Despite the fact it's aimed at professional users - corporate and event videographers and advanced home-video enthusiasts are the target market - Ulead DVD Workshop 2 retains many of the ease-of-use features for which the company has become known.
This release offers a lot of the pro authoring features that were lacking in the first version, including automatic scene detection, multiple audio and subtitle tracks, motion menus and buttons, playlist control, copy protection, region encoding and output to the professional mastering DLT tape format.

Version 2 also supports the import of Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, which is encoded to Dolby digital stereo on output, with surround-sound emulation if needed. Previously, this required the more expensive AC-3 version of DVD Workshop or the AC-3 Power Pack.

DVD Workshop uses a tabbed workspace to organise DVD production tasks, providing only the tools and features required at each stage of the process. The Capture tab offers automatic scene-detection options based on either time code or frame content, and scenes can later be automatically converted to chapter points.

At the heart of the application are the Edit and Menu tabs. The workspace layout differs little between the two, with the centrally located preview window flanked by an Options panel and library on the left, chapter list on the right and storyboard at the bottom.
The Edit tab is primarily for importing and arranging content, including video clips and stills, setting in and out points, and automatic and manual creation of chapters. It's also where the options for adding additional audio and subtitle tracks are located, on tabs in the Options panel.

Up to eight additional audio tracks may be added - that limit is defined by the DVD format, not DVD Workshop. Overall volume level can be set, and the audio clip may be configured to fade in and out at the beginning and end of the clip. You can also assign audio tracks to DVD language menus.

Up to 32 subtitle tracks may be added, and a Titling Editor provides a fairly good selection of text-editing tools. Positioning text is a little awkward, as you can't drag it around the preview screen and you have to use position buttons to locate it at a preset position or enter x and y values. Subtitle files, with appropriately formatted timecode and style information, may be imported as TXT files, and for multi-language projects it proves a more efficient method.

Retaining the same interface for DVD menu creation keeps things simple, and the provision of templates as well as a Menu Wizard makes it easier still while providing the tools to build from the ground up.

The wizard merely requires you to select clips and choose a menu style and backing audio track; it then automatically creates all of the required menus, chapter submenus and navigation buttons.

As with clip editing, all the controls are provided in the Options panel, which is divided into three tabs for editing menu, button and text properties. Advanced menu controls include menu duration, and you can set a loop point and loop count. Using these three parameters, it's possible to extend motion menu behaviour beyond a simple infinite loop; for example, playing an intro segment once only, then looping a specific number of times from a point partway through the clip before playing the first menu item or moving to another menu. This kind of control is particularly useful for interactive kiosk presentations where, for example, you may want to return to a main menu after a certain period of time if no menu selection has been made.

Oddly, changing the thumbnail image of clip buttons isn't as straightforward an operation as it should be. The only way we could manage this was to go back to the Edit tab and right click the thumbnail in the chapter list to change it. Even then, we had to replace the button on the menu, as it wasn't automatically updated.

At least the button options are quite flexible. The Button panel has five sub-options, four of which control a button's appearance and one - Playlist - its behaviour when selected. Playlist provides versatile control over button behaviour, allowing you to play subsequent clips or return to alternative menus once a clip has finished playing, as well as the usual option of returning to the menu from which it was selected.

The Finish tab provides good preview facilities. There's no option for disabling motion menus, but they render in a few seconds, although playback isn't very smooth. Three buttons provide output channels to folders on your hard disk, recordable DVD or DLT, the latter providing CSS copy protection, region coding and dual-layer DVD-9 options.
Ulead's MPEG.Now encoder provides three DVD-quality presets as well as VCD and SVCD options. The DVD templates are of a high-quality 8Mb/s constant bit rate and two - presumably single-pass - variable bit rate options. You can edit the templates and change the resolution, bit rate and audio encoding settings, but the tweaking of MPEG settings clearly isn't a priority and most users are likely to stick with the best-quality setting.

Ulead has made a terrific piece of high-end software. The price is steep, though, and, while Adobe's Encore (February 2004, cover CD) may be $440 dearer, the extra features and professional touches make it the one to buy.