shows). You can have up to 25 chapters per DVD(chapters are sometimes called Shows or Albums) . You should have at very least 1 chapter for every 100 photos or slides. Obviously you want to group your photos into chapters that way they can be easily found.

Chapters can be create in several ways. You could simply use an existing photo as a chapter or we can create a text chapter for you, i.e. "Bill's 5th Birthday", we charge $2 for every text chapter in addition to package deal.

I would like you to make a wedding slideshow. I would like you to add text to some photos and even use some as chapter points. Can you do this?

Yes we can. We charge $1 for every text we add to the photo. This is in addition to package deal. Please enclose the photo in an envelop with the exact information you want to appear in the photo.

FAQ's on Slides

Please order your slides in the carousel. Unless otherwise stated each carousel will be considered a chapter.

Many of your slides will have dirt or fingerprints on them. We do not do slide cleaning. We are not responsible for any dirt on your slides. Through our restoration services we can digitally clean up a slide but this is at additional cost. We would be happy to give you a quote.

Pricing is for scanning 35mm slides in normal thickness 2"x2" cardboard or plastic mounts.


Why should I use your service when I can do it myself?
It basically comes down to these factors: You might want to do research to find the best hardware and software for your budget. How much do you want to spend to purchase the equipment and software you need keeping in mind that your only going to have to do this once in your life. Ensuring your equipment works perfectly right out of the box, normally you have to download and install a slew of patches and upgrades first. How long will it take you to learn all the equipment and software? Will you get the same quality if you did it yourself. Sub $1000 scanners use lower quality chips so you will not get the same level of colour detail despite manufactures claim of high resolutions. Every scanner manufacture offers high and low end scanners. There is a good reason for the price differences and it really comes down to quality. You can't expect a $200 scanner to give you the same quality results as a $3000 scanner. But perhaps the most important factor is how much time do you want to spend (waste) to do this very tedious task It takes us a long time to do this. It will take you even longer since are not automated and you are just learning the hardware and the software. You will be lucky to scan more than one slide every two or three minutes at high resolution. That's at least 3.5 hours , to scan 100 slides. And that doesn't include colour correction and slideshow creation.What about photo restoration, are you going to take the time to learn how do this. Most people will need to take a course to learn how to this proficiently. Remember this is a one time project why waste your time, let the professionals at Safeguarding.com do it for you.

What are the final image sizes that I will be receiving?
What do you end up with after your 35mm slides or photos are all scanned? What will your image sizes be?

Your photos will be scanned in at 300 ppi (pixels per inch) and saved at their original size at. You should easily be able to enlarge your 4" x 6" image to a 5" x 7" or even an 8" x 10" print.

The files are saved in JPG format, at a quality of twelve (the highest quality setting). The size of the file will be approximately 1mb to 3 mb.

Standard 35mm Slides are saved as 4" x 6" images, at 300ppi and JPG quality of 10.

Therefore the approximately size of a 4 * 6 photo would be 4" x 300 plus 6" x 300 = 1200 x 1800 pixels = 2.16 Mega Pixels

What are the advantages and disadvantages of having music put on a slideshow?

- What is popular today will sound funny in the future. The key question you might want to ask your self is, "Would you have played this music while you took the photos in the first place?" Music that spans the generations such as Wedding music and Holiday music definitely do work.

- Music gets stopped in mid play. Each chapter or show in the slideshow can have a piece of music assigned to it. More than likely, your music will not last as long as the Slideshow and will be cut off when the next show starts, OR the music will start to repeat and then be cut off at the end when the pictures run out. We strongly advise you to look at the length of the music as on important factor. Basically 1 minute of music is equal to 12 photos being displayed for 5 seconds at a time. For example if the music you want to use is 4 minutes and 10 seconds long then your show should contain 50 photos. Anything more or less will mean the music will be cut off or the photos will show for more or less the 5 seconds.

- Music takes up a lot storage space on the CD.

Depending on the songs length it can reduce the number of photos you can fit on a disk by several hundred! The more music you have, the less room you will have for your photos.

Having your images stored on the disk is the first thing that you should want because your photos are then protected and stored for future uses including being able to print them out. You are preserving them for future generations.

If you must have music, we would recommend doing BOTH types of disks:

1. Stored images, combined with a non-musical slideshow,
2. A separate Musical Slideshow.

The purpose of this transfer to digital is to preserve your 35mm slides and photos for future generations. Adding music, in our opinion, only takes away from the photo preservation effort and adds nothing.