Pics on CD or DVD???

Question

Just fgot back from Sicily and Greece. I have about 500 pics, and am going through one by one with iPhoto, resizing, cropping, filtering, etc. When done, I would like to put on a disc and be able to lend them to different friends with different computers.
Two questions:
1.) What exact discs should I buy?
2.) Will these be useable on any computer, if not, wehat are the limits/options?
3.) If playing on CD or DVD, how will it work - how will I switch pics? Are the slideshow options and if so, can I stop or reverse the order?
OK - that was 3 questions - one of them was a bonus!!! I'm new to this part of mac-dom, and appreciate any help you can supply. These forums have been most helpful to me in the past. Thanks for any info you can supply - Dennis

Answer 1

1.) Verbatim DVD-R, not DVD+R, not DVD-RW, not DVD+RW.
2.) A Video-DVD should play on Macs, DVD players, and Windoze computers if they have the right software.
3.) Plenty of options in iDVD for slideshow presentations.
I build my slideshows only in iDVD. No iPhoto or iMovie. This is one of my more complex DVDs:
Ireland 2004 iDVD Project
Nearly 800 images dragged into iDVD as organized folders from the hard drive. Transitions on each image, and menus, sub-menus, and sub-sub menus. The sub-menus are created by clicking on the Folder icon on the iDVD interface.
Main Menu has 6 buttons: Downpatrick, Antrim Coast, Letterkenny, Sligo, Trim, and Extras. Behind each button are additional buttons ranging from 3 to 6 buttons. The Extras button goes fairly deep. When you click on Extras, it gives you 3 choices on a new menu. The "B&Bs" button opens a new menu with 5 buttons. The "Movies" button opens a new menu with 4 buttons. If you click on the "Irish Music" button, you open a new menu with 2 buttons. At that point, you are at a "sub-sub-sub menu."
Music was on 95 of the slideshows. Some movies converted to QT DV from Canon S400 digicam .AVI files (iDVD 4). Now convert to H.264 with QuickTime 7. Images are original 4MP (2MB) JPEG images from the same digicam. This DVD project is around 4GB with all pictures as DVD-ROM content.
Best Quality setting.
Suggest you create a disc image and then burn the DVD. File/Save As Disc Image...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=164927
This will isolate any encoding/burning issues you may encounter. Once the disc image is created, double-click the .img and burn the virtual disc that should appear on your desktop, using Toast to burn the DVD. Disk Utility to burn the .img file. Usually, you can select a burning speed in Disk Utility.
There are variations to this process based on which OS X you are using...
Open Disk Utility (in Utilities folder in Applications folder), click on the virtual disc (maybe the .img) in the left-hand window. Click the Burn icon. A new window should drop down and your SuperDrive tray will open after clicking the Burn icon. Insert a recordable DVD. (Verbatim DVD-R preferred by me.) Click the Close button. Wait. Select a burn speed. If you hold your mouse cursor over the pop-up it says: "Select a slower speed to work around burn failures," so select 4x or slower for best results. Then click the Burn button.
-->If the virtual disk selection won't allow you to click the Burn icon, use the .img file instead. This may have changed in 10.3.9 and did change in Tiger.
Also, you can use DVD Player to play the virtual disk to check your iDVD project before burning to DVD. Launch DVD Player. File/Open VIDEO_TS (Open DVD Media... in Player 4.6). Find the VIDEO_TS folder and open that. (The audio folder is for DVD-Audio disks.)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93006
iDVD 6 Getting Started
Apple's iMovie Learning Site
Apple's iDVD Learning Site
General Learning Center
Ken Stone: Authoring in iDVD 6
My favorite, by far:
iMovie HD & iDVD 6: The Missing Manual
You can download Chapter four: Camcorder Meets Mac.
iPhoto 6: The Missing Manual
G4 DP 1.25 GHz 2GB RAM 4 Drives 770GB Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2 SuperDrives (SL 8X & DL 16X)