Ulead's latest DVD authoring application, DVD Workshop, offers a similar workflow to its AU$135 stablemate DVD MovieFactory, but adds a selection of advanced features for those looking to get the best out of their DVD/VCD projects.
As with parts of DVD MovieFactory, the front end of DVD Workshop is divided into five sections, each of which is accessed by clicking on the selection tabs at the top of the screen. These sections -- Start, Capture, Edit, Menu and Finish -- provide a step-by-step workflow that guides you through each stage of the authoring project.
Although the Capture section is only marginally different to previous versions, features worth noting here are Scene Detection, Split By Scene and Join, which allow you to break batch captures into single files, as well as stitching existing files together. You can also capture video or audio only, if you're planning to dub your project later.
The single timeline used to assemble your chapters is uncomplicated, and lets you quickly build a sequence by dragging and dropping clips from the library pane. Here, you can mark in and out points for your clips, change the running order and add titles. You can select in and out points for your titles if you don't want them to span an entire clip, or want to add more than one to a single clip, by adding mark in and mark out values to them. Once created, titles are shown as small icons on top of the clip thumbnails in the timeline. It should be pointed out that DVD Workshop is only intended to provide DVD authoring tools, so there are no transitions or video effects to be found here.
Once you've assembled your chapters, the Menu section is next on the list, and it's here that DVD Workshop offers the most improvement. Users of DVD MovieFactory will recognise the menu templates that come with this package, but now you can start from scratch, using your own background images and buttons from external sources, including animated GIFs and other moving formats. Effectively, there are four types of object to work with in when creating menus: Images; Video/Image sequences; Text; and Placeholders. All of these can now be customised to suit your desired style. The link properties menu lets you assign actions to a menu object such as linking it to a chapter, or a sub-menu. General menu properties such as timeouts and background music can also be changed here. For buttons, a range of colour, contrast, transparency and shadow effects can be applied, dependent upon its state, and an After Play menu allows you to select the action required after the selected chapter is played -- so you can return to the menu, jump to the next chapter, or specify a specific chapter (such as the end credit sequence).
Once your project is assembled, the Finish section takes you through preview, encoding and burning. The preview pane and remote control have been improved to present a larger preview image and timecode, chapter and title information, as well as allowing you to preview any motion within your menu itself (this requires rendering, as the menu is converted to video). A series of encoding templates are provided, although you can specify your own bit rates, both constant and variable, before finally burning an image to DVD, or hard disk archive.
Overall, DVD Workshop is an effective product. It may not be as advanced as some high-end, higher-priced applications, but it allows far more control over your DVD's creation and appearance than most current consumer authoring packages. However, given the AU$550 price differential between this product and Ulead's DVD MovieFactory, you should ask yourself whether you need this level of control enough to justify the extra cost.
DVD Workshop
Company: Ulead
Price: AU$685.00
Distributor: Pineapplehead
Phone: 1800 657 601
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