Ulead's DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus [Archive]

Damion Chaplin

09-27-2007, 03:00 PM

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review00-092407.jpg" /> Product Category: CD/DVD Authoring Manufacturer: <a href="http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1174668369543">Ulead</a> Where to Buy: <a href="http://astore.amazon.com/digitalmediathoughts-20/detail/B000OM7DIQ/102-9643833-4549757">Amazon</a> [Affiliate] Price: $72.99 USD ($45.99 upgrade) at time of writing System Requirements: Intel® Pentium® 4 (or equivalent) or higher recommended; 512MB RAM (1GB recommended); Windows XP or higher; 900MB HD space for installation; 1024x768 screen resolution or higher. Pros: <li>Relatively easy to learn and use;<li>Feature-rich package;<li>HD-DVD & Blu-ray support. Cons: <li>Some features are less intuitive than others;<li>Not named after a Roman emperor. Summary: Ulead’s DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus bills itself as “The easy way to create video and slideshow discs – and more,” and Corel has tried to aim it squarely at the Nero and Easy Media Creator crowd. Advertising just about every feature you could want, and at a competitive price, DVD Movie Factor (DMF) looks like a great value. But is it really? Can it really stand up to the heavy hitters that are Nero and Easy Media Creator? Over the past few weeks, I took DMF for a spin to find out for myself. Did DVD MovieFactory live up to my expectations? Read on to find out!<!> <PAGEBREAK> The Complete Package From burning CDs and DVDs, to editing videos and backing up data, DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus includes just about every tool you could need to author your discs, and gives you multiple options for doing so. The program’s even future-proofed should you eventually get an HD-DVD or Blu-ray burner. First there’s the DMF Launcher, which acts as a launching point for creating any type of disc you want. In a wizard-like style, the Launcher allows you to choose what type of project you need to do and launches the appropriate program, or, in some cases, gives you a simplified version of the function you need. The more technically-inclined can go straight to the program they need, either Ulead’s Burn.Now (for audio or data CD and DVDs) or DiscRecorder (for video DVDs), and last but not least is Ulead’s nifty QuickDrop, a gadget-like program that sits on your desktop and allows you to do quick-and-dirty disc authoring. DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus also comes bundled with InterVideo’s WinDVD and DVDCopy, in case you actually wanted to play the DVD you just made, or want to quickly dupe it for friends and family. All those programs and options are nice, but do they add up to an easy and enjoyable user experience? I was anxious to find out. The Launcher When you first install DVD MovieFactory, the only icon it puts on your desktop is to the Launcher. All other programs need to be accessed from the Start menu. This didn’t prove to be a problem though since every function you need can be initiated from this launcher screen (except the QuickDrop, which is really a Launcher-alternative). <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review01-092407.jpg" /> Figure 1: DVD MovieFactory 6’s main Launcher window. Along the left side of the screen are the different disc authoring options available. Clicking on each one will reveal more refined options on the right side. For example, clicking on Audio Disc gives you the options of making an MP3 Disc, an Audio CD, DVD Audio, Music DVD Video or CD Extra (both music and data) disc. Along the bottom of the window are the buttons for Preferences, Disc Info, Drive Info and Print Disc Label. These buttons seem out of place, like they couldn’t figure out where else to put them, but they function and are easy enough to find. Clicking Preferences will allow you to choose the working folder that DMF uses and other less useful things like Registering the product. The Disc and Drive Info buttons do just what you would think they do. <PAGEBREAK> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review03-092407.jpg" /> Figure 2: The Label@Once Module. The Print Disc Label button opens Ulead’s Label@Once program, which allows you to add images and text to a pre-sized CD Label template and print it. This program is nice to see, but is really not very useful. Most people who still print on labels and stick them to CDs are using specific size sheets with labels at specific points, and while Label@Once does allow you to create a specific template for your labels, it’s not an experience I would recommend. What I would really have liked to see here is support for printers that can print directly on the CD, as well as LightScribe drives. For those of you who don’t have the ability to print or ‘scribe’ directly onto a disc, I recommend a Sharpie. Let's Burn For the most part, I found creating discs in DVD MovieFactory to be pretty easy and self-explanatory, requiring very little guesswork on my part. There were, however, a few exceptions where I think someone new to the whole disc authoring arena would be confused. Audio and Data CDs in particular were something I accomplished simply because I had used similar programs in the past and knew what I was doing. I’ll get to that in a second though. