Re: Ulead Dvd Moviefactory 8 Free Download Full Version
Phyllis Sterlin
Back at the dawn of the DVD age, the wacky idea of playing movies from a discwas originally conceived as a one-way, write-only process: assemble the assets,design the DVD, burn a master, and then manufacture a bazillion copies to sellto the masses. But then as hardware prices plummeted, and software applicationsmade authoring more accessible, the masses also started to get involved in thiswhole thing of putting videos on DVD.
Now, especially for consumers, the DVD is no longer the final result; it'sjust an interim step in an ongoing process of accumulating and editing videoclips. After all, whether you're building a disc of this year's outings for thefamily, or new product demos for the business, today's DVD is just a work inprogress -- next week there will be new material to add and other changes to bemade.
The old model of professional DVD authoring is breaking down. Before, if youwanted to be able to ever have the possibility of re-authoring a DVD, you neededto archive all the original assets with your project. In the new world, the discis the project, and so the DVD is always available to not only play, but also tore-open and re-edit its contents -- and even edit directly on the disc if it isa rewritable (RW) format.
New versions of consumer-focused DVD authoring tools, like Sonic MyDVD 5 (www.sonic.com/products/mydvd),have provided more of this re-editing capability, as have set-top DVD recordersthat allow you to record shows to disc, just like videotape. Now, Ulead hastaken another step with the new release of DVD MovieFactory 3 Disc Creator,a complete disc-burning suite with the ability to import and edit DVDs in aneven wider variety of formats (www.ulead.com/dmf).However, no single format is best for all uses, so with this freedom of choicecomes some more confusion about DVD formats.
If you think about it, why should you need to keep a separate copy of allyour DVD projects around? After all, the final DVD, by definition, has all thecontent on it: certainly all the video and audio, even conveniently broken intoclips and chapters, plus the menus, and the navigation information. Any DVDplayer can extract this information in order to play the disc, so it would seemto make sense to think that you could do the same in order to re-edit it.
Of course, things are not quite that simple. When you build a DVD, all thecontent is compressed and then mushed together into the VOB files that you mayhave seen under the VIDEO_TS folders on a DVD disc. These days, stripping thevideo and audio clips out of a DVD is not a big deal, but you typically just geta dump of the video and audio streams out of the VOB files, not the nicelogically organized clips and chapters that appear in the menus. In addition,the video is in compressed MPEG-2 format, which is not particularly convenientfor further editing.
Even worse, the menus on a DVD are "flattened" into a singlecomposite image. All the different elements that you composed into the menudesign -- the background (image or video), titles, graphics annotations,buttons, button frames, button text, etc. -- are squished down into the finalmenu image (or video) stored on the disc, so all the individual elements thatwere used to create it have been lost.
(Yes, the button highlights are still available, so you could derive someinformation about the general button positions and associated navigation links,but you still could not access the individual elements, much less edit the textof a menu title to fix a typo.)
This situation is so tantalizing -- the DVD is so close to being accessiblefor editing. It has all the content, but mushed together with the navigation andthe flattened menus. All that is needed is a little more easily-accessibleinformation about the structure of the DVD and its menus, and the disc could becracked wide open for editing. (Just to be clear: we're talking about your ownDVDs here, not copy-protected commercial products.)
This is exactly what has been done to turn plain old DVD-Video discs intore-editable DVDs. Since the DVD specification does permit other arbitrary datafiles to be included on a disc, and provides some freedom in laying out theelements on the disc, it's quite feasible to add some additional data on thedisc to describe its contents for re-editing, and to organize the disc contentsto allow a rewritable DVD to be edited and updated directly on the disc. Nowwe're getting somewhere!
To build a re-editable disc, DVD authoring software applications basicallyplace a copy of the project file on the disc, along with the various individualelements used to create the menus. If you then need to update a menu title, forexample, the application can re-create the menu from the saved background andbuttons, and then compose new title text on top.
However, set-top DVD recorders do not have the luxury of running full-fledgedDVD authoring tools. Instead, they need to be able to add and remove clips, andbuild associated menus, all with a remote-control interface through your TV.While support for re-editing was not part of the original DVD concept orspecification, the consumer electronics industry has developed a variant of theDVD-Video format that does support this usage, called DVD-VR (for VideoRecording, and not Virtual Reality).
