Use quick and easy disc making options with limited options. A one-size-fits-all process works at times and not at others. As you use the various choices, you'll get to know which ones work best for your needs.

For access to all options, open DVD Maker from the start menu when you're ready to package pictures, music, videos, or a combo of them.

In the view above, DVD Maker is now in the forefront, with Photo Gallery and Movie Maker open in other windows.

Newsletter #128 was about DVD Maker.... Click the image to read it.

Animated Menu Styles

The Baby Blue style is the lead in to movies with an obvious theme.

... except the set I used to demo the style didn't quite fit... you'll have to do your own

Baby Pink also has it's obvious place.

... the animated teddy bear is the opening host...

The Bandwidth style doesn't seem to have a message... it just shows some eye-candy before and between the main features, your movies.

This set of samples are on YouTube.

The Color Cycle style... makes smooth transitions of color.

Being a bit color-impaired, I'll leave this one to be the favorite of others...

The Full Screen style... plays the videos as larges as they can be...

.... while preserving the aspect ratio. I'm very impressed with Movie Maker and DVD Maker in Vista for how well they handle the aspect ratio. I can give them a mixed set of clips from a camcorder tape and each clip will show appropriately.

The Highlights style... is a neat techno-modern one.

They were saved in Movie Maker 2 at the option of Video for LAN (768 kbps)...

Layers is another style from a Movie Maker 2 title animation...

I used the default settings when making this set of files.... I didn't explore the changing of fonts.

The Page Flip style is right from the classic Photo Story and Movie Maker transition of that style.

DVD opening menus are now part of the main production...

Here's one showing the Performance style.

It's my personal favorite, but it's hard to not pick another.

The Photographs style is pretty neat....

I prefer styles like this that seem more like DVD menus to those that are spinoffs of transitions or effects in Movie Maker.

The Push style is another one that reminds me of story and movie making transitions....

... but it's well done, as they all are.

Reflections is another style I like.

If your movies have water in them, it's a good choice... even if they don't.

the Rolling Hills style...

looks like a good one for videos of your golf outings...

the Scrapbook style...

... for the scrapbookers who are also into making digital ones.

the Shatter style is a familiar transition in Movie Maker...

... and will now be equally familiar on DVDs.

the Soft Focus style is a familiar effect in Movie Maker...

... one that looks equally effective as a DVD menu animation... I'm kind of partial to the whole line of Pixelan soft organic effects and transitions

the Special Occasion style goes with most everything.

... if you like an old fashioned look. I do.

The Travel style will work with my 'Europe 301' vacation project.

I'm building a full set of the 20 styles for these links...

... but will keep the other set on the YouTube playlist below for Apple users, as they can't see videos on the mydeo service.

... the Video Wall... is interesting and a different kind of style...

... The Wall is my favorite Pink Floyd album, but there are other kinds of walls.

... the Vintage style is attractive... I've always liked antiques and such a look fits right in with many of the things I do...

Here's another set of the same clips, this time in a YouTube playlist.

Although the styles are great, you have only basic disc authoring choices... DVD Maker is a quick way to 'burn and play'.

Bottom line... it's easy to use, and makes great looking and playing discs... but if you want more control of the full authoring process, you'll want to continue using other DVD software.

Behind the Scenes

An SDK helps you create and add your own custom transitions, buttons, and menu styles for Windows DVD Maker. The link is...

Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker SDK

The Shared\DvdStyles folder has a DVDTransform.fx file, 34 png files, and 16 bmp files... things like navigation buttons that are common to all styles.

Then there are folders of style-specific files. Here's a snapshot of those in the 'Baby Blue' folder...

From top left to bottom right, the files are a .png thumbnail image, 10 WMV animation clips (5 PAL and 5 NTSC) at bitrates of 8000 kbps, and 6 navigation thumbnail .png images.

One of Eric Gunderman's Blogs provides some Windows DVD Maker SDK Information about command line options and the DVD Maker project file format.

Tips and Tricks

• 1 - You don't need to render or save movies in Movie Maker if you want to use them on a DVD. DVD Maker accepts the project files of Movie Maker and uses them as the recipes for transcoding the source files to the MPEG-2 files needed for the disc. Skip all of those renderings that take forever and sometimes don't finish successfully.

  Caution: You'll need to render the movies first if your project includes any Pixelan transitions or effects... they'll preview OK in DVD Maker, but you'll get an error message saying "no such interface supported" if you try to burn a disc.

• 2 - Wizards in Vista do interesting things. There are interactions between software apps that go much beyond the apps in XP. For example, when you connect a digital camcorder by firewire and turn it to the VCR position, AutoPlay opens... from there the ImportVideo wizard... has a choice of going directly to a video DVD. After importing, the BurnWizard of DVD Maker takes care of the rest of the process. You end up with a video DVD with the 'Full Screen' menu style without opening Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, or DVD Maker. It uses the 'Full Screen' style... with the name you give the disc as you go through the steps of the wizard.

  

  Newsletter #133 was about the full wizard route from camcorder tape to video DVD. Click the image to read it.

