“The owner SID on per-user subscription doesn’t exist” error on DVD Maker

If you’re a Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate user, you would probably have noticed the Windows DVD Maker and might even have tried it out. And in all honesty, I’d have to say that I actually like it.

One of the main reason why I think that the Windows Movie Maker is kinda cool is that it’s just so easy to use. All you need to do is just the few steps as the following:

• Launch Windows DVD Maker
• Drag and drop selected photos and/or videos
• Set the Disc title and change the options if required.
• Click Next and choose the menu type (this is really cool and easy). Customize it if you want.
• Click Burn and wait.
• Wait a little longer more and voila! The DVD pops out and it’s done!

Yup. It’s really that simple.

But unfortunately for me, the last step didn’t really happen and instead, I get a “The owner SID on per-user subscription doesn’t exist” error. Worse still, is that the DVD has already been burnt and the error happens when it’s almost done. So, I was left with a DVD coaster, a lightscribed one too. Sigh.

But as I discovered later, there was a way to fix this! A search in Google revealed that this has something to do with ffdshow codec and one way to resolve it was to uninstall the codec.

Errr…. sure, so much for that fix since I prefer to keep the ffdshow codec intact. And it’s true, Windows DVD Maker was using ffdshow codec to decode the few divx encoded videos that I’ve tried to burn into a DVD.

So, after tinkering around a bit and losing yet another DVD+R in the process, I found an easy way out to resolve this problem and still be able to keep using ffdshow 

The resolution to this problem, as I found it, is extremely simple and does not require any hacks or any (un)installations. All you need to add to the workflow of making the DVD is to use Windows Movie Maker to initiate the Windows DVD Maker.

Yup. That’s it and that’s all to it.

And this extra step actually makes sense too. Windows Movie Maker provides you more control in terms of setting up your slide shows or videos with transition effects as well as overlay titles and more.

You can even add in lots of fun elements into your overall movie such as a title ‘page’ and more which makes a lot of sense when compiling a DVD photo slideshow. Thus, I would almost call this a perfect ‘solution’.

So, once you’ve setup the movie on Windows Movie Maker, the next step would simply be to publish it into a DVD. It would basically prompt you to save the Windows Movie Maker file and it will automatically switch over to Windows DVD Maker.

After that, the steps for Windows DVD Maker is the same as the above.

Oh, and a quick tip to add. If you intend to play the DVD on regular DVD Players, you might want to set the DVD recording to ‘Slow’ in the Windows DVD Maker options to avoid it being burn using different speeds and thus creating a ‘gap’ in between the disc. This would normally affect older DVD players but I’m not certain if newer DVD players can handle it more gracefully.