For me, this is the neatest option of all. You can walk up to that smug knowit- all at your local video store and boast that you have the world’s only video CD copy of My Family Reunion Bloopers 2004! (Heck, tell him you’ll be happy to burn him a copy for a small fee.) To record your movie on a CD or DVD, follow these steps:

1. Rest your tired mouse pointer atop the Export button in the Movie group and choose CD/DVD from the menu that appears.

2. If ShowBiz recognizes a CD recording application on your system, click the Select Device drop-down list and select your CD or DVD

recorder. If your drive doesn’t appear, don’t panic that means that ShowBiz doesn’t recognize any compatible recording programs. Instead, select the Save a Copy to Disk check box to enable it. Then type a filename, click the Browse button to specify a location where the video file will be stored, and record it manually later with your CD recording software.

3. To save your movie as a clip in the library album that you specify, select the Add to Album check box.

4. Click the Format drop-down list to choose the type of disc that you want to burn. The most compatible choice (and the one I use most often) is Video CD File, which can be played on virtually any DVD player and on most PCs as well.

5. Click the Settings button to select the proper quality settings for the film. The Format dialog box opens. The default settings for the Video CD and DVD formats are optimized for those specific media types, so leave these settings alone unless you’re sure of what you’re doing. (Repeat after me: “Defaults are usually good things.”)

6. Click Save to apply any changes and to return to the Make CD dialog box.

7. Click OK. ShowBiz automatically cranks up your CD-burning software to handle the rest of the job. If you’re going to create a DVD, make sure that you use the DVD File format, which results in a much higher-quality MPEG-2 image. (As you might expect, you won’t be able to burn this monster video to a mere CD, so most of us will stick to the Video CD File format.)

I Can Make My Own DVDs?

You know, as a PC owner and a dedicated movie fan with my own digital video (DV) camcorder I honestly can’t think of a current technology in the world of personal computers that’s more exciting than burning my own DVD videos! That’s why I chose the title for this article: DVD recording is new enough and sounds so much like rocket science that even many PC power users don’t know much about it. (Another large cross section of PC owners knows that recording DVDs is possible on a PC but thinks that it’s too complex or far too expensive.) With the recent drop in the price of DVD-R drives and the availability of easy-to-use DVD authoring software like MyDVD 4 recording your own DVD videos is now kid’s stuff. Trust me: You can do this, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Your DVD videos will have professional-looking menus, and they’ll run on standard DVD players. But instead of watching Arnold Schwarzenegger, you’ll be watching your family at Walt Disney World. (And unlike those old tapes, your DVD home movies will never wear out!) MyDVD 4 can also create video CDs with MyDVD, which means that the program even accommodates those of us with antique CD-RW drives. Note, though, that a video CD has much less storage space than a DVD, so your movies must be much shorter (usually about an hour). Also, the video quality of a video CD is nowhere near as good as that of a DVD. Therefore, I eschew video CDs in this article and concentrate on recording DVDs by using existing video clips and multimedia files from your hard drive.

Welcome to MyDVD

As you can tell, I’m a big fan of MyDVD 4, from Sonic Solutions (www.sonic. com); for about $80, you can produce truly professional-looking DVD movies on your own PC. To begin your foray into the world of Digital Versatile Discs (or whatever the heck DVD means check out the nearby sidebar), either double-click the MyDVD icon on your desktop or choose Start -> All Programs -> Sonic -> MyDVD -> Start MyDVD. The program displays a combination welcome screen and wizard. From the opening wizard, you can choose to

-  Create a new MyDVD project or edit an existing project.

-  Transfer video Direct-to-DVD.

-  Edit an existing DVD and then re-record it.

-  Run the MyDVD tutorial, which is HyperText Markup Language (HTML)-based (and launches Internet Explorer).

-  Display the MyDVD Help system. To bypass the wizard screen entirely and jump to the MyDVD main window, select the Don’t Show This Window Again check box. Speaking of the MyDVD main window, click Create or Modify a DVD-Video Project to begin your first project. Of the slew of different DVD formats out there, only one is compatible with virtually all DVD players: That’s DVD-R, the record-once version of the DVDRW (rewriteable disc). If you burn a DVD project on a DVD-RW, DVD+R, or DVD+RW, it might not run on your DVD player. Or, even worse, it might run fine on yours but be completely useless on your Aunt Betty’s machine. +R/RW and -R/RW are different formats, too, and they’re not compatible! The only way to be completely sure that a DVD produced by your recorder will work on a particular DVD player is to actually try it!

Menus ’R Easy!

DVD authoring programs allow you to build a menu system that can be controlled by a DVD player’s remote control; the person viewing your disc will press buttons to select from the menu choices that you’ve laid out. After you build the menu framework, you essentially connect your video clips to the menu system. MyDVD also enables you to add screens with still photos from your digital camera or scanner. I always think of an art gallery, where the walls provide a backdrop for the paintings (and where those silly little rope fences are supposed to guide you to the proper place). (Personally, I jump right over the fences which is why I’m barred from visiting any art galleries in my town.) In the past, DVD authoring software was a confusing nest of weird-looking arrows, funky technical terms, and configuration settings that would give a Mensa member a splitting headache but applications like MyDVD (and iDVD in the Mac world) have revolutionized how you construct a DVD video. The default style used in MyDVD is Allegro, which has a musical feel to it. A MyDVD style is a combination of a menu background, a button appearance, and a font format. (More on this in the next section.) In this example, I show you how to build a menu system with a video clip, a submenu, and a still image slideshow. Follow these steps:

1. First, change the menu title to something more appropriate than Click here to change text. Okay, it’s catchy and instructive, but I doubt Uncle Milton would be impressed. a. Click the title, which opens a text editing box. b. Type the new title for your disc menu and then press Enter to save it.

