I attempted to burn some photo's to a DVD and received a message stating the DVD inserted does not work. It is a Verbatim DVD-R disc. Magix showed it should be a DVD-RW disc. Do I need a DVD-RW disc to burn my photo's in Photostory Deluxe?
No, you do not need to use DVD-RW discs for burning a slideshow (though you might use one as an initial "test" burn, to ensure you like the end-result of your hard work!), indeed such discs are not really intended as the final medium, in my opinion. (As rewritable discs they can be reused but I suspect that, over time, there could be degradation of the disc surface so leading to problems with playback of any program burned to such a disc.)
Unfortunately not all DVD blanks are created equal and there could be some degree of incompatibility between your computer's DVD writer and the discs you use or between your DVD Player and the discs.
However, I think you need to tell us exactly what you are doing to put these photos onto a DVD. PhotoStory is designed to enable the creation of slideshows of images, and/or videos and audio. This is called a "project" which must be exported to disc in order for the DVD to work normally in a DVD player.
It is not clear from your post whether that is what you have done, i.e. exported a PS Project to DVD. It could be that you have simply copied photos to a DVD. If so, that will not play in any DVD Player because you have burned a Data disc, not a DVD Video disc.
Is this a genuine Verbatim disc, there have been some counterfeit DVD discs on the market and it is very difficult to determine what the actual disc is without software that can read the manufacturers data that is burned on to the disc - this is what the DVD drive is reading and uses to adjust the laser power setting, however if they were a 'bargain' or significantly cheaper than other suppliers they could be counterfeit or very old.
It is easy to determine if the disc is DVD-R or -RW by the colour - if it is a light purple colour than it is either a -R or +R disc, if it is a grey colour then it is a -RW (rewriteable).
I believe I followed the correct procedures to burn a DVD, but may have done something incorrect. Before I attempt this again, can you please let me know what the best/correct blank DVD Disk I should use. My computer is a Dell disk top with Windows10.
. . . . what the best/correct blank DVD Disk I should use . . . .
Personally I use:
for DVD - Ritek full face printable DVD-R discs, I can print the 'label' directly on to them no need for paper labels, have not had a failure with any of them and they work in every player I have tried them in (> 10 different models/types)
for Blu-Ray - Verbatim BD-R for Full HD resolution ie 1920 x 1080. However there is a little trick here - if the video is less than 25 - 30 mins long on the timeline, I use the above DVD disks. It is possible to burn Blu-Ray to a standard DVD-R disc and have it play in a Blu-Ray player.
. . . . Is it required to "Format" the blank DVD Disk on my computer before using it to burn photo's on it? . . . .
No - you would only do this if you were creating a data disc - data discs can only be used in a computer - they cannot be played in a DVD or BD player - you should be burning as a video disc.
. . . . What is the best/correct selection for the DVD burn, i.e., should I use the setting of DVD, DVD DL, Blu-Ray Disc or AVCHD Disc? . . . .
That depends on what your source video resolution is and the player types you want to play them on.
If the source video is SD resolution ie- 720 x 576 or 720 x 480 then DVD is good enough, upscaling to Full HD can result in a poor/soft image when played on a FullHD or 4K TV. The upscalers in the player or TV do make for a better picture quality.
If the source video is Full HD or higher than, if you have a Blu-Ray player, use the Blu-Ray burn option - there is no need to use the AVCHD option.