Storing Photographs

[lyndhurst]

Windows Vista home Premium  Trying to Burn photo's (Live File System) on CD's
Pictures folders, total size 5.5 GB.     First Folder 1.3 MB absorbed about 30 MB on disk and there was not sufficient space for
another folder.  Is it because of UDF file system?
What is the best method to save Photo's on CD/DVD ?
If I back up PC Files, will I need untold # of disk's or will 1 DVD be sufficient?

[Geek-9pm]

No, a DVD is not a good way to archive photos., if you have lots.  A standard DVD is about 4.7 GB and crating folders on a DVD uses some space just for the folder. Photos take with a high quality digital camera often take about 1 MB of spice for each  in JPG format.

The size can reduced in two ways. Reduce the number of pixels and/or increase the JPG compression using a photo program.

Also, if each photo has a distinct name, separate folders  are not needed.

[patio]

I'm  curious as to why you state "DVD's aren't a good way to store photos"...

[DaveLembke]

DVD's are a good way to store photo's, but if you want to navigate a view them on a DVD it takes forever to seek and view files with more than 4000 photos around 1mb or less. If you want to navigate and view photos on a DVD, I'd perform a copy of all contents from DVD to Hard drive and then view them from hard drive instead which can navigate and seek and load files faster.

I dumped my one video game screenshots folder to a DVD with thousands of JPG's, and found out that it does not work well to navigate and view off a DVD image files when many are there. DVD-RAM drive became unresponsive at times and I could hear it spinning and optical eye worm gear moving eye frantically on SATA DVD-RAM drive. Navigating on DVD's doesnt work well when you have thousands of files on them, and even worse when they are all in the same folder.

[Geek-9pm]

OK, fair enough.
The OP did not say how many photos he had not did he say how he wanted to use them after they were saved. I made an assumption. Likely he would think about showing his photos on a DVD player. Unless the DVD player has a special method, it would not work.

I assume he wants a DVD slideshow, which bis really a movies.

Here is a remark copied from another forum:

...  have resized my photos to 1000X750 like the book says to do for a slide show DVD to play on the TV. How many photos can I fit on a DVD? When I do the math, it sounds like I could put about 4000, but the slide show editor says not to put more than 500 or it will be too slow. Do I really need to keep it down to 500?
http://muvipix.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=10092

He wants to make them into a slice show. The limit is 500.
Also, DVDs get starched. Flash drives do not . A 4 GB flash driven holds lots more than a DVD slideshow.

[patio]

Again this doesn't make sense...
DVD 's get scratched...if your not careful yes.
Flash drives fail completely...never had that happen to a DVD.

And why would the flash hold more if a DVD is also 4G ? ?

[Geek-9pm]

Glad you asked.
At one time, people were amazed by DVDs. You could put a long movie on it with high quality. Well, that is alright with movies. But if you take a bunch of digital photos, even ones nicety reduced to a piratical size, they will take more space on a DVD that what you would think. About  500 max. As a slide show.

The issue is how people want to use the DVDs. Few, if any. DVD players have a method for showing photos in a slide show. Flash drives solve the problem. Flash drive are not mechanical thugs that haven to rotatable at a constant speed.

Many, even most, new TV sets have a USB port. It is for showing a slide show from a Flash drive. A nice little 4 GB Flash drive can entertain your relatives for about  8 to 10 hours. Whereas the DVD would maybe do 1 or 2  hours. Because the DVD is a movie, not a set of still images. Standard DVD players have no simple way to show frame by frame.

Soon all-in-one DVD players will go the way of record plates. Just buy a new TV with a USB port. It is also like how the PC is dying to the Smartphone. People like things and are small, easy and work better. DVDs are too big. An you have to cover them. Good Flash drives have a MTBF of a;most  ten years. Unless you leave them on 24 hours by 7 days a week.


