Creating DVD Menus in VideoStudio 10+

[twives]

Members,

I downloaded the trial version of VideoStudio 10+ wanting to try out the advertised DVD menu creation features. Now that I am using it, I cannot find any mention of how to create DVD menus in the help file, and I cannot find any features that help you do that. There is no mention anywhere on the website that the trial version does not have these features. Does VS 10+ simply not have these features for creating DVD menus?

thanks,
twives

[sjj1805]

Please view
Authoring a DVD

[BrianCee]

VS10+ certainly does have a lot of options for creating DVD menus - but I didn't think the trial version came with any help files - do you have the correct help files ?

[twives]

Brian and Steve,

I now realize my confusion (I have never done any video editting, and the steps to get to the menu-ing were not intuitive to me), and I am now working through the DVD authoring tutorial that Steve suggested - thanks.

I could not find "DVD menu making" or any variants of this in the Table of Contents (at a high level) or in the index, and I could not find it in the menus. My "programming" brain did not think to go through the share section to get to making the menus. I am playing with it now.

Thanks,
twives

[BrianCee]

You might also like to read through this thread :-

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=15137


..

[twives]

Thanks Brian. I saved the link and will look at it once I get passed the basics. The discussion looked like it would be very helpful. twives

[twives]

Steve and Brian,

Another question. I am trying to evaluate this product, and if I had not gotten help from you, I would have not thought to ask whether or not the trial version has fewer options to choose from than the bought version when creating menus. Is this the case? Looking at the tutorials and then looking at VS10+ trial version, this seems to be the case. I wish the download page would specifically state what is missing. It makes evaluation very difficult.

thanks, twives

[BrianCee]

Yes the download version is indeed missing a few "Extras" such as additional templates etc. - although it should have all the functions to allow an evaluation. Ulead do this to keep the trial download to a manageable size - if you do decide to downdoad the full version your talking around 900Mb in total - many of us prefer to buy the discs - not only because of the size of the download but because of the many strange problems reported by people who did download.

[twives]

One last question ... I think , I am guessing that the way you create submenus under main menus is to work on all the submenus and their respective clips first, save those as DVD files to disk (i.e. don't burn them) and then go back and pull them in at a higher level. Is this correct? The tutorial is great, but I am not seeing yet how to do this layering of menus.

thanks, twives

[Ken Berry]

The other thing that trial versions usually don't have is Dolby AC-3 audio. This is for licensing reasons as Dolby charges a fee for each package which contains its codecs. And software companies would find it expensive if they had to pay the fee for what are only trial packages.

[sjj1805]

One last question ... I think , I am guessing that the way you create submenus under main menus is to work on all the submenus and their respective clips first, save those as DVD files to disk (i.e. don't burn them) and then go back and pull them in at a higher level. Is this correct? The tutorial is great, but I am not seeing yet how to do this layering of menus.

thanks, twives

The tutorial is perhaps a bit lengthy and possibly causes some confusion.
I'll try and explain it again a bit more simply.

Lets say you have 3 videos. 2 of the videos are about 15 minutes long each. the other video is a hour long.

Video A = 15 minutes
Video B = 15 minutes
Video C = 1 hour.

You decide that you do not need 'chapters' (The technical term for jump to points) for videos A and B because they are not that long. However you decide that Video C ought to have 5 chapters so that a viewer can quickly jump to a spot somewhere in the video.

You create your chapters for Video C - as per the tutorial.

When you now create a DVD Menu you will have a Main Menu - termed the Root Menu. On this Menu you will find 3 thumbnails. There wil be a thumbnail for each of the 3 videos A, B & C.

If you select thumbnail A then video A will start to play.
If you select thumbnail B then video B will start to play.
If you select thumbnail C then you will be taken to a chapter menu containing the chapter thumbnails for Video C.

Does this clarify the problem?

[dmz]

Is it true that VS 10 is not a product strong on Authoring and that something like moviefactory is? Ive heard it said that editing is great in VS10 but lousy in moviefactory. Im thinking of doing my capturing and editing in vs10 and looking for something else for authoring.

[Ken Berry]

Think of it this way. Video Studio is primarily an editing program, but happens to have an authoring module tacked on for the sake of completeness. Movie Factory was designed primarily as an authoring program, but has the elements of video editing tacked on for the sake of completeness. Both can stand alone, but they in effect complement each other. I have both, as do a lot of other people. Essentially, though, they both use the same burning engine, but Movie Factory offers more choices in authoring. Don't expect the world, though...

At the higher end of the market, Media Studio Pro is an excellent editing program, while DVD Workshop is the authoring complement to it.

It's a bit like Adobe Premiere Pro, which is very much a sophisticated editing program, but it too has some relatively rudimentary authoring capabilities these days. Its Adobe complement is Encore for authoring (and After Effects for special effects).