Play .JPG on DVD (Picture / Photo CD)?

Infopackets Reader Martinez 'Purity3' writes:

" Dear Dennis,

My DVD player is supposed to be able to view JPG picture files on CD. I recently made my own picture CD and put it in the DVD player, but the player reports an error message and refuses to display any images. What am I doing wrong? The DVD manual says it plays 'JPEG picture files that conform to ISO9660 Level 1/Level 2 standards, and the extended media format, Joilet.' I'm not sure what that means?! Any suggestions you can provide to help me get this .JPG picture CD working with my DVD would be greatly appreciated! "

My response:

When I visited relatives in Holland this past May, I took along my digital camera with the intent of making a photo CD. After I got back from my trip, I ran into a number of "compatibility issues" with 3 different DVD players after I burned my photo CD. After some trial and error, I was able to overcome most of the issues (which I have outlined below). Based on my experience, here's what I can tell you:

1. There appears to be a maximum number of pictures you can store in the root directory or folder when creating the photo CD. Based on my experience, the maximum number of photos allowed in a folder (or root directory) is 300. If you have more than 300 photos, some DVD players will not recognize the remaining pictures in the directory (or at least, that's what happened to me). In this case, I suggest you split your photos into multiple folders; this makes navigating the CD a lot easier. Also, many DVD players have a *very* basic slideshow navigation and will only play photos from start to finish without the ability to skip to an arbitrary picture. If you have the photos stored in multiple folders, you should be able to play each folder (from start to finish) as a mini-slideshow.

2. Burn the photo CD in 1 shot; this is because some DVD players won't read more than 1 CD session at a time. Use the "disc at once" or "DOA" method -- or quite simply, don't choose to create a multi-session CD when creating the disc.

3. The photo CD should be burned as a "data CD". Do not choose any other type of disc format or it may not work properly when you go to play the photo CD in the DVD player.

4. Make 100% sure that the photo files you're burning are in fact .JPG format. If the file extension is .JPEG, try renaming the file with a .JPG suffix. You can review the file extension format in Windows XP by opening up your picture folder (or wherever your pictures are stored), then click Tools -> Folder Options -> View tab -> uncheck "Hide Extensions for known type", and click Apply. This will show you all the full filenames.

Good luck!