How to force order of photo and videos to display in Win 7 DVD Maker

I have over 500 photos and videos from 4 different people to put into a slide show with Windows DVD maker. The files names and date taken from the differing sources do not sort in an order that makes sense and there are too many items to move into an order by the "move up" or "move down" orders.

Does this mean I have to move each file name into DVD maker one by one? If so, is the display order FIFO of LIFO?

If I change the folder holding all the items going onto the DVD to the Details view vs Thumbnail view, I see "Tag" as one attribute, and that sort by tag is an option. Can I use the Tag as a means to force a sort order? Meaning, can I define the tag by some ordinal that would when sorted by Tag provide the order I want the photos displayed? If so what numbering scheme do I use to have to order displayed as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, .... And Not have sort order used by windows where the order gets jumbled?

Even better, can I add a file attribute and the sort by it force an order?

We keep losing our display order by moving the thumbnails, but keep losing it when we copy folders and cannot keep re ordering them.

Help?