Yeah, I know. Some of the youngsters have never seen a record player and now the are cool again. When my girls were  moving into our new a house, they found two 45s left by the previous tenant. I showed they how to use a phonograph. Never mind the lyrics were in French and my girls speak English and Spanish. They played the records overs and over. They memorized the lyrics and could lip sync with the French lyrics. It was cute.

Still, I am sure the DVD is going to fade away in favor of tiny Flash drives.

[patio]

So if i have a 4G slideshow it'll fit on the flash drive but it wont fit on a DVD ? ?

The space issue he is seeing is simply because he is using the UDF format....wrong choice.
In theory you could never fill a CD/DVD to the stated capacity using this format because it treats the media as a floppy so to speak and if i remember correctly it would allocate approx the same size free space as it would written files so it would work that way.
I'm a bit fuzzy on those exact #'s since it's been a long time since i stopped using that format to burn CD/DVD's...but thats how i seem to remember it.

[Geek-9pm]

Sorry, I compressed details.
We are talking Apples and Oranges here.
The DVD is like getting juice from an apple
The Flash drive like getting juice from an oranges.

 Here are the two scenarios I believe the average use will find:
A. The OP would put his photos on a DVD with software that creates a slideshow for use on a normal DVD player. It is a movie that looks like a slideshow. The software says the limit is 500 photos.
B. The Op puts his photos on a clean Flash drive as JPG images of the appropriate size and compression. It is not a video  file, it is a collections of individual JPG i,images. He will play it pay on a TV set that has a USB port.

The OP can put three thousand or more JPG photos on small flash drive.

I am suggesting that anybody who wants to stone photos and have a quick easy way t o show them to quests should the Flash drive. A good one.

In the future, even now, flesh drive will be the way to go for photo storage.
BTW: There is a type of flash technology where the device can be made very reliable for long-term storage. But I will stop here. For now.

[patio]

Just 2 quick things then...
The 500 photo limit for a slideshow was a quote from another article on a different Forum...no way to tell from the quote which app it is...could be a limitation of the slideshow software itself.

3,000 pics on a flash stik in a slideshow at say 6 seconds per pic would be close to a 300 Hour slideshow...or a little over 12 and a half days.

Does the TV itself have a slideshow app that would run automatically ?

I'm not stating the flash isn't a good or better alternative...just not understanding your statements that 4G on a flash drive wont fit on a 4.2G DVD...

Or some of the other points stated.

[Geek-9pm]

Just 2 quick things then...
The 500 photo limit for a slideshow was a quote from another article on a different Forum.....
3,000 pics on a flash... a little over 12 and a half days.

Does the TV itself have a slideshow app that would run automatically ?
...

We need some help help. I estimate that at one per second you could do 3600 in an hour. At 6 seconds, that number shows in 6 hours. I did it on pencil and paper. Can't find my calculator.

Published information is misleading. What most people expect is one full screen image for several seconds on a normal DVD on a normal player.
The review below is a bunch  of $%^& for average person..
http://photo-slideshow-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
You have to read a lot to see if they tell you there really is a practical limit. The reviewer says "Unlimited". That is nonsense.

A DVD-R can hold up to two l hours of a movie.  But 90 min is more common. At 6 secs per image  you have 180 frames of the same image. A big waste of space. You might get 1200 images in two hours ate at 6 secs per still image the really is 180 frames.

Yes, many TV sets now do slide shows with JPGs on a USB thing. There is amenu option to change the time between images. The TV set has a JPG to video conversion stuff in the TV itself.
One of many references out there:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/why-does-my-tv-have-a-usb-port-115428
And yes, I have used it. Next time I have relatives that want to spend the night, I will give them an 8 hour slide show. Not sure if I can talk that long.

[patio]

All i'm saying is the real goal for the OP is to get him an app and a medium that will do what he wants it to do...not a full blown discussion on what's best vs. what's not best.
Let's get back to that...
Again you keep posting outside reviews to apps i've neither used...or tested.
So the rest is just hyperbole mixed in with confusing info for the guy that just wants to store / save photo's.

