Windows Vista DVD Maker. DVD Studio Windows - Awesome program for creating menus! How to manually download and update

Disc Studio is a program that helps you burn files to CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. It can create both regular data discs and media with certain types of content intended for playback on older players (Audio CD, Video DVD). In addition, the program provides the function of creating media with an automatically loading menu, ripping tools, as well as the functions of adding and erasing RW discs.

Before you start, you must select the type of disc you are going to burn. Next, the project window will open, into which you need to move the recorded data. You can do this by "drag and drop" or by using the "Add Files" item on the left side of the window. Data conversion (if required) occurs automatically. When the work on the disc project is finished, the program will ask you to select the drive to which the recording will be made. You will also need to specify the speed of "burning" and the title of the disc. By the way, the created project can be saved in the computer's memory and returned to work on it later.

Like any other similar program, Disk Studio can check the disc after burning, copy media, turn off the computer upon completion of work, and burn to several discs in turn. If at any stage of working with the program you have problems, we recommend that you contact

Owners of the Windows 7 operating system have the opportunity to burn a DVD disc using the built-in service. However, it should be noted right away that this service is not intended for serious operations with discs, but the studio allows you to record and make a small DVD design.

It is also worth noting that there is no such service in the Home basic version of the Windows 7 operating system. In other versions, to find it, you should go through Start and All Programs to find an icon called Windows DVD Studio. After clicking it, a window will appear in which all the functionality of this service is located. There is an Add function here to write information to disk.

It is possible to add several files to the disk at once, for which they should be selected by holding the Ctrl button on the keyboard. To edit the order of displaying images in a slide show, use the blue arrows, thanks to which a certain image can be moved to the desired position in the list. If the user accidentally added an unnecessary file for recording, then you should use the delete command provided for such situations.

Some PCs are equipped with multiple burners, the choice of one of them is carried out in the corresponding section of the Windows Studio DVD. It is possible to rename a disk using the field for the disk name. In general, the functions described above will help to write the necessary information to the disc, which can then be configured directly on the disc.

To select the disk you want to edit, you should find the Options option in the bottom left corner of the window. This option allows you to change certain playback parameters of a DVD disc, set the desired aspect ratio, as well as the format.

The service provides for the use of several disc playback options:

Start playback from the disc menu, which will be immediately displayed on the screen when the disc is inserted into the drive;

Direct video playback immediately after starting the disc, after which the menu will appear;

Play video in a continuous loop.

In addition, the user can adjust the aspect ratio of the DVD as desired, using either normal aspect ratio (4:3) or wide screen (16:9).

Some people have different opinions about the speed of writing to a disc, for example, the higher the speed, the worse the quality of the recording. It should be noted that there is no such dependence, but, as a rule, a slow write speed guarantees good readability of the disc in the future.

When the recording setup is complete, you can start designing the disc by setting up the menu and slide show. The user has access to standard solutions, as well as the ability to independently create something new.

In the menu settings, you can customize the types of buttons, background image, and add an audio track if necessary.

After all operations with the DVD disc settings, the process should be completed by the Burn command, which is located in the lower corner on the right side of the window.

What prevents us from knowing in advance what surprises Microsoft is preparing for us? Moreover, the long-awaited operating system is not far away from the start of sales, and its components such as Windows MovieMaker and Windows DVD-studio will not undergo any changes compared to previous builds of Vista. Let's take a look at what Redmond will please future Windows Vista users interested in digital video.

After installing the system, the first thing that attracts attention is the presence in the Start panel of four items, in one way or another related to processing, creating and viewing videos.

Microsoft seems to have taken the goodness of its Office experience to Vista by turning several disparate programs into a cohesive set of modules. Now the user can, using the Windows Photo Gallery, select material consisting of photos and video clips, perform simple actions on drawings and...

click the Create Movie button.

The next module will immediately start - familiar to everyone from its XP incarnation of Windows MovieMaker. The files selected in the Photo Album are already located on the timeline, along with the transitions between them, selected randomly. What we see is a ready-to-publish slideshow that can now be exported to any available format.