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6ReviewH1-092407.jpg" /> DVD MovieFactory is primarily a program for creating video DVDs and photo slideshows, so it’s no surprise that Video/Slideshow Disc is the first option in the Launcher. As the primary focus of this program, it’s important that this component, at the very least, is easy to use. Thankfully, it was. Both video and slideshow projects are created in the main MovieFactory program, which is basically the same as the DiscRecord program. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review04-092407.jpg" /> Figure 3: The MovieFactory main DVD creation screen. Creating a video DVD was easy and painless, though a little time-consuming. I tested this program on my P4 3Ghz/1GB RAM machine and it took a bit longer than the runtime of the file itself to render and burn it. Thankfully, if you’re one of the lucky ones to have a dual-core CPU, DMF is written to utilize both cores, which should reduce processing time significantly. As expected, you can capture video from a camera, use a video on your hard drive, or capture a segment from an unencrypted DVD as your source. Once you select a source (I tested it with a WMV file on my hard drive) you then have the option of editing it. Remember Chris’s <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,12572:dont_paginate,1">VideoStudio 11 review</a>? Just about everything that program allows you to do you can do here. <PAGEBREAK> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review05-092407.jpg" /> Figure 4: The Multi-trim screen, featuring the almighty Ad-Zapper. One feature I’d like to highlight here is the Ad-Zapper, which can be accessed by clicking on the Multi-trim Video button. The Ad-Zapper claims to be able to detect the commercials in a TV recording and allow you to delete them from the video file. I tested this with a 27-minute segment recorded off TV (thanks, Jason!) that contained 2 commercial breaks. The Ad-Zapper module successfully detected and marked both commercial segments and marked the program segments with a ‘P’ and the suspected commercial segments with a ‘C’. After reviewing them to make sure they were right, I simply selected the ‘C’ parts and deleted them. If you do a lot of recording off of TV, this is an invaluable tool. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review06-092407.jpg" /> Figure 5: Choosing a DVD Menu. The rest of the DVD creation was pretty by-the-book. You can choose any of 44 different menus (some animated), though the box says “Choose from over 100 professionally-designed menu templates”. I’m not sure where those other 50-odd templates were, but they weren’t apparent. Editing the templates was easy, and thankfully they provide a blank template for those of us who don’t like our vacation photos presented by someone else’s vacation photo. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review07-092407.jpg" /> Figure 6: Creating a Slideshow disc. Creating a Slideshow disc works much the same way as a video disc. Instead of choosing a source video file though, you choose a folder or range of picture files. You can then choose a menu and soundtrack to accompany it. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6ReviewH2-092407.jpg" /> Audio and data discs proved to be the least self-explanatory parts of the Launcher, as selecting either of these simply launches the Burn.Now program. People who are familiar with disc authoring programs will be able to figure it out, but people who’ve never created a disc before will find themselves reaching for the user manual. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review08-092407.jpg" /> Figure 7: The Burn.Now module for creating an Audio disc. For example, clicking on Audio Disc in the Launcher gives you five options: MP3 Disc, Audio Disco, DVD Audio, Music DVD Video and CD Extra. The problem is it doesn’t really matter which one you click on because they all simply open Burn.Now with a blank project open. Clicking on CD Extra doesn’t tell you how to add music and data to the same disc, and doesn’t explain why it’s different than a regular Music disc. I have done these sorts of things before, so I was able to muddle through, but a newbie would probably be left scratching his or her head. <PAGEBREAK> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6ReviewH3-092407.jpg" /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review09-092407.jpg" /> Figure 8: Burn.Now for Data disc creation. Note the similarities to the Audio creation screen. Authoring a Data disc is only intuitive because the Burn.Now interface resembles Windows Explorer. It’s safe to say anyone familiar with Windows Explorer should be just fine creating a data disc in MovieFactory 6. I think it should be noted here that the box implies that there are backup tools included in the package, allowing you to easily back your data up onto a disc. While data backup is certainly possible, it’s only possible by doing so manually in Burn.Now. It would have been nice to see a simple automated backup program included, which would have rounded out the data disc offerings nicely. