DVDlab review

There are many DVD authoring tools around these days. Many of them are based on the principle that they should be as easy to use as possible. However, they will limit your creative possibilities by using templates and a limited array of functions. In the professional area you will find very advanced ones, but they have a long learning curve. On their web site, Mediachance promises you an authoring tool that is easy to learn, but nevertheless offers professional capabilities. So, let's have a look.

1. Background and Versions

DVDlab was developed by a single person, Roman Voska. He claims that he was driven by the desire to design an authoring tool that offers all the capabilities of a professional authoring program and yet easy enough to use. The program is distributed by the small company Mediachance. Unlike many other suppliers of authoring tools the company does not offer other video tools like video editing packages or encoders. As a matter of fact they struck a deal with other companies: MainConcepts for video editing and TMPGEnc (supplied by Pegasys) for encoding. DVDlab does not offer (S)VCD authoring.

At the time of writing, two version of DVDlab are offered. A regular version and a Pro version. From the outside both versions look exactly the same. They operate with the same user interface and the tools are basically identical. If you mastered one, you will have no problem using the other. Main differences between the two versions is that the Pro version offers a number of extra features, including but not limted to:

• mulitple audio streams in a movie
• subtitling
• mixing of aspect ratio's, 4:3 and 16:9
• creations of play lists

2. The User Interface

The first thing that is noted when starting the program, is that the user interface is very different from other authoring tools. Many basic to intermediate level programs are shaped as a wizard where the user is guided step by step through the whole process. DVDlab is designed more as a toolset which you can use to build a DVD. The user interface consists of a number of (un)dockable windows which can be opened, closed and arranged according to your needs.

• The project window will show all items that are being used in the current project and can be used to control your activities.
• An asset window is being used to show all data that can be used in the project: movie files, sound files, backgrounds, stills, objects to be used as buttons and also styles to change the look of graphical elements in menu screens.
• A preview window is available to watch the available movies.
• A working area which is used to assemble movies with audio tracks and subtitles, create chapter points, design menu pages and create a navigation structure.

The heart of DVD authoring, creating the navigation can be done in a conventional way by selecting objects and defining links and actions.

However, you can also work with a more sophisticated representation in the form of a set of items connected with lines. This type of representation is also found in high-end, professional products and enables more advanced features which are not possible in most other consumer level DVD authoring programs.

3. Importing video and audio

DVDlab does not come with a capture module, so all your materials already have to be on your system when you start the authoring process. A very important thing to know is that DVDlab does not include and MPEG-encoder. Your video files therefore already needs to contain be DVD compliant MPEG streams; you cannot import AVI files or any other types which are not DVD compliant. This is not the case for audio: DVDlab does include a transcoder to transcode audio to make it DVD compliant.

If you import a stream that includes both audio and video, DVDlab will prompt with a question if you want to de-multiplex audio and video in two separate streams. The choice not to de-multiplex is only recommended if you are absolutely sure that the MPEG file is DVD compliant. An advantage of de-multiplexing is that this enables you to treat audio and video separately create titles with multiple audio tracks.

A great feature is that you can also import VOB files from existing DVD's. This means that if you want to author a DVD from material that is already on a DVD, you don't need to extract the MPEG streams from the VOB's on the DVD. If you import multiple VOB files from a DVD, you can also choose that DVDlab joins these VOB files together into one large file.

4. Menu design

DVDlab has a number of different asset areas for different types of stills that you can use as background, objects, buttons and frames. Standard, an interesting collection of nice assets are supplied with the program, but you can also import your own.

DVDlab also offers an interesting sets of styles and effects which can be used to change the appearance of objects in your menu screens. Examples are effects like blur, fade, fire, glow and gradient, but there are also advanced effects which allow you to change objects and backgrounds to a level that you can hardly recognize the original object. All in all, DVDlab offers almost endless possibilities to give your menu screens a personal look, even if you use the standard backgrounds and objects included in the program.

5. Navigational structure

The real power of DVDlab is revealed when you design a navigation structure for your DVD. As mentioned above, the program is not a straightforward wizard but a complete toolbox. There are therefore several ways to create links and define actions that will performed when the user presses a button on the remote control during playback. It is beyond the scope of this article to describe how to build a navigation structure in DVDlab, but here are some examples of features that you will not find in many other authoring packages:

Motion menus & time out

Many authoring programs offer the possibility to use movies as linked buttons. This can also be done with DVDlab. But besides that you can even have a movie play in the background of the menu which is something that is not found in other consumer oriented authoring packages. Further more, you have full control over time-out parameters determining what happens if a menu plays for a certain amount of time and no button is pressed.

Menu transitions

This is a very cool feature. It enables you to create a smooth transition from one menu page to the next. Another option is that you can create a motion menu in which the buttons do appear not immediately when the menu appears but later on. This feature is found very often in todays commercial DVD's and give your DVD a very professional touch..

Multiple audio tracks (PRO version only)

You can place different audio tracks in one title and create menus or use the "audio" button on your remote control to select the audio track that you want to hear. This is a nice feature if you for example want to create movies accompanied with selectable music or voice overs.

Play list creation (PRO version only)

You can create separate lists in which you can arrange a number of titles which are played in a sequence after each other and create a menu item to tell your DVD player to play that list. You can create multiple lists and it can be done both with a list of titles and with chapters. In the latter case this is called Chapter Branching.

6. Conclusions

If you are looking for a DVD authoring program that goes beyond what you can do with many consumer oriented programs, DVDlab is a very good choice. There are hardly any structures, allowed in the DVD specifications, that you cannot create with DVDlab. Downside is that, if you want to use many of its advanced features, there is a learning curve to go through and you will not master the program in 15 minutes, as is the case with more basic authoring programs. Some really advanced features require you to have a more in depth knowledge of DVD authoring or the willingness to learn. But once you have mastered it, you will be able to create DVD's with a look and functionality comparable with commercially produced DVD's.