MovieMaker differs slightly from its predecessor built into Windows XP. The timeline still consists of only one video track, which does not allow you to overlay one clip on top of another; The maximum number of effects added to a clip at the same time has not changed - there are still six of them. The composition of the effects and transitions built into the program has slightly changed: in MovieMaker version 5.1 (Windows XP SP2), the number of transitions was 60, now there are 64; the number of effects, which was 24, increased to 49.

But first things first. Now we will capture video from a digital video camera, and create a simple movie. Only after that we will begin to think how to publish our work. Perhaps we will be able to create a DVD video disc without using anything other than the tools built into Windows...

If the user is going to capture video, then it is better to launch MovieMaker with a digital video camera connected to the computer and switched to Play mode. Although the program is painfully familiar, it is still worth looking into its settings. Team Tools > Options will open the program settings window, which consists of three tabs. As you can see, the set of parameters is still minimal, and no changes are observed here.

On the first tab, one of the important points can be considered the time interval after which the program automatically saves the project; on the second tab, the user can change the duration of displaying photos when they are placed on the timeline of the program, as well as the duration of the animated transition between them. The aspect ratio and television video format are also selected here. The last tab contains a list of codecs available to the program installed in the operating system. Interestingly, any of them can be disabled, making it inaccessible to MovieMaker.

Let's move on to capturing video, for this we will execute the command ctrl+r (File > Import from Digital Video Camera). Minimalism triumphs: a field for entering the name of the cassette; choosing the location of the folder where the captured video will be saved; choosing a format for saving - all simple settings. Separately, let's talk about formats only: if the user plans to edit with cutting / gluing video clips, applying effects, transitions and titles, then in this case it is recommended to select the first format in the list: DV AVI as a single file. The remaining two items (WMV as a single file and WMV with splitting the file into scenes) are recommended if no editing with subsequent video transcoding is planned.

The next gigantic window contains only two items, the choice of which depends on the wishes of the user: it is not at all necessary to dump an entire tape to the hard disk if you need to capture only a short one-minute episode.

Finally, a window has opened where the capture will take place. The camcorder is controlled here by standard buttons, there is also a customizable capture time limit. If the user selected the first item in the previous window, then you can safely press the button Start video import, and find more important things to do for the next hour and a half, while the tape is being played and captured.

Upon completion of the capture, the resulting clip will be automatically imported into MovieMaker, however, with some peculiarities. Despite the fact that the program created a single AVI file in the folder specified by the user, the same file imported into the program looks broken into scenes. Broken not just by the time the camera was turned on and off (timecode), but also by an optical sign (picture change).

If in the previous version of MovieMaker such splitting of a file into scenes could be disabled by unchecking the item "Create clips after the wizard is completed" when recording video from a device, or from the item "Create clips for video files" in the file import dialog, now video is always split into scenes and cannot be undone. However, it's not scary. The user can merge many clips into one at any time by selecting them and executing the command from the context menu Merge:

Although, to be honest, there is no need to do this, because editing involves cutting out unnecessary, uninteresting frames. And it is much easier to produce it if the video is already broken into pieces.

It is unlikely that anyone who has dealt with digital video at least once has not tried to create their own project in Windows MovieMaker. A simpler process is hard to imagine. Apparently, the developers are so satisfied with this simplicity that they decided not to add any, even cosmetic, changes to the program. Each element, each team remained in its original place. With the exception of...

Except for one nice little thing: the ability to create a DVD-video disc! To the great joy of users, the list of available ways to publish a movie, located on the left side of the program window, has been replenished with the item DVD.

By clicking on this item, a warning will appear (and where did you see Windows without system messages?):

After an affirmative answer, a new module will be launched, which now has a permanent residence in the operating system: Windows DVD Studio.

As you can see, this program cannot boast of a large number of settings; even a hopeless beginner is not able to get lost in several points.

Everything is extremely simple: in the "Select DVD playback options" field, the DVD construction scheme is selected, in the "DVD aspect ratio" section - the aspect ratio of the video (aspect), and in the third - the TV standard (PAL is used in Russia). By and large, you don’t need to pay attention to the “DVD Burning Speed” parameter (except when you plan to watch DVD on a player that cannot read discs recorded at high speeds). And you should pay attention to the item "Location of temporary files": this will help to slightly speed up the creation of the disk, its miscalculation. The fact is that any program that works with video, during video processing, constantly accesses the source file, while simultaneously writing the result to a new file. And, if the disk is heavily fragmented, or has a low rotation speed, the work can be very slow. To avoid this, click the Browse button and select a different hard drive than the one on which the original video is located.

