DVD Workshop wishlist

Dethroner · Post by **Dethroner** » Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:18 pm

I am sorry to say this, but admitting rich features and versatility of DVD Workshop I nevertheless cannot say I'm happy with it. Despite all the features it misses small things here and there resulting in necessity to use third party software to perform varios stages of authoring. It works fine when it is necessary to author a draft DVD quickly, but fails when it comes to polishing the result. That's why I have desided to post a list of most wanted things in DWS.

I invite everyone to make your observations and post your wishes about DVD Workshop functionality and features. Hope this won't go unnoticed by DWS development team.

There are a few enhancements that can be added with DWS service packs:

Ability to turn off subtitles from disk menu (add Assign tracks command);
Ability to select start point for motion thumbnail instead of always starting thumbnail video from chapter point. This even does not require user interface change: just use a point selected as chapter thumbnail as a loop start for motion menu and as a thumbnail image for still menu. There's no need to specify loop end point, it can be determined from menu duration.
Speaking of chapter thumbnails, it would be convenient to see timestamp of thumbnail point in chapter tooltip, i.e.
Video chapter
Timecode: 00:00:00.00
Thumbnail at: 00:00:08:15
The grid lines in menu editor are too solid and interfere with menu elements. They should be translucent, dashed or dotted, or even consist only of dots in node points.
There must be an option to snap menu elements to grid (or snap them always when the grid is visible).
The grid lines in menu editor are too sparce. There should be secondary grid, less visible but more fine. Or just dots at intersections of secondary grid lines.

In the future versions of DWS I'd also like to see:

Full featured timeline with chapter points and thumbnail points instead of jog bar.
Text effects. Please, give me helpful text effects, especially contrast contour around the letters with ability to highlight when the text is selected. To my mind, current set of text effects is pretty useless, most of them reduce text readability and can be of any use only with large captions. (The only text effects I have ever used were Fire and Snow in DWS 1.0, but for some reason they have been removed from 2.0. You should have removed anything but these. At least, they were readable).
Ability to highlight chapter caption additionally to chapter thumbnail or thumbnail frame. Currently this can be done with additional buttons assigned to captions, but this screws menu navigation since there appears to be too many selectable items.
Ability to import whole menu from PSD documents and use document layers as buttons, highlight areas, etc.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 3:01 am

I would like to see an option to alter the default "after play goto" setting.
Currently it returns to the point from whence it came which could be a sub-menu. I would like the ability to specify that "after play goto" will divert to the root menu.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 6:37 am

sjj1805 wrote:I would like to see an option to alter the default "after play goto" setting.
Currently it returns to the point from whence it came which could be a sub-menu. I would like the ability to specify that "after play goto" will divert to the root menu.

Is it so difficult to drag the root menu into your playlist, should you wish this???

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Wed Sep 28, 2005 7:17 am

Its not difficult but it is time consuming and prone to human error if you have a DVD with lets say 2 titles. Each title has 4 sub menus with 6 thumbnails on each. thats 2 * 4 * 6 = 48 thumbnails. Each thumbnail will play from the selected chapter to the end of the title, then it returns to the sub menu you came from.

OK so standard Computer paths are you walk out the way you walk in.
However I would prefer to have the choice of jumping straight back to the root menu rather than the originating sub-menu.

Yes I can do it manually but as I said, time consuming and prone to human error.

I often put more than 2 titles on a DVD if I have a collection of short video's.
I also like to include plenty of chapters so my family/friends can 'jump' straight to a certain point.

Dethroner · Post by **Dethroner** » Mon Dec 26, 2005 4:31 pm

In addition:

Scalable timeline for precise positioning;
Ability to change position of existing chapter (and keep the thumbnail). Dragging the jog bar slider while holding Ctrl doesn't work very well;

pauley · Post by **pauley** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 5:34 am

Here are some of mine:
- something broke in the updates and the encode creates jaggy video unless you are very careful, or something. People have worked around it, but the fact remains, the skipping video was less on earlier revs. Fix this, whatever it is.

- be able to make 'custom' menu templates within DVDWS and not require the purchase of another Ulead product. This would allow us to share, or sell, templates.

- it is possible to create custom highlight grafics using transparent objects. According to the DVD spec, these should be able to support two colors, while the techniques for DVDWS only allow one color (to be clear, one color selected, and one color when activated). Allow these to be created and easily integrated into the menus using DVDWS.

- similar to the above, I have seen some graphic highlights use more than two colors. I do not know how it is done, but DVDWS should make it easy and straight forward. Example - Maid in Manhattan (I think).

- also, some DVDs show a intro scene then fade in the buttons WITHOUT any change in the title so the audio continues to play smoothly. However this is created, make DVDWS support this easily. Example - Gladiator.

- ability to create a map for the buttons on what button is highlighted next based upon the keypress.

Pauley