Review: Roxio MyDVD Premier DVD authoring software

There once was a time when video-editing software and DVD authoring programs were distinctly separate entities.

But now, most video-editing applications include an output to DVD option and, as is the case with Roxio's MyDVD Premier, many disc creation apps include full video capture and editing facilities.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. With MyDVD, for example, it means everything users need to produce high-quality DVD movies or photo slideshows from their own camcorder footage and digital image libraries is housed under one roof.

There are two basic ways to use MyDVD. More experienced users can get fairly hands-on by starting the application in standard mode.

This provides access to all MyDVD's tools and features, including full timeline video editing and a useful hierarchical project preview that presents the disc's menus and chapters in a tree view.

Click on 'Quick DVD Creation' from the splash screen and MyDVD will launch in Express mode. Here, many of the more technical aspects of video disc creation become automated.

Cinemagic, for example, can edit together a complete movie from raw footage in a matter of minutes. And when it comes to building the DVD itself, wizards act as helpful guides through most of the process and pre-designed templates ease the strain when it comes to creating menus.

Naturally, producing discs using the assistant-driven Express mode is a less creative experience, but it's an undeniably simple way to get footage from tape to disc without the hassle.

MyDVD also has a number of other interesting features, including a useful media manager and UPnP server for sharing media around a network.

It also features support for high definition video formats, although since burning HD to disc is currently limited to DivX HD-compatible DVD players in the UK, this is of less interest than it sounds.

It's not the cheapest of DVD authoring packages, but it will appeal to beginners and more experienced users alike.

System requirements:
1.6 GHz Pentium 4
256MB of Ram
1 GB hard disk
DVD/CD writer
Windows 2000/XP