In total, there are twenty different design styles in the piggy bank of the program, which should be enough in most cases.

Themes can be changed by yourself, however, not without certain tricks. The DVD design files are located in the Program FilesMovie MakerSharedDvdStyles folder. It is worth replacing them with your own - and no one will be able to reproach the author for using standard themes replicated all over the world. True, you will have to try hard for this, because most of the menus are collections of carefully tailored blanks, consisting of graphic and video files. However, one can hope that in the near future the work of enthusiasts will appear on the Web, which will help expand the design capabilities of Windows DVD Studio.

The big minus of DVD-studio: it is impossible to manually set the interval and places of arrangement of chapters (chapters) on the created disc. The program determines the location of the chapters in the film on its own, guided by the same principle according to which MovieMaker breaks the video into scenes, namely, at the moments of changing the picture and turning the camera on / off. However, if the project contains two or more video files, then the files imported into the project will be the chapters, and the intermediate chapters will disappear.

But back to work. An important part of it is the creation of your own inscriptions on the menu. Do not leave the faceless phrases "Nameless", "View" or "Scenes"? Enter your text in the required fields, and select a suitable font.

In addition to the inscriptions, the video shown in the menu can also be changed (by default, the program takes frames from the video imported into the project), the background sound, and the style of the buttons.

If the user has added a folder with photos to the project, then it is desirable to make some changes in the slide show parameters. First, choose the musical accompaniment that will sound during the display of photos. When the melody is selected and the file is selected, it is best to check the box "Change the duration of the slide show to match the duration of the music", and not leave the value fixed. True, in this case, you need to mentally compare the number of imported photos and the duration of the selected melody, and calculate the average display time for a single photo. It will not work well if the photos flicker at a frantic speed or, even worse, are shown on the screen for a long time, driving the audience into depression.

It should be remembered that at any time you can see how the DVD will look after performing one or another operation, changing any parameter. Button View always ready, by pressing it, the program will start simulating the operation of a DVD-video disc.

If after such viewing the user was satisfied with his work, you can proceed to the final stage: burning the disc. Unfortunately, Windows DVD Maker does not create DVD files on your computer's hard drive, offering to burn them directly to optical media.

However, it is not difficult to deceive the program: files ready to be written to disk are located in the system temporary files folder, but are destroyed when the program exits. Thus, if the user simply wants to get DVD files, he just needs to start rendering the movie with an empty disc inserted into the DVD drive, and then remove the disc from the drive without waiting for the burning to start and without closing the program. At the end of the rendering, the DVD-studio will ask you to insert a disc into the drive again - this means that the temporary files are ready; now they can be safely copied to any folder, and used in the future at your discretion.

The time it takes to create a DVD depends on the amount of source material and its format. During rendering, the program not only transcodes all files to MPEG-2, but also processes all the effects that the user filled the project with while working in MovieMaker. The test creation of a 50-minute DVD-video disc took about two hours (the original video was DV AVI, without applying effects and transitions; the rendering was made on a computer with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1024 MB DDR SDRAM).

At the end of burning, the DVD-studio will offer to repeat the operation. No need to be afraid of another long wait - this time the program will just overwrite those same temporary files on a DVD.

Another annoyance: there are no tools for setting DVD output parameters in the program! This "protection from an incompetent user" has turned the program into a tool that cannot be used, since it does everything itself (although, perhaps, the vast majority of users are just waiting for it).

Pay attention to the disk full indicator in the lower left corner of the window where files are imported into the project:

The DVD studio believes that video encoded at such a low bitrate can be considered high quality. Perhaps this is so, if only it were not about amateur shooting, with all its noise caused by the constant lack of lighting, and the dancing of the operator's hands.By creating several DVDs of different lengths, it was found that the final bitrate of the film is selected automatically by the program, and varies in the range from 8000 Kb / s (with a disc duration of 50 minutes) to 3901 Kb / s (with a disc duration of 150 minutes). The sound is always encoded unchanged: MPEG Audio, 48000 Hz, stereo, 224 Kb/s.