2. Add your first video clip to your menu. a. Click the Get Movies button in the toolbar at the left of the window (or press Ctrl+G). MyDVD displays a standard Open dialog box. b. Navigate to a specific clip on your hard drive and double-click it to load it. MyDVD can accept all three of the Big Three digital video formats: AVI, MOV, and MPEG. Therefore, you don’t have to convert your video clips from one format to another before you use them in your projects.

3. If you wish, change the title on the button to something more appealing. a. Click the text under the clip button. MyDVD opens a text editing box. b. Type the new label for the button and then press Enter to save it. You just created your first menu! (A little rudimentary, of course, but you could actually save the project and record it at this point.) By the way, keep an eye on the disc-shaped graph in the lower-left corner of the MyDVD window. When you add menus, photos, and video clips, it’s updated to show how much space is available on a disc (and how much space remains on a typical 4.7GB recordable DVD). If you’re going to record your project onto a video CD, click the drop-down list next to the disc graph to switch between different DVD format capacities. You can now add a submenu to your DVD menu. A submenu is a branch command that takes you to another menu level under the top-level menu. I use submenus for organizing different clips and images by date or subject. For example, you could create a single DVD with clips from an entire year and then add submenus for vacation video clips, Christmas videos, and school clips. To create a submenu, just follow this yellow brick road:

1. Click the Add Sub-menu button on the left toolbar to create the Untitled Menu

2. To change the label on the submenu button to something appropriate, click the text under the submenu button, type the new label for the button, and then press Enter to save it. Look at the structure of the submenu screen. Double-click the submenu button to display it. MyDVD always adds two new navigation buttons to the bottom of the new screen: • Home: Clicking this takes you back to the main Title screen of the menu. • Previous: Clicking this takes you back to the previous menu screen, which is handy for when a submenu appears within another submenu. These buttons also work while you’re creating the menu; just double-click a navigation button to use it. (After all, you need a way to move between menu screens.) Other than the Home and Previous buttons, a submenu works just like the top-level Title menu. You can add another video clip by clicking the Get Movies button (as I demonstrate earlier) or the Add Slideshow button or even add another menu level with another submenu. However, note this one thing that you can do with a submenu that you can’t do to the Title menu screen: A submenu can be deleted. (This makes sense because your project always needs a Title menu.) To delete a submenu, display it, rightclick the menu background, and then choose Delete Menu from the shortcut menu that appears. Deleting a submenu also deletes any buttons (and the corresponding content) that might still be on the submenu. For this reason, MyDVD will prompt you for deletion confirmation. To verify that you want to delete everything on the current menu from your project, click OK. (Note, however, that deleting a submenu doesn’t permanently delete any video clips that were on it from your hard drive. That would be the very definition of A Bad Thing.) Speaking of deleting items, you can also delete any button that you’ve added to a menu by right-clicking it and then choosing Delete Button from the shortcut menu that appears. Again, deleting a button is like deleting a menu: You remove everything that was linked to the button so MyDVD again prompts you for confirmation, just to make sure. To add a slideshow to your submenu, walk this way:

1. Click the Add Slideshow button (left side of the main screen). MyDVD opens the Create Slideshow dialog box.

2. Click the Get Pictures button (left side) to display the Open dialog box. There, select one or more pictures from your hard drive for your slideshow and then click the Open button, which displays the images in the filmstrip. At the bottom of this screen, check out how MyDVD keeps track of how much space the show takes on the DVD as well as the length of the show.

3. To choose a specific picture as the slideshow button image, click the desired image in the filmstrip and then click the Button Image button on the left toolbar.

4. To control the delay for each image and choose an audio soundtrack (in MP3 or WAV format), click the Settings button, which displays the Slideshow Settings dialog box.

5. Click the Advanced tab to choose an optional transition that will appear between slides.

6. After you add all the photos that you want to your slideshow filmstrip, click OK to save your changes and return to the submenu screen. You’ve finished your menu system in a minimum of short steps, no less! Press Ctrl+S to save the project, enter a filename when MyDVD prompts you, and then click Save to store your masterwork on your hard drive.

Changing the Look of Your Menus

At this point, you might be satisfied with the results of your work. If so, you’re ready to move to the next section. However, what if your video clips and photo slideshow have nothing to do with music? At this point, it’s time to dump Allegro (no offense) and choose a menu style more fitting for the content of your disc. MyDVD includes special styles for holidays and all sorts of events, as well as themes based on colors. You can switch styles at any time during the development of your DVD menu. Generally, I wait until the end because I can see the entire effect with the fonts, colors, and button borders on the different elements in my project. To choose a new style, follow these steps:

1. Click the Edit Style button in the top toolbar.

2. To use an animated style, choose Motion Styles from the drop-down list box at the upper-left of the Edit Style dialog box.

3. Click the style that you want from the scrolling list at the left of the dialog box. The preview window is automatically updated with the new style. To use the new style as it is, click OK. You can also use the options on the Edit Style dialog box to choose a favorite background picture, button frame, or background music track for your style. And, in turn, if you want to use it for future MyDVD projects, you can click the Save As Custom Style button to create a new style under the name you provide. (For instance, I create new styles with my own background pictures and save them for later.) To pick a photo (or a video clip) of your own as a background, click the Choose button next to the Select Custom Video or Still Background dropdown list box in the Edit Style dialog box