DVD Authoring: An Introduction

DVD Authoring is the process of collecting variousselection,either on the main menu or a sub-menu.
content assets such as video,audio, photographs,DVD authoring applications also usually support the
subtitles, and menus, connecting them together andcreation of multi-angle content
burningthem to a master dvd disc.(where viewers can decide to watch a different
The assets themselves are generated in a variety ofpassage of video with the samesoundtrack and
applications such as videoediting, post-production,subtitles) and Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound
image editing and subtitling. They are then compiled in aUsing this method it is very easy for even a
DVD authoring application such as Ulead DVD Moviecomparitive novice to create a fairlysophisticated DVD
Factory on the PC or DVDdisc with most of the features found on a commercial
Studio Pro on the Mac. The process of authoring isdisc.
very much like building awebsite. The menu screen onIndeed the biggest challenge for the prospective DVD
a DVD is analgous to the homepage of a websiteauthor is the aesthetic designitself. Getting all the bits to
inthat it contains links to all the content on the DVD.work properly is one thing, but making it look good
Menu screens usually link to the main feature, chaptersandintuitive to use is another.
within the feature,additional scenes not contained in theOnce the content of the disc has been laid out in the
feature, photographic slideshows, andadditional audioauthoring application, it is thenpreviewed to make sure
content. The main menu screen can also contain linkseverything works properly. It is then 'multiplexed'
to sub-menus, which helps avoid cluttering the main(thecontent is linked together) and the master disc can
menu with too many options.be burned.
In addition to setting up menu selections on the mainIt's worth noting that the affordable DVD writers and
menu, the DVD authoringapplication allows theauthoring applications onlysupport writing to DVD for
producer to set-up additional features such as subtitles.General media which doesn't have the necessary
Within the authoring application, each item is given thelead-intracks required by mass duplicators. Therefore
metaphor of a container. Acontainer can hold any typethis type os solution is not reallysuitable for producing
of supported content and is linked to a menuDVDs which need to be mass-duplicated.