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6ReviewH4-092407.jpg" /> The Import/Capture function is available from the main Launcher menu, and while I didn’t have a camera to test it with, I’m sure they work as expected. I would, however, like to point out that most cameras come with capture programs of their own and I would speculate that most people who capture video directly from their cameras would be most comfortable in those programs. I can see how having it all in one place would be beneficial though. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6ReviewH5-092407.jpg" /> The Edit/Append Disc feature is next in the Launcher, and it does pretty much what it says it does: allows you to edit or append to the contents on a pre-burned disc. While I’m sure this would be useful to some people, I usually recommend that people close their disc sessions (preventing further writing to the disc) and avoid rewritable DVDs. You might be different though, and thankfully Ulead’s thought of you. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6ReviewH6-092407.jpg" /> <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review10-092407.jpg" /> Figure 9: Coppying unencrypted DVDs is as easy as it gets. Using the Copy Disc tool in the Launcher, you can copy or rip an un-encrypted DVD to your hard drive. Also featured here is the ‘Burn from Disc Image’ function. The Copy Disc tool is pretty straightforward. You tell it which disc drive is the ‘source’ and which is the ‘destination’, both the same drive in my case. The DVD rip feature (‘Burn DVD Folders to Disc’) is nothing to write home about. You can save the DVD as either an .ISO file or Ulead’s proprietary .IXB disc image file. It would be nice to see some .AVI file support here. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6ReviewH7-092407.jpg" /> Lastly, the Disc Tools feature allows you to Format, Erase or Close a disc. I’m not sure when I’d ever format or erase a CD or DVD, but I’ve often wished for the easy ability to close a disc I accidentally left open. <PAGEBREAK> The QuickDrop <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/DFC-DMF6Review11-092407.jpg" /> Figure 10: The QuickDrop module, shown here at actual size. If the giant Launcher doesn’t seem like your thing, just fire up the QuickDrop program. The QuickDrop is a seriously tiny program that sits on your desktop just waiting for your next burning desire (sorry, couldn’t resist). You just drag whatever files you want to burn onto the QuickDrop, and it will automatically guess what type of disc you want to burn. For instance, drag a folder of music on it, and it will format the disc for music. Then you just click the Burn button and the disc is made, all without having to open up a big program and click through that same next-next-next-burn sequence you’ve already done twice that day. As you can tell, if you frequently burn discs for friends or coworkers, the QuickDrop can be not only a time-saver, but a sanity-saver as well. WinDVD and DVDCopy Included in the Plus version of MovieFactory 6 are ‘silver’ versions (whatever that means) of InterVideo’s WinDVD 8 and DVDCopy 5. They’re not really part of the MovieFactory package, and must be installed from their own disc, but they are included in this version, so I’ll touch briefly on them. WinDVD has been one of the leading DVD players for a number of years now. It doesn’t really do anything but play DVDs, but it does do that well. If you can’t stand Windows Media Player or MCE (or whatever else may have come preinstalled on your machine), WinDVD is an excellent alternative. DVDCopy is an interesting addition here, seeing as Copy Disc is one of the features of MovieFactory, but upon launching DVDCopy, it’s obvious the two programs are in two completely different leagues. Put succinctly, DVDCopy has every feature that I found lacking in the Copy Disc feature. Copying and ripping DVDs was much easier, and I was even able to rip to a Divx .AVI file. Nice. So, Is It All That? In all, I’d say Ulead’s MovieFactory 6 Plus stood up well to my expectations. While I found certain parts of the package less intuitive than others, it is a very comprehensive package, and did everything I asked it to do. I found it to be quite comparable to the other two disc authoring programs out there, and a pleasant addition to my computing experience. Damion Chaplin is a graphic artist and digital media connoisseur living in the San Francisco Bay Area with his lovely wife Lorri and the ship's cat Grimalkin (The Kitty). He finds programs that automatically remove commercials to be über-cool.