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If you own or are thinking of buying a DVD-RW or a DVD+RW drive for your PC, you'll soon need some software to help you create DVD discs. Ulead's DVD Workshop offers just this, with its ability to capture and burn films, images and presentations onto DVD.
DVD Workshop's five modes take you through the entire disc creation process. On the Start page you begin your new project or open an existing one for editing or burning. After this you move on to the Capture mode.
The term 'capture' basically means that you acquire the footage from whatever video source you are using and transfer it to your PC. This program can take video straight from analogue or digital camcorders, digital stills cameras and webcams.
A FireWire port is required for transferring digital video from a digital camcorder to a PC, or a USB port for stills and web cameras. If you want to grab footage from VHS tape, you'll need an analogue capture card.
After transferring the film from your device, DVD Workshop sets about converting the file into the required format for your chosen burning media.
You can burn onto DVD, the less common mini-DVD, VCD or Super VCD. You choose what media you want to burn at the start and the program captures and converts the files into the right format.
For example, if you want to take a film from a digital video camera and make a VHS-quality VCD you'd first capture the data from digital video tape and then use DVD Workshop to convert the information to MPEG 1 format before burning it onto CD.
The application makes this process easy and the simple interface should prevent even the greenest users from getting lost in the process.
Moving on, the Edit page helps you fine tune a project's video, audio and image files. The main work you do here is on 'chapters'. Each chapter marks a point in your original footage. While reviewing a film you can pause and create a chapter by clicking and dragging the scene to the List section.
DVD Workshop will also detect scenes shot at different times from your digital video camera and mark them out. Although it sounds complicated, the interface makes this process simple.
Thumbnails in the column on the right of the screen list the chapters, and these can be reorganised with drag-and-drop actions. This allows the creation of professional looking front-ends for DVD discs to help viewers jump straight to a scene.
With chapters and titles marked out, the Menu page is used to build an introduction screen. You can either start with a blank page or use one of DVD Workshop's large selection of ready made templates and buttons.
There is a wizard to help you if you need it and the ability to set buttons and backgrounds in motion with one mouse click is a boon.
This part of DVD Workshop is really well designed, and impressive menus can be created in a matter of minutes. The presentation opportunities this gives you are useful for putting a slick sheen on your project, ideal for creating promotional business discs or personal gifts.
When the time comes to burn a disc, choose a drive and recording speed and away you go. The whole process is kept simple by the interface, with little that can go wrong.
However, if problems do occur, Ulead's technical support sits at the end of a German telephone number, which will obviously cost more to call than a UK number. We're assured that this situation is only temporary, but you'd do well to check before buying.
Price: £179.00 (inc VAT)
Specifications:
- Capture MPEG direct from any source
- Automatic scene detection system
- Advanced file conversion feature
- Large selection of menu templates
- Burns DVDs, mini-DVDs, VCDs and SVCDs
Minimum requirements: Windows 98 or higher; Pentium III 450MHz PC; 64Mb Ram; 150Mb hard disk space; 4Gb+ hard disk space for video capture and converting (13Gb hard disk space required for one hour of digital video).
Contact: KL Associates 01327 844 880
www.ulead.co.uk
See also:
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Give your home movies that professional look with the latest EditStudio. 22 Apr 2002
With a new interface and DVD authoring, does this video editing suite perform? 28 Mar 2002All Video Recording, Editing & Mixing
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