Ulead has often been quick to respond to market demand and DVD Movie Factory is no exception. With the release of DVD burners and sub-$1,500 cameras, everyone with FireWire is suddenly a potential Spielberg. Though editing is relatively straightforward, the realm of DVD encoding and authoring is almost a black art.

When professional titles are made, the film is usually passed to a specialist team, including a compressionist who encodes the film. As DVDs are encoded with MPEG2, this often calls for a high level of expertise to reduce compression artefacts. The film is then passed onto an author who constructs the overall feel and interaction of the title before it is multiplexed in a format that can be read by set top player.

This is a daunting process, which is where DVD Movie Factory comes in. Designed with ease of use in mind, it is comprised of three components: Video Toolbox to capture, trim and convert clips; DVD Movie Factory to author and multiplex the project and Photo Express to create labels and covers.

Video Toolbox is used to capture and trim video clips and uses a wizard-style interface to guide the user through the capture and encoding process. Unfortunately, it only recognises devices that conform to OHCI drivers, forcing us to use RexVideo to capture footage to our Rex-RT Pro system. The program uses a storyboard metaphor and selected clips are trimmed by marking in and out points. Trimmed clips may be merged and converted to a single MPEG movie, however, this is not a cut down of Media Studio Pro or Premiere. Users are forced to use straight cuts as there are no provisions for transitions or titling. There are also no facilities to split footage in a clip, which requires users to import multiple instances.

This is not entirely bad as it forces users to think carefully about how the film is shot and edited. This also prevents users from falling into the trap of using every possible effect, and making the footage look like a used car commercial.

Unfortunately, the windows are optimised for 800 x 600, and at higher resolutions clips appear at postage stamp size. The program also has problems with complex fast-moving scenes, responding with stuttered playback. Video Toolbox offers a reasonable choice of encoding options including WMF streaming and AVI. MPEG1 and 2 files use the Ligos LSX engine, which produces reasonable results, however, the settings require tweaking for the best performance. The engine is slow, encoding at 7x speed and does not handle complex scenes well, causing strobing of complex elements. The only workaround was to opt for I-frame compression that dramatically increases the file size. The resulting footage is acceptable for domestic use where most artefacts are not noticeable on standard composite TV.

Exporting the clips to a DVD project launches the DVD Movie Factory component, which is able to work as a plug-in for Uleads Video Studio and Media Studio Pro. A wizard leads users to build scene lists and setup menus. Like its competitors, SpruceUp! and DVDIt!, users are limited to pre-authored templates, however, all the screen elements (buttons, menus and so on) are locked. The backgrounds are replaceable, and with 35 templates, users should be able to find one that suits their needs. The project is then simulated for testing and burning. The NTI burning program supports DVD-RW and DVD+RW without any problems.

All in all, DVD Movie Factory is an excellent starter package with a huge host of other features. If you can install the program, you can author a DVD in next to no time; I authored a title without even looking at the manual. If you have a capture card and no NLE, then there is no competition. All you need is a DVD burner. The program is let down a bit by the quality of the encoder, but it still produces vision better than VHS. This is the first program that integrates capture, editing, authoring and burning in one package under $200. Just dont try and author Moulin Rouge with it!