There is also a reason for joy: the program does not always necessarily transcode the video. To verify this, a 30-minute file was prepared with characteristics that fully correspond to files created by a DVD studio: this is MPEG2 video, 720x576, 25.00 fps, 8000 Kb/s. As a result, the creation of the disc took only 10 minutes (no doubt, so much time was required to create the menu), after which the source file was compared with the final one. It is not difficult to guess - they turned out to be completely identical.

So, the created DVD-video is ready to replenish your media collection, which can now be viewed using the powerful tool built into Windows Vista - Media Center. It differs significantly from, their comparative reviews have already been published on the Web, but for now we will limit ourselves to a series of screenshots.

The main and, perhaps, the only advantage of the Windows Vista DVD-studio is its very appearance as part of the operating system, and, therefore, it is free (hardly anyone buys an operating system just for the sake of some one module). In all other respects, the DVD-studio is more than modest in its capabilities, inferior to similar programs in almost every parameter. It is worth mentioning - similar, but separate programs designed to fulfill a single purpose: DVD authoring. Such packages are not designed for the average user at all, their cost often approaches the cost of the entire operating system, and no one will ever compare Windows DVD Studio with a powerful authoring tool like Sonic Scenarist.

I welcome you once again, dear readers, and today I would like to tell you what Windows DVD Studio is! In this article, I would like to tell you about one useful and interesting program that is present in the Windows 7 operating system. The program is called DVD Studio Windows.

What kind of program is this and what are its capabilities, we will consider in today's lesson.

DVD Studio Windows

First of all, it should be said that the Windows DVD Studio program is designed to create high-quality recordings on DVDs. With this program you will learn how to create a menu of DVD content. And not just any menu that will contain, I would say, a list of films, cartoons, but a cool attractive menu with a beautiful design combined with musical accompaniment, made according to your plan. By the way, in one of the previous lessons, I already said:

In addition, you can also create certain scenes from which you can play.

In other words, with the help of this program you will easily create DVD discs with certain information (cartoons, films, photo presentations), which in turn will be played in home DVD players. There is nothing difficult in this program, in my opinion. In my opinion, this is the simplest program of all existing at the moment. You will only need to create one video file (burn a DVD) to acquire skills in managing this program.

In order to open the Windows DVD Studio program, click on the "Start" button and type DVD Studio in the search bar, as a result, the requested program will be displayed, left-click on it.

Thus, the main window of the program will open, in which you will need to click on the "Add" button to select a movie to be recorded, or it can be photos. In my example, I will choose the Rio cartoon that I would like to burn to DVD. I click on the "Add" button, then I specify the location of the video file on my computer and click "Add". After the video file has been added to the windows DVD studio program itself, it will be necessary to write the name of the video file in the DVD title line.

Now we will need to set the appropriate video parameters, to do this, click on the "Parameters" link and in the "DVD Options" window that opens, the settings that you see in the figure below are presented.

You can read the description and purpose of each parameter by clicking on the link "How to change DVD settings". After reading the purpose of each parameter, you will receive comprehensive information about the parameters of this program.

In the reference information, everything is described in detail, so I recommend that you set the settings already for their intended purpose. In my example, I leave all the default settings and click OK, then Next.

In the next window, you will need to select the style of your future disc menu. Here you can familiarize yourself with the presented styles by scrolling the slider on the right side of the program window.

After you have chosen the style you like (I chose the “Reflections” style in this case), go to the top menu of the program, which contains the main tabs for editing the created video file.

Tab "File" - designed to save the project;

View tab - allows you to view the current project being created;

Using the Menu Text tab, you can edit the text in the DVD menu. Here you can set the font of your choice.

In the "Notes" field, you can write a short description of the video file. After you have made changes in this tab, to save all the set values, click "Change text".

