oh gawd - help me please - do I want to have my disk as a Live File System or Mastered???

[BaroqinAroundTheChristmasTree]

I'm putting together a DVD (or 2?) for my BF for Christmas. It's going to have photos and video that I know she'll want to keep (so will want to keep the disk as it is) - but will probably want to put some of the photos onto her computer (which I'm not sure which Windows version she has....) as well.

If I do it "mastered" - will she be able to copy stuff onto her computer?

Bollox - I thought I was doing so well, editing a video and piecing it all together, and creating audio files from videos to play with stills.

But now I'm stuck !!!

Help - please

Just asked dp and he says do it as a live file system which means it can be read in any pc or mac

is he sure?

it's just the help thing says that the Live file system only works in Windows Vista, XP or later (which ever came first

I think she has XP - but can't be completely certain.

Will she be easily be able to accidentaly delete stuff off the CD's if I do them live file system (she's not 100% computer savvy - though getting there)

actually the initial "which option do you want" page says

• Like a USB Flash Drive: Save, edit and delete files on the disc anytime. The disc will work on computer running Windows XP or later (Live File System)

• With a CD/DVD player: Burn files in groups and individual files can't be edited or removed after burning. The disc will also work on most computers (Mastered)

oh goodness - I'm stupid.

I have a laptop with Windows 7 - and a PC with XP - I have lots of spare discs. It's just dawned on me I can do a test one on here (W7) - and try it out to see if it'll do what I want on XP.........

thanks for help though

If you write to a CD-R (ie not a rewritable CD) then once it is written it cannot be erased later, it is read-only.

So she could read it, copy files off it, but never accidentally (or deliberately!) write over it.

From the descriptions given, Mastered sounds the option you need. I guess a Win 98 SE system (over 10 years old now) would probably read the CD, but it would be more awkward to find up-to-date versions of any of the latest media player software to run reliably on an older system like that.

Vista came after XP, but was not as popular, and following Vista is Windows 7.

If you have lots of spare discs, could you do one of each & give them both?

Thanks you 2 - I have done it mastered ~(and it works on my older computer - being able to do the stuff I expect she'll want to do).

I had a major panic over it all which was really rather silly as I'd managed to edit these video clips and do all sorts of clever stuff - and then didn't have a clue what to format the disc as

Best friends Christmas present is all sorted