• 3 - The starter set of 20 wonderful animated menu styles is enough for many needs... the ability to create additional custom styles will be an opportunity for third parties, and as much fun for geeks and hackers as the making of custom effects, transitions and titles are for Movie Maker. Files used by the 20 styles, and other custom ones, are in individual folders under c:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\DvdStyles

• 4 - An easy way to include a slideshow of still pix is to use your file manager to drag and drop a folder of pix into DVD Maker. Then go to the slide show feature in DVD Maker to add music and pick other options.

• 5 - The temporary files created by DVD Maker and used to produce the disc are in the folder of your choice (Options > Temporary file location). They are not the same as the files that end up on the disc.

  During the first 5% of the disc making process, DVD Maker generates the custom images (BMPs), audio (AC3) and videos (MPEG-2) used in the menu animations. They are easy to copy and make great special features for other projects. That's how I made the sample videos to show the menu styles... get them before the temporary files are deleted as DVD Maker closes.

• 6 - DVD project files are small text .msdvd files, stored by default in the same folder as the temporary files.

  

• 7 - DVD Maker handles aspect ratios well, mixing any combo of widescreen and standard stories and movies. They'll look right regardless of the choice of the DVD aspect ratio setting... or the viewer, which is a little confusing until you read Dean Rowe's explanation in his blog of 11/14/06... the setting is for slide shows on the DVD, where there's a mix of pictures, some standard and others widescreen. All the pictures will have appropriate aspect ratios... they'll just be cropped or displayed a bit differently to favor the DVD option.

• 8 - The VOB files on the DVDs are 'progressive' mode, not 'interlaced'.

• 9 - The default setting of the disc burn speed in DVD Maker is 'fast'. If you find yourself getting too many error messages during burning, try lowering the burn speed setting in DVD Maker to 'medium' or 'slow'. The wizard process of going from tape to disc uses the 'fast' speed setting, not the speed setting from DVD Maker.

  Others have posted successfully resolving burning issues by changing the brand of disc (like from Memorex to TDK).

• 10 - This tip is from Jeffrey Mealo... who was able to significantly increase the speed of encoding by using the Task Manager to change the priority of DVDMaker.exe from "Below Normal" to "High". A user can walk away and let the DVD encode without software such as WeatherBug getting more CPU resources than needed. See his blog entry for more info about it.

• 11 - Jeffrey's tip reminds me of a concern I have about the operating system not considering movie rendering to be a user activity. If you don't tweak your Power Settings, you might come back to find the process didn't finish because a screen saver kicked in, your monitor went to sleep, and so did your hard drive.

What Can go Wrong

• 1 - Some Codecs can cause serious issues for Movie Maker... and/or DVD Maker.

  For example, an email of 4/17/07 said DVD Maker halts with error message: “Windows Movie Maker has stopped working.”... and it only happens when he attempts to publish a video to DVD containing DV-AVI files. A newsgroup post of 5/5/08 reads "... used DVD Maker a few times but now for some reason it will no longer run..."

• 2 - If you use a standard aspect ratio 4:3 Movie Maker project as an input to DVD Maker, be aware of distortion of title overlays in the animated menu scenes.

• 3 - DVD Maker doesn't recognize your DVD burner.

For fixes and work-arounds, see the same item number in the next section...

Fixes and Work-Arounds

• 1 - The relationship between codecs and Movie Maker in XP has been known for years. The same or similar relationship is there between codecs and DVD Maker in Vista.

  To help resolve it, Microsoft added a feature to Movie Maker... what isn't well known is that the same feature works for both Movie Maker and DVD Maker. Unchecking a codec in the Tools > Options > Compatability tab of Movie Maker effectively takes it out of the picture for both Movie Maker and DVD Maker.

  A new Vista installation has no line items showing up in the Compatability list... as you install software, items appear in the list. Try working with all items unchecked if you have crashing or hanging issues with either Movie Maker or DVD Maker, .

  The user with the problem making DVDs from DV-AVI inputs resolved it by renaming lmpgd10.ax and lmpgspl.ax.

  A newsgroup post of 3/27/07 reported DVD Maker crashing after adding a file and clicking next... the menu screen appears and just freezes, with an error message DVD MAKER HAS STOPPED WORKING - SENDING ERROR REPORT. The crash info included reference to lmpgspl.ax. A response said installing Cyberlink Power DVD 7 and the WinVista patch will correct issues with DVD Maker.

  This HP Website provides an Intel ViiV Software Update to resolve lmpgd10.ax or lmpgspl.ax errors reported by Rundll32.exe when copying media files of MPG or MPEG format... on an HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7760n Desktop PC.

• 2 - DVD Maker transcodes the standard movie for viewing appropriately, with overlays contained within the movie window, as shown at the left. But it transcodes the VOB file for the animated menu differently.

  The menu uses movie frames of 4:3 but adds black sides, and uses the full widescreen 16:9 window for the overlays. The distortion of some overlays isn't acceptable, as in this case of a round symbol.

  

  The work-around is simply being aware of the issue, and not using portions of such movies in the animated menus.

• 3 - Kent in this thread at the WindowsDVDMaker forum explains how he resolved it... when caused by a conflict between an unused SATA controller and an IDE controller.

  Two newsgroup posters of 9/23/09 said they worked around it by removing USB wireless devices. One described it as a pre paid broadband key (USB stick) and the other a USB wireless internet conection. Temporarily removing the USB device resulted in DVD Maker finding the burner.