Vista DVD Windows Vista: Windows DVD Maker
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Vista DVD Windows Vista: Windows DVD Maker
Microsoft was late to the party. Windows didn't natively support DVD writing until 2007, when Vista launched. On the bright side, Vista's Windows DVD Maker was definitely worth the wait.
Windows DVD Maker is a disc-authoring application, which means that it’s designed to turn your existing video clips and photos into playable DVDs complete with menus. It’s not a video-capture or editing tool, per se; that’s Windows Movie Maker’s job (see “Capture, Edit & Publish With Movie Maker” on page 28 of the October 2008 issue), although there’s a little bit of feature overlap between the two.
In other words, if you want to import footage from your camcorder and cut out or rearrange scenes, use Windows Movie Maker. To turn that edited video into a movie disc, turn to Windows DVD Maker. Let’s explore the latter.
Addition
To get started; click the Start Orb, All Programs, and Windows DVD Maker. If this is the first time you’ve used this application, click the Choose Photos And Videos button. The first thing you’ll see is the Add Pictures And Video To The DVD window, which looks a little utilitarian, like the bland lobby of a nice restaurant.
Here, you can drag and drop video files from other open folders as well as photo and music files should you want to turn them into a slideshow DVD. Alternatively, you can also use the Add Items button. Click it, and an Explorer window will appear featuring Vista’s Videos folder. Browse to your media files, click them to select them (hold down the CTRL key to highlight more than one at a time), and add them to Windows DVD Maker with the Add button.
Once you’ve gathered all the video clips you want to burn to your DVD, you can change the order in which they’ll play on the disc. Drag and drop them higher in the list to play before other videos or lower to play after other clips. You can also click a video file once to highlight it and then use the blue arrow icons to move it up or down the roster.
Note that if you included any pictures in your project, they will appear in a folder called Slide Show. So will any audio files you added, although you won’t see them right now. To review or rearrange the photos, double-click the Slide Show folder. Use the arrow icons or the drag-and-drop method to change the order in which you want the photos to play. You’ll have the opportunity to do more with your slideshow later, so click the Back To Videos icon next to the blue arrows when you’re ready.
Next, type a title for your disc in the field at the bottom of the window. A simple pie chart at the lower left will tell you how much time your videos will use up on a typical recordable DVD. If you have more than one DVD burner, make sure to select the drive letter of the one you want to use at the upper right.
Finally, click the Options link. Set the DVD aspect ratio (the relationship between the finished video’s width and height) to either 16:9 (widescreen) or 4:3 (fullscreen) to suit your video clips and/or the TV you’ll use to watch the disc on later. The Video Format for U.S. readers should be NTSC (National Television Standards Committee). Leave the DVD Burner Speed set to Slow, as this will reduce the chance of errors in the final disc, and make sure that the Temporary File Location is on a hard drive partition (section with its own drive letter) with 5GB or more free space. Click OK and Next.
On The Menu
Next, choose a Menu Style from the scrolling list along the right. Windows DVD Maker gives you 20 nice options, so take your time. Click one, such as Video Wall, and then click the Preview button to see what the menu will look like with your photos and video incorporated in it. Click the Back icon when you’re through previewing.
Once you’ve picked a Menu Style, click Menu Text to adjust its verbiage. You can also pick a font, change its color, and set it in boldface or italics here, but you can’t make the lettering bigger or smaller. Use the Preview button to see your changes. Click OK to exit the preview and then confirm or discard your changes with the Change Text or Don’t Change buttons, respectively.
The Customize Menu button includes font options, too, but it’s also the button to click if you want to choose a particular song, photo, or video to use in the menu. Here, you can also change the frames of the thumbnails in the Scenes submenu, if you like. Preview, save, or discard your changes and then click Back.
If you added photos to your project, click the Slide Show button. Here, you'll see one more example of the way Windows DVD Maker simplifies features that far too many other disc-authoring and video-editing programs make difficult. Many users want their photos to slowly move around the screen or zoom in or out because motion piques viewers’ interest. Checkmark the Use Pan And Zoom Effects For Pictures box to enable this automatic, albeit nonadjustable, feature. Likewise, every app capable of making slideshows should have a Change Slide Show Length To Match Music Length checkbox. Kudos to Microsoft on both of these options.
Elsewhere in the Change Your Slide Show Settings panel, you can add or remove background songs as well as change their playback order. Unfortunately, there’s no way to adjust a track’s volume, to use just part of a song, or to trim off a stretch of silence.
Still, you can speed up or slow down the length of time your photos spend on the screen with Picture Length. There’s also a short list of Transitions to use between each pic; however, there’s no way to use more than one kind of transition per slideshow. Choose Cut if you want no transitions at all. Preview your efforts and then save your changes.
Author! Author!
When you’re ready to commit your project to disc, put a blank DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, or DVD-RW (according to the discs your DVD drive and player both support) in your burner. Select Burn.
A small progress window will appear as Windows DVD Maker encodes your project (turns it into DVD-compliant video and menus) and burns it to your disc. This can take minutes or hours, depending on your PC. When your disc is finished, play it in one or more DVD players to make sure that everything turned out the way you wanted it to.
Windows DVD Maker has the features most users want, and it makes them incredibly easy to use. It’s one freebie we turn to more often than commercial alternatives.
Vista DVD Windows Vista: Windows DVD Maker