The next tab is "Menu Settings". In this tab you can set the background of your menu or upload a music file that will be played when the menu is opened. In addition, you can set the foreground video. Of course, you ask what is a foreground video? I will tell you that when you put a burnt disc in a DVD player, the background video will play on the screen before the disc menu starts, then when the disc menu appears, the foreground video will be played.

As you can imagine, these additional settings serve as a kind of splash screen that gives the menu a unique and attractive design. Having set all the settings of your choice, you can click on the "View" button to check the operation and display of the set disc menu settings.

And finally, the drop-down list of the "Scene Button Styles" tab will allow you to specify the location of the scenes of the video file in the menu.

I left everything here by default, did not change anything and did not download anything. Then, once you have set the parameters you need, click "Change Style". So, with regard to the settings of the video file, then the settings are completed and we have the last tab not considered - “Slide Show”. This tab is designed to create a slideshow if the project being created includes image files.

When at the initial stage we were adding a video file to the program, you could additionally add image files. And the "Slide Show" tab allows you to make viewing images on a DVD player, I would say, bewitching, beautiful, by setting certain parameters, such as: background music, transition effect.

After setting the parameters, you will need to save the set values ​​\u200b\u200bby clicking "Change Slide Show". On this, in principle, the installation of the necessary parameters is completed, and the next step is to record the finished project. Click on the "Record" button and a window will open in which the encoding of the video file will begin. The time it takes to encode a project mainly depends on the size of the file itself. The process, of course, is not very fast, so please be patient.

As soon as the encoding process is completed, the information will be written to the DVD disc. Upon completion of the recording, we will be asked to save a copy of the recorded project to the computer, for example, if you want to burn the finished project to disk again in the future.

Now you just have to insert the DVD disc you recorded into the player and see the result.

On this I will complete this article, it remains for me to wish you a pleasant viewing. Now, thanks to Windows DVD Studio, you will create beautiful menus for your video files.

In the next article you will learn =>

If in previous versions of Windows to write data to a CD I had to install additional programs, it's good if they were free programs for burning DVD discs ... but many had to install bulky Nero and Roxio, in which most of them did not figure it out to the end

All this was necessary, since the built-in tool in previous versions of Windows was very limited in its capabilities - now in Windows 7 there are no additional software for burning discs no need.

In addition to the usual procedure for writing data to disk, a special utility is now provided for burning to DVD graphic files and videos with the ability to add a navigation menu.

Windows DVD Maker allows you to burn a disc for viewing on a PC or home DVD player.

Windows DVD Maker

With this application on the disk, you can create a slideshow of photos with the addition of videos.

To control the viewing of recorded media on DVD, a navigation menu is added, which, when recording, is easy to edit to your taste or choose one of 20 preset styles!

When creating a slide show, you have more freedom of action: you can add musical accompaniment from several songs, specify the duration of each image on the screen and choose transition effects between them.

In addition, settings for the process of converting to DVD format are provided: you can specify the aspect ratio of the image (1b: 9 or 4: 3), as well as select the television standard for recording (PAL or NTSC).

As an example, it will be shown how, using the built-in Windows 7 Windows DVD Maker to burn videos and photos to DVD. Run" Windows DVD Maker". To do this, in the menu, click on the item

In the window that appears, click the button

and select the videos or images you want burn to DVD. The files will then appear in the window.

Set the parameters for recording and converting data.

Click on the line (options) - in the next window, specify the action that will be performed when reading the disk by selecting the appropriate radio button

And, just specify the video standard on which the DVD will be played. On panel

Leave the default value as our country generally uses PAL standard.

To confirm the performed actions, click on the "OK" button. To proceed to the next step, click on the "Next" button

In the window that appears in the list on the right

choose the style of the navigation menu you like. If you want to change the button names or the disc title, click on "Menu text" and fill in the appropriate fields in the next window:

Confirm the changes by clicking on the "Change text" button. To set up a slide show, click on the corresponding button, and in the next window, add musical accompaniment.

The playback order of music tracks can be changed using the buttons

And in the list:

Specify the graphic effect to be used to transition between images.

Confirm the actions performed by clicking on the "Change Slide Show" button

Insert a DVD-blank into the optical drive and click on the "record" button - the process of burning data to DVD will start

All the secrets and subtleties of Windows 7