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Pinnacle originally released this program about a year ago under the name Express. It was a bit of a rushed job, hurried out to grab a slice of the rapidly expanding DVD market, and consequently it had a few rough edges.
This renamed, re-released version smooths a lot of those edges and it's now a good choice for anyone who's just getting into DVD creation on their home PC.
Just to make it clear, Expression isn't a video editing program. It assumes that you've already edited your video clips in a separate application and just concentrates on 'authoring', which is the process of creating a menu and navigation controls for your homemade DVDs.
Running along the top of the screen are three simple buttons that allow you to switch between Expression's three main sets of tools. The first button takes you into Capture mode, where you import audio and video clips from a camcorder or from your hard disk.
The program can scan your video clips and automatically divide them into scenes. It does provide some very basic editing tools, allowing you to mark specific scenes yourself and add simple transitions, such as 'dissolve' or 'fade to black'.
It all works well enough but much better results can be gained in a proper editing program before importing video clips into Expression.
The second button switches you into Preview mode, where you can select a template for your DVD menu, such as those that appear at the start of DVD movies.
There are more than 40 templates provided with the program and fonts and layouts can be modified, or entirely new menu designs created by importing new background graphics. You can also import audio clips to play a soundtrack while the menu is on the screen.
The on-screen controls allow you to preview your work, as if you were actually watching the finished project on a standard DVD player.
When everything looks just right,the third and final button switches into Burn mode. This transfers (or 'burns') the entire project onto a recordable DVD.
The only slightly confusing part of the program is that the various compression options needed before burning a disc are actually tucked away in the previous Preview window. So nipping back into Preview mode, you use the Settings option to specify the format you want to use for your new disc.
As well as creating DVDs, Expression also supports the less well known VideoCD and Super VideoCD formats, and allows you to choose either the PAL format for playback on European television sets or the American NTSC format.
Selecting compression settings can be a bit tricky but Expression keeps all the technical details out of sight.
Just press the Automatic button and Expression will work out how many minutes' worth of video you have and then select the best compression quality to fit all that video on a single disc. Pinnacle even chucks in a labelling kit for your finished discs as well.
Expression is a fairly basic authoring program but its interface is tidy and easy to use, so that even complete beginners should be able to bore their friends and relatives with homemade DVDs in no time.
DETAILS
Price: £30
Contact: Pinnacle Systems 01895 442003
www.pinnaclesys.com
See also:
This latest application from Ulead makes creating DVDs easy and should satisfy beginners and more demanding users alike. 30 May 2002All Video Recording, Editing & Mixing
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