Windows-based DVD Authoring tool provides motion menus, interactive features
As I noted in part 2 of my article on DVD authoring tools, Apple's iDVD2 was the first consumer-friendly DVD authoring tool to provide advanced features such as "motion menus," background soundtracks and animated buttons. Now, all this functionality and a lot more comes to Windows, with the release of Ulead's US$299 DVD Workshop.
Chart 1: DVD Workshop vs. Apple's iDVD2
| DVD Workshop | iDVD2 | |
| Capture Analog Video | yes | no |
| Capture Digital Video | yes | no |
| Custom Menu Fonts | yes | yes |
| Background Soundtrack | yes | yes |
| Animated Menus/buttons/backgrounds | yes | yes |
| Motion Menu loop length | 1 or 5 sec. | continuously variable, up to 30 sec. |
| Create Slideshow | yes, with soundtrack | yes, with soundtrack |
| Supported file formats | AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WAV, MP3, QuickTime (MOV), JPG, TIF, BMP, GIF, PNG, TGA, etc. | QuickTime, AIFF, JPG, GIF, TIF, MP3, etc. (Most AVI movies can be converted to importable MOV files with the US$29.95 QuickTime Pro.) |
| Burn directly to disc | yes | no |
| Create Chapter markers | yes | no |
| Background encoding | no | yes |
| Support DVD-RW | yes | no |
| Support DVD+RW | yes | no |
| Support CD-R/RW | yes | no |
| Create MiniDVD (cDVD) | yes | no |
| Create VCD, SVCD | yes | no |
| Create ISO image | yes | no |
| Encoded video quality | High, Medium, Low, Half D1 (342x480), CIF (240x352), custom | only one option; approximately equivalent to Ulead's "High" quality mode. |
| Platform | Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP | G4, SuperDrive, Mac OS X |
| Price | US$299 | US$19.95; bundled with some Macs |
| Manufacturer | Ulead (www.ulead.com) | Apple (www.apple.com) |
One area where Ulead's offering significantly lags behind iDVD2 is in the latter's ability to preview motion menus and animated buttons with little or no delay. DVD Workshop, in contrast, must render a preview video before these functions can be the Mac. It only takes a few minutes (or perhaps less if you are lucky enough to own a very fast PC), but is an interruption to an otherwise smooth process.
As I noted in part 2 of the DVD Authoring tools report, Apple makes a big deal about iDVD's ability to perform "background encoding," in which the video content is rendered into the required MPEG-2 format in the background, while you work on building the interface. DVD Workshop cannot do this per se, however, it can render in the background, while you are working in a different program. For example, as I am writing this, the Ulead program is rendering a movie in a minimized window. On Windows XP, when a movie or preview is finished rendering, the taskbar icon turns orange to let you know the program needs attention.
The many encoded video quality options provided are a key advantage of DVD Workshop. The program displays the bitrate of each option, and estimated how many minutes or hours you will be able to fit on a DVD disc. The High quality mode, for example, stores 60 minutes of video on a disc; the lowest-resolution CIF mode can fit 6 full hours of video (at lower resolution, of course) on a single disc.
The program includes a library of graphics, buttons and graphic objects that are serviceable, but not of outstanding quality. A number of special effects can be added to text titles, giving it the appearance of glass, embossed lettering, fire, and several other gimmicky looks.
As with Ulead's other consumer-oriented programs such as VideoStudio 6 and DVD MovieFactory, DVDWorkshop breaks down the tasks involved in creating a project into separate screens: Start, Capture, Edit, Menus, and Finish. You can move back or forth from screen to screen to edit or rework your project as required. It's a fairly straightforward interface, marred only by the inability to drag-and-drop videos directly into the program from the Windows Explorer. Once you've used the file import function to bring your video clips or slideshow images into the library, drag-and-drop operations work as expected, allowing you to assemble your video. You can also drag buttons (Play, Stop, etc.) onto the screen to control the action in this manner.
Predefined templates provide button and background layouts to get you started; you can also build your own from scratch, if you prefer.
When you're ready to output your final video to disc, you can burn it directly to a recordable/rewriteable DVD or CD, save it as an ISO image, or save the VOB files to your hard drive. We were able to produce a fully functional "mini DVD" on a CD-R disc with several minutes of high-quality video, then play this disc with a standard DVD player. This sure beats the high cost of recordable DVD discs, if your video project is short, as is often the case with birthday party videos and other recordings of family events.
There are several aspects we'd like to see improved in a future release. Ulead should take a note from Apple and allow the length of DVD Workshop's background soundtracks and motion backgrounds to be custom defined. As it is, these effects often end up with awkward breaks as the event loops. Also, we'd like to see a real-time preview option for these features, as Apple has been able to produce. Despite these minor limitations, DVD Workshop brings new capabilities to PC-based DVD authors, at a reasonable price. A 30-day, fully functional trial version is available for free download from Ulead's website. Recommended.
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