Making an Interactive CD

How do I get here?

From Main Menu, click Open button below the show thumbnail. You will be directed to Opening Show Window. Click Make interactive CD

Overview

Interactive CD is playable on any computer without the need to install a special utility. Interactive CD is a good way to share your show with your friend or relatives. You can even make your interactive CD expire after several days of usage and require user to enter a license number/registration code. You can also customize the show window with your detail, website address and a company logo.

Making Interactive CD

To make an interactive CD, you need to go through 3 simple steps

1. Selecting show to be included in CD, reordering shows and giving CD title

InAlbum lets you put more than one show into a CD. The left window showing show thumbnail available to be put into CD while the right window showing the show will be included in CD. By default the currently opened show is included. To include a show into CD, double click on the show thumbnail on the left window.

The Current CD space used information above the right window tells you how much space already used in the CD

Excluding show from CD

Double click on show thumbnail on the right window.

Including all shows

Click Add All button

Excluding all shows

Click Remove All button

Reordering shows in CD

Click and drag show thumbnail on the right window to reorder it and drop it at the desired location

Giving a CD title

Type in Title text box. CD title will be used as a CD volume

2. Specify additional settings

When you ready to make a CD, click Make CD Now button.

A window will open showing where the intermediate files will be placed in your hard disk before they are burned to CD. It will also tell you how much space will be required and how much space available on that drive. You can change the location of the intermediate files by clicking on Browse button.

3. Start making a CD

Click OK to continue burning the CD.

You will be prompted to insert a blank CD into your CD Writer. Make sure you insert a blank CD. Then click OK. Burning process will takes a while, depending on your computer and CD Writer speed. It is advised not to run a complex process during the burning process.

The view the resulting CD, simply insert the CD into any CD-ROM drive. It will automatically launch itself.

Customizing interactive CD splash window and adding registration detail

As mentioned previously, you can customize your interactive CD splash window with your detail, website address and company logo. To do this, click Settings button next to Registration / splash screen settings at Specify additional settings window.

Splash screen

A splash screen is a window which will appear when your interactive CD is launched. Below is one example of a splash screen.

Always show splash screen window

Uncheck this setting to show splash screen only when required, for example when asking user to enter registration code. Otherwise the splash screen will always show up every time the interactive CD is executed.

Title

The title appear on the interactive CD splash screen.

Company Name/Author

This will also appear on the interactive CD splash screen.

Logo

Check to have a logo.

To select your own logo, click Browse button. Logo file can be any image format supported by InAlbum (JPG, GIF, PNG, TGA, BMP). The recommended logo size is 300x50 pixels.

Change icon

To change the exe icon

Registration

A registration is a way to limit the usage of your interactive CD. You can set your screen saver to expire in a few days and require user to enter a registration code to continue using it.

There are 3 possibilities you can choose:

Your interactive CD does not require user to enter a registration code and it will never expires.

User will be asked for a registration code before he can run your interactive CD.

Your interactive CD will expire in x days. When the time comes, a window will show up notifying user that his/her interactive CD is expired.

If you want to allow user to enter a registration code to continue using your interactive CD when it expires, check allow user to enter registration code to remove expiration.

Registration code

Registration code to unlock his/her interactive CD.

Adding original photos into the CD

You can add original photos into the CD by checking Include original photo files. This feature only available for InAlbum 3.0 Deluxe.

InAlbum will automatically insert the original photos (unmodified) into the final CD. If the original photo cannot  be found, it will insert the resized version saved within your document file. You can change this behavior by clicking on Settings button.

A window will open up like the one showing below.

To make InAlbum 3.0 resize the photo if bigger than certain dimension, check the Resize photos if bigger than this resolution. Then type in the maximum width/height.

To compress the photo as a JPEG file, check the Compress photo to JPEG

Adjust the JPEG quality slider to define the compression quality.