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Unfortunately, it’s rare that a video clip will begin or end precisely where you want; most clips have extraneous stuff that needs to be trimmed away. Instead of loading your clips in a full-blown video editor like Adobe Premiere which is a much more powerful and ponderous program than you need for this simple task MyDVD gives you the ability to trim the beginning and ending of your clips from within the program. Truly sassy! This great feature even goes one better: It doesn’t actually remove any material from your video clips, so you don’t have to spend any time saving or converting them (which can take minutes, even on the fastest PC). Instead, the MyDVD trim process only marks the beginning and ending points that you choose for a clip, leaving the original digital video file untouched on your hard drive. To trim a clip, follow these steps:

1. Navigate through the menus that you’ve created until you find the menu screen with the video that you need to trim.

2. To begin trimming the clip, double-click it. Three thumbnail frames show you the start of the clip, the frame used as the button image, and the ending of the clip.

3. Click and drag the green slider (which corresponds to the Start Frame) to the desired location where you want the clip to begin. MyDVD automatically updates the Start Frame preview to show you the new starting frame. You can also click the slider that you want to move and press the leftand right-arrow keys to move backward and forward one frame at a time.

4. Click and drag the red End Frame slider to the desired location where the clip should end. You can use the updated End Frame preview image to gauge where you are in the clip.

5. To choose a different frame for the image that will appear on the video button, click the thumbs-up marker and drag it until you see the desired frame in the Button Image preview image. This is a great feature when your video starts with a black screen.

6. When you’re done trimming, click OK to set the markers and return to the menu screen. If you’d rather start over and try again, click Reset and follow these steps anew. Trimming a video clip is different from actually editing the video. But if you happen to have both MyDVD and ArcSoft ShowBiz installed on your PC, you can click the Edit Video button in the top toolbar to edit your video clips.

Time to Preview

Would a Hollywood studio release a movie these days without a trailer? Not very likely . . . and MyDVD allows you to preview your disc before you burn it. I’m all for avoiding the possibility of wasting a recordable DVD because something was wrong with my videos or my menu system. In Preview mode, MyDVD will display your project just as it will appear in a DVD player. You even get a virtual remote control that you can use to test out your menu system. To enter Preview mode at any time, click the Preview button on the bottom of the screen (or press Ctrl+P). Click any button to simulate the press of that button on your DVD player’s remote control. Click the Title button to display the Title menu, and click the Menu button to display the last menu that you used. After you’ve checked each button and function on your menu, click the Stop button on the remote control to exit Preview mode. You can then make any changes that you need to make to your menu, or you can record your project to disc.

Burning Your DVD and Celebrating Afterwards

Here it is the moment that you’ve been waiting for with such anticipation! But before you decide to spend a disc on your project, I should mention that MyDVD can actually create two different types of DVD videos:

-  A standard DVD video: This is a physical DVD-R that can be loaded in a DVD player.

-  A DVD volume: If you select this method of recording a DVD, the files aren’t actually burned to a disc. Instead, MyDVD records them to a separate folder on your hard drive, where you can either record them later or view them with a software DVD player like Sonic’s CinePlayer. (This is a great option if you’re working on a laptop and you’re using an external FireWire or USB 2.0 DVD recorder, but you don’t happen to have the recorder handy. You can save the project as a DVD volume and burn it later when you get back to your home or office.) To burn a DVD video from your project, follow these steps:

1. Load a blank disc into your recorder.

2. Click the Burn button on the remote control pad on the bottom of the MyDVD window (or press Ctrl+D). MyDVD prompts you to save the project.

3. Click Yes, type a filename, and then click Save.

4. If you have more than one recorder on your system, click the Device drop-down list to choose which drive will be used.

5. Click in the Copies text box and type the number of copies that you want to make. I recommend leaving the Write Speed setting at Auto; that way, your DVD recorder can record at a slower speed if the DVD media that you’re using doesn’t support full-speed burning.

6. Click OK and sit back to watch your recorder do the work. To save a DVD volume, follow these steps:

1. Choose Tools -> Make DVD Folder. MyDVD displays the Browse for Folder dialog box.

2. Click the location where the DVD volume folder should be stored.

3. Click OK to begin creating the DVD volume.