Recently in DVD Studio Pro Category

Layered menus in DVD Studio Pro can allow you to create menus with far more sophisticated-looking buttons than the native DVD standard allows.  Unfortunately, this extra functionality comes at a cost.  The layered menus that you create in DVD Studio rely on some behind-the-scenes tricks to work -- and this can make them play back in unexpected ways when viewed on computer DVD players.

Symptoms
When you play back a DVD with layered menus on a computer-based DVD player (but not in DVD Studio's Simulator), and you try to navigate the menu using your mouse, you have to click a button once to "select" it, and then click it again to activate it. 

The menu behaves normally:

• in DVD players, and
• in most software, when you use the arrow keys rather than the mouse to navigate it.

After the jump, the explanation ...

Did you know you can duplicate any element within the Graphical View in DVD Studio Pro?  For example, within a menu you can duplicate a button, text object, or a drop zone and quickly make duplicates of it that just need to have their content changed to become independent.



Read on to use the duplicate function...

Do you ever wonder why you're given the option in DVD Studio Pro to Build, Format, or Build/Format?  Most DVD authors will just automatically choose Build/Format for the ease of a single step.  Once your project is finished and you're ready to burn, the options depend on the situation.

The Build Process is basically only creating the VIDEO_TS folder.  You can choose the location where the VIDEO_TS folder is created.  If you want to emulate or test your project on your computer by using the DVD Player, using the build process only will save you time without having to format it and find out you have mistakes to fix.  Where the correct workflow is to first test your project in Simulator, then Build your project, then test the VIDEO_TS folder you built in your computer's DVD player, then format your project and test it in a tabletop DVD player and also make sure your disk plays on your computer, you could essentially do it all in one step.

The Format process takes a VIDEO_TS folder you already have created and writes it to a DVD recordable drive.  The Build/Format option simply combines these two tasks of creating the VIDEO_TS folder and writing it to a disk, in one step.  So why even bother with the two-step process, you ask?  Well there are a couple of advantages with performing the Build process by itself first.

One advantage being the fact that you can preview your project by playing the VIDEO_TS folder on your Apple DVD Player, and avoid burning any mistakes onto a disk.  Well why can't I just preview my project in Simulator?  You can; however the Apple DVD Player will allow certain functions that Simulator will not, for example, fast-forwarding.  You will get a more realistic point of view by playing your project on the DVD player than in Simulator.  Another advantage to using the Build step separately is the ability to choose what VIDEO_TS folder you want to burn.

But for all practical purposes, most authors will use the Build/Format option for most projects.  Check out our upcoming schedule for 1-day DVD Studio Pro training to learn all the necessary skills for authoring a fully functional DVD!  

Apple just released the new iMac's and they are incredible. For the first time you can get into a Quad core Final Cut system for under $3000. That's right the iMac line now has a quad core machine. If that's not enough the top end iMac now has a 27 inch screen with 2560 by 1440 resolution, and a 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card.

At GeniusDV we use iMac's in our classroom for our Final Cut Studio training. Aside from some limitations to what you can hook up to an iMac in terms of peripherals, the iMac's make for great Final Cut systems. I have personally edited  numerous jobs on an iMac, and find them to be quite satisfactory.

I always tell students that unless you need to have MacPro for whatever reason, consider getting both a MacBook Pro, and an iMac. I find that you can get so much accomplished having two systems. Personally I can't imagine not having a MacBook Pro, because I travel so much, and do plenty of editing at 30,000 feet. With this new iMac I can now have a powerful desktop system as the primary Final Cut Studio editing system, and the MacBook Pro system too, for thousands less than a high end MacPro system.

You can create awesome slideshows right within DVD Studio Pro; however making sure your source material is properly prepared ahead of time is vital if you want to avoid wasting time and headaches down the road.  DVD Studio Pro lets you use most common image formats in slideshows such as PICT, BMP, JPEG, TIFF, TGA, QuickTime image files and Photoshop PSD files.  Once a still image is imported into DVD Studio Pro, it is converted into an MPEG image and if necessary, will automatically be scaled to fit the framesize.

You can create 4:3 and 16:9 slideshows.  For the best results, you should make sure your slides match the resolution of your slideshow.  Slides that are bigger or smaller than the slideshow's resolution are automatically scaled to fit.  If you have a slide where the aspect ratio doesn't match the project, a color background is automatically added to fill in the gaps.  The background color is defaulted to black, however, you can change that background color under the DVD Studio Preferences menu.