There are actually two flavors of VR formats -- "dash" and"plus" -- corresponding to the two rewritable DVD formats. DVD-VR,originally developed for set-top recorders using the DVD-RW format, provides asimple text menu for essentially a playlist of clips. DVD+VR, developedfor set-top recorders using the DV+RW format (of course), supports more generalmenus with clip thumbnails. However, since the VR formats are variants ofDVD-Video, discs in VR format may be somewhat less compatible, especially onolder players.
As a result, if you want to both play and edit discs on both a set-toprecorder and a computer, then you need to use a VR format, and you also need DVDauthoring software on the PC that can import the VR format. If you're onlyworking on a PC, you can create full DVD-Video discs, with an embedded projectfile.
Sonic calls its version of this project file concept "OpenDVD"and uses it in MyDVD and some of its other products (MyDVD also can importinformation from VR discs). Ulead's new DVD MovieFactory 3 also adds its ownproject files to discs, and can import, edit, and burn discs in VR format aswell.
- Create Video Disc - DVD video, VCD, SVCD
- Create Slideshow Discs - Photos and interactive menus on DVD, VCD, or SVCD
- Create Music Disc - Audio CD or MP3 on CD or DVD
- Create Data Disc - Copy and backup data files to CD or DVD
- Direct to Disc - Real-time video capture and burn to DVD, VCD, SVCD
- Edit Disc - Edit an existing DVD or MP3 disc
- Copy Disc - Burn a DVD from another disc, or a folder on hard disk
- DVD Player - Play DVD, VCD, SVCD, or video file
What's really interesting about MovieFactory 3 is Ulead's focus on re-editingacross the broad range of DVD formats. You can import and edit DVD-Video, DVD-VR,and DVD+VR formats, and MovieFactory will extract the available information fromthem. When you burn a disc, MovieFactory also can add its project informationfile so the disc will be easier to re-edit. And, if the disc is in a rewritableformat (RW), MovieFactory can edit it directly on disc, without requiring thatyou first copy the 4+ GB of disc contents to hard disk.
MovieFactory 3 then provides a wealth of options for creating a new DVD,depending on whether you need to be compatible with a set-top recorder, andwhether you are burning a rewritable (RW) or recordable write-once (R) disc:
- DVD-Video Fast Re-Editable - Create a rewritable (RW), re-editabledisc in DVD-Video format. The disc includes the MovieFactory project file toprovide re-editing information, and the content is organized (within theDVD-Video spec) to facilitate re-editing on disc. Best for appending newcontent, but not lots of editing, since it is slower than +VR to update (sinceit needs to read a larger block of data to modify). This also is more compatiblethan +VR, especially with older players.
- DVD-Video - Create a recordable write-once (R) disc in DVD-Videoformat. The DVD can include the MovieFactory project file, but the disc'scontents will need to be copied to hard disk to edit and then burn to a newdisc.
MovieFactory 3 provides these choices, and more (VCD, SVCD), in itsinterface, although you'll need to pay attention to which choice is providedwhere. When you start a project, you need to make an initial chose of the basedisc format (DVD, DVD-VR, VCD, or SVCD), since these choices determine thefundamental disc organization, menu structure, and even compression formats usedon the disc. When you are ready to burn a DVD, you can choose the recordingformat (DVD-Video or VR), but you then need to dig into an Advanced Optiondialog to choose between plain DVD-Video or Fast Re-Editable. And you also needto access an Output Options dialog to choose whether to include the projectfile. (MovieFactory provides the option to include a copy of the Ulead DVDPlayer application on the disc, so it can be played even on a PC with no DVDsoftware.)
Hidden under an Output Options button are several more possibilities: you canburn your DVD to disc, and/or to DVD folders and a disc image file on hard disk.However, the Direct to Disc mode only burns to DVD disc; you cannot use it tocapture a video to a DVD on hard disk.
The MovieFactory's Direct to Disc does show how far we have come withprocessing power on today's PC: you can capture video, compress, format the DVD,and burn to disc, all simultaneously -- end-to-end, tape to disc, in about thetime it takes to play the tape.
You first choose the output disc format and the DVD burner drive, then choosethe recording format, and then customize the disc. You can choose a menu formatfrom the list of templates, and automatically insert chapters at fixed intervals(but not through DV timecode or detecting scene changes). As is typical withUlead software, you also can dig down to set detailed options, includingcompression parameters.
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