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Everybody loves to share photos online and preserve those special memories on CD-ROM. Now, photo-sharing site PhotoWorks.com is moving beyond the PC to your TV, introducing this week a PhotoDVD service that lets you create slide-show style DVDs from your digital photos.

Once you're a member of PhotoWorks' site (membership is free), you can upload images from your hard drive, or select images from existing rolls of film that you've sent to PhotoWorks for processing. You can already create an album with the images you want. Now you can select the PhotoWorks PhotoDVD option. From there, it will take a matter of minutes to create your DVD.

The cost of the service, though not prohibitive, isn't cheap: PhotoWorks charges $24.95 for the first 50 photos, and 10 cents for each additional photo to a maximum capacity of 200 photos (which would cost $39.95).

That may sound like a lot at first, but consider what it would cost to accomplish something similar by yourself: A DVD-R, such as Pioneer's newly released DVR-A03 sells for $995, while DVD-R discs still cost about $20 or more each.

Slide Show Made Simple

PhotoWorks' online application for creating a DVD is designed to be simple, walking you through the five-step process of building a show that best encapsulates the special occasion or vacation you're commemorating. First, you'll choose from five background wallpapers, including ones themed to travel, romance, and the winter holidays. Since the backgrounds feature dissolve effects, and will change from image to image, the site provides a preview so you can get an idea of what constitutes a given background theme.

Next you can pick from seven "stock" musical soundtracks, ranging from classical to romantic, and preview each as well. Then you make final adjustments to the photo assortment that will be put on the DVD. You can change orientation of photos, and add or delete them as you choose. You get to add a title and description (which will appear on the back of the DVD case cover) preview the final sequence, and even add credits. As a final touch, you can write a personalized inscription that appears with the title on the front of the DVD cover.

Within seven to ten days, PhotoWorks will ship the completed DVD.

Enhancements Planned

While the 200-image limit on the DVD may seem odd given that a DVD can hold 4.7GB of data, PhotoWorks says it capped the number of images based on typical customer behavior.

"We didn't really want it to lend itself to dumping every image you have onto DVD," says Jay Wheatley, DVD product manager at PhotoWorks. "We see this as an entertainment and social product. It's actually a movie. Each image is on screen for seven to ten seconds, and moving at 30 frames per second." A 200-image PhotoDVD can provide about a half hour of playback, PhotoWorks estimates. The movies are encoded using MPEG II video compression.

PhotoWorks hopes to enhance the service's features, adding support for personal audio selections, captions for individual pictures, and Web links embedded on the DVD itself.

PhotoDVD stores two versions of each image--one at the original resolution, and a second one at 720 by 480 pixels, the optimum resolution for playback via an NTSC television. The DVD-R media used is compatible with most existing consumer DVD players, which PhotoWorks lists on its site.

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