Chapter 8. Producing DVDs

At a high level, DVDs have two components: content and menus. Content primarily takes the form of videos, slideshows, and audio files; while menus are the pages that allow the viewer to navigate to and play the content. From the same 50,000-foot view, DVD authoring comes down to two simple activities: creating the menus and linking the menus to the content so the desired video for example, plays when the viewer presses the button. Once you've linked your video content to a menu, the DVD authoring program does the rest encoding the video into MPEG-2 format and recording menus and content to your DVD recorder.

Many consumer-oriented DVD authoring programs are just that simple even a first-timer can create a DVD in about 10 minutes (this doesn't include the time it takes for rendering and burning, and treating the capture and editing as separate processes, even though some DVD authoring tools include those functions). As you add features to your menus, and start to customize the viewer's navigation through the disc, the creation and testing cycle gains complexity, and takes more time.

In this chapter, I discuss DVD basics like disc capacity and audio/video formats, and explore some of the advanced design and navigation options available in the more advanced authoring tools. I've structured the chapter as a large FAQ covering the most common questions I've been asked about DVD authoring and DVD-Recordable technology.

I've chosen screens from multiple programs. To best illustrate the concepts under discussion. While the concepts are consistent from program to program, the interfaces will certainly be different, and the terminology may vary slightly. My hope is that once you understand the concept, you'll know how to apply it within your authoring program of choice. For guidance specific to your authoring program, check the list of available workbooks at www.doceo.com/dv101.html.