Grease was the word around here a few weeks ago. My daughter and her high school theatre department performed the iconic musical in November to packed out audiences for a week! It was so exciting. My husband video taped the performances so all the cast could have a copy of the show. Sounds like a simple plan, right? Well, the snag is that burning DVDs right now is not as easy as it was in the past. The reason? Technology has changed and most people are storing things in the cloud. Therefore, many computers don’t provide for dvd burning these days. This becomes especially a problem when you have a video of about 2 hours like we had.
So, I had the task of finding a way to put together an edited version of the show, convert it to a smaller size, and then burn dvds for the students. I tried several free software programs but none of them would allow me to do what I needed. Finally, on Christmas Eve, I found the one that worked! It was a Christmas miracle! I used Wondershare DVD Creator and it worked like a charm. I did have to purchase the software instead of using the free version, but it was worth the $39.99.
I used Movie Maker Live to piece together the video first. I needed to edit the footage a little so this made it pretty simple to do. It took forever for the video to load, but it looked nice when I was done with a title, etc. Then I used Wondershare DVD Creator and selected the template I wanted the DVD to use for my video and titled the video. I loaded the video into Wondershare and again it took forever, but it was worth it. Finally when the video had processed I was able to burn copies of the video on DVDs using my external DVD burner.
With the end of the school year around the corner, I thought some of you may be putting together class videos and might need some help if you have parents wanting DVDs of the presentations. I do use the cloud for just about everything for storing and sharing, but this particular file was so large and many of the parents requested a DVD copy so I had to go old school and work through this process. Like I said earlier, many computers now don’t even have a DVD player/burner so you may find yourself needing to purchase an external burner and software to burn your favorite videos. All the trouble was worth it because the students and their families were able to watch an incredible show and cherish the memories made during the production of the show. We watched it ourselves several times to see our hysterical daughter play the part of Jan, the cutest Pink Lady ever!