Meanwhile...he hasn't returned...probably because we made the task at hand way more confusing than it should be...

[Geek-9pm]

My regrets  for chasing away a  poster. 
In a nutshell, JPG is the way to store photographs.

[patio]

All due respect but the jpeg format had nothing to do with what we were discussing...

[Geek-9pm]

The title is Storing Photographs.
He went on to ask about DVDs.
Op, if you are still there,  Standard DVD in current format *can hold about 4.7 GB of data. It would take two  DVDs to store your photos as data.

* UDF has replaced ISO9660. Overhead is modest.

[patio]

I sincerely hope it is me that is misunderstanding this whole diatribe...
If not i apologise in advance.

[patio]

In my reference in an above post i incorrectly ID'd UDF as the wrong format...that is incorrect...
Although UDF is technically packet-writing format it's not the one i was referring to in my comments.
I can't remember what it was called way back when but it basically emulated read/writing to CD's same as floppies... hence you never got the full storage capacity when burning.

So thanx for the above correction Geek...

[lyndhurst]

All I wanted to do is remove photos from PC in case of hard drive failure. Thank you all for your replies, I learned a lot.
   Thank you.

[patio]

Then you can safely burn them to CD/DVD's for storage as i started out by saying...
A flash drive is also an option...but i've personally had more flash drives fail on me then either CD's or DVD's.

[Geek-9pm]

Then you can safely burn them to CD/DVD's for storage as i started out by saying...
A flash drive is also an option...but i've personally had more flash drives fail on me then either CD's or DVD's.

My personal failure rate is near 50% fir either, but I always buy the cheapest I can.

You can get a lifetime warranty on some bend name flash drives.

[patio]

A lifetime warranty is absolutely worthless in getting your pics back should the flash drive fail.
Think about it.

[Geek-9pm]

A lifetime warranty is absolutely worthless in getting your pics back should the flash drive fail.
Think about it.

You don't get any warranty with a DVD. Think about it.

[patio]

I did...
But since we continue to beat a dead horse what would the warranty do ? ?

[Geek-9pm]

I did...
But since we continue to beat a dead horse what would the warranty do ? ?

No, the horse is still moving. One more shot will do it.

Warranty only covers the replacement of the device. However, it insoles the company has made an effort to ensure quality control in production.
An area where it matters in in promotional advertising. This has led to some companies really getting serious about the flash drive.
http://www.flashbay.com/support/faq/flash-drives-review
The above link is about both appearance and performance of USB sticks used in advertising.

The marketplace is filled with USB Flash Drives of vastly varying quality. Some are excellent, although many are completely unfit for the purpose of data storage. If you are considering a bulk purchase of logo-branded USB Flash Drives for promotional purposes, a good quality product that will enhance your brand image is essential. In pursuit of the lowest price, many bulk purchasers encounter suppliers at the unacceptable end of the quality spectrum.

We sent Henry Jacksen (Quality Control manager for the Flashbay Factory ) out into the marketplace to investigate the competition. "The findings were quite worrying in most cases," said Jacksen. "Of the hundreds of models tested, we have chosen just one as a comparison to illustrate the common quality pitfalls." The report below shows our standard Classic USB Flash Drive compared to the common copy. Jacksen adds that, "Many corporate gift distributors buy the copy direct from unscrupulous manufacturers in China who cut too many corners, resulting in serious quality issues."

Where is the OP?
Did he walk away and leave his dying horse? 

[Allan]

First of all, pc users have been copying and saving photos (and most other data) to cd's and dvd's for over 25 years. It works fine. And if the burn process fails you'll know right away and you can redo it. There is zero risk.

By the way, I guess I've been lucky but in all the years I've been using cd's and dvd's as backup media (and this goes back to the mid '80s when they were first introduced) I've had fewer than a handful of burn failures. If you use name brand media, handle them properly, and take your time you are less likely to run into trouble (though it's bound to happen once or twice regardless).