What can I say about those old slide projectors and video CDs but "We May Never Pass This Way Again."

Mention to my friends that you're coming to my house for dinner, and they might advise you to run the other way. Not because of my cooking, thank you, but because I might treat you to a slide show. In the old days, that meant I'd haul out the slide projector and narrate my fall weekend in New England or worse, my high school reunion. The only soundtrack was the noisy whirr of the slide projector, and the screen was the mostly blank living room wall.

I can't tell you how excited I was when digital photography came along and imaging software replaced the projector. Programs from companies including Roxio, Sony, Sonic, Ulead and Photodex enable you to record not only photos but music to disc. Even better, you can copy a slide show using the VCD (Video CD) format on a CD-ROM or DVD—and play your masterpiece on a DVD player and your TV!

When I sent out CD slide shows of my high school reunion a few years back—complete with Seals and Crofts' "We May Never Pass This Way Again," they were a big hit. But those VCD recordings used MPEG-1 compression, which rivals the old-world quality of a VHS cassette. Now that I'm used to the sharp contours of HDTV and the crisp quality of DVD movies encoded with MPEG-2 compression, VHS-grade isn't good enough.

I discovered that when I created a slide show from a weekend trip to Napa Valley last fall. I made a VCD recording using my PC's CD-R burner and Ulead's Picture Show3 software. Although Ulead has done a great job of making it easy to put pictures and soundtracks together into a slide show, the results on my 57-inch HDTV were disappointing. The images were fuzzy and by one diplomatic critique, "impressionistic."

Realizing it was time for an upgrade, I hooked up a Pioneer DVR-S706 DVD-ROM burner to my PC. The additional capacity would give me seven or eight times the disc space of a CD.

Not so fast. When I tried to record my slide show to a DVD, I encountered a DLA conflict, whatever that is. A 911 call in to Ulead solved that, but when I tried to record my show to DVD again, the recording stopped 28 minutes into the burn, and it did this twice. I had been using a 2x blank DVD-R, and the recorder was rated at up to 8x. So I bought some 4x DVD-Rs and tried again. At the dreaded 28-minute mark, the software locked up again and spit out a message even tech support could not decipher. Given that it was the night before Thanksgiving, the Ulead crew and I agreed to adjourn. It was then that I noticed an inconspicuous options button tucked into the corner of the Burn page.

It had been set to default to maximum speed, which was too much for the disc and recorder to handle. That's when this brainstorm hit me. I chose the minimum recording speed, hit burn again and went to whip up some cranberry sauce and pumpkin bread for the next day. When I returned several hours later, my DVD-ROM had sound and music intact. My much-anticipated Napa show is darn impressive. Care to come for dinner?

Rebecca Day is a freelance writer based in New York.

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