I started to put together a set of DVDs containing picture slideshows and some videos of my nephews for my sister-in-law and my FIL and MIL. I have never used iDVD so thought I'd give it a shot. The themes are easy enough to use, but had some issues. Mainly, during the slideshows, as the images would transition from one to another, I would get visual "noise" in the background. I created different slideshows using different transitional effects, and also tried burning from iDVD as well as creating an image and then burning.

I also added music to each slideshow as well as the menus. They played ok for the most part, but sometimes would hiccup and the music would stop for a few seconds. I am not sure if I could add more then one song per slideshow either, will have to check on that. With hundreds of pictures in a couple of the slideshows, the song ends up looping. Would be nice to have it start another song. There is no timeline in iDVD to adjust this, that I am aware of at least.

The last thing that is annoying is that the software does not tell you the project size, and in fact will go through an entire burn process until the disc fills up and just fails. It does not tell you this is the reason for failure. The only way I knew is I created an image and checked the size of it.

After all this, I figured that there is probably better software out there. I could go with either Mac of PC. I plan to rip scenes from certain movies to put together my own test DVD to use on jobs to both test and demo home theaters, so I want something that will not give the issues I mentioned above. It probably would not be a huge issue for the demo disc as I believe all my issues occur on slideshows, and I will most likely not be using any on that disc. I would however like to complete this project with the pics of the kids.

 

Doesn't Nero do something like this?

 

Not sure, haven't used it in years and when I did I basically just used it to burn discs. Does it have templates and does it automatically setup DVD menus?

 

Yeah.. I'm pretty sure that it does.

http://www.nero.com/eng/show-tutorial.php?tut=MTI=
http://www.nero.com/enu/nero11-video-editing.html

Looks like there is plenty of software out there for what you are looking for.
http://www.wondershare.com/pro/dvd-s...er-deluxe.html
That's just one of the ones that came up on google.