Memories on The Big Screen

Nowadays, everyone has memorable moments stored in video files. What happens if we want to share them with our friends? What if they ask for a DVD disc? Well, you can always burn them directly to a disc and hope that they will play them on their computer or on a DVD player that supports the format of the video files. It’s very hard to imagine, in the second case, that they will be able to play them given the various video formats available today. SuperDVD Video Editor allows you to capture videos from a webcam or DV camera, edit them, create DVD menus and burn the final content.

This kind of software is usually expensive, thus people will tend to call in the pros, without taking in account that they may as well be able to create DVDs from scratch. No doubt, this job requires some video editing knowledge; however it’s not rocket science. Being a novice user, you will start going up the slow (at the beginning) curve of handling your video files in order to create the final product. I assure you that viewing a self-made collage of video clips and sound is a wonderful feeling.

MasterSoft Inc’s SuperDVD Video Editor will provide users with a free complete suite that integrates the tools necessary to get your videos up and running on any available DVD player. It will help you record your favorite video files from your DV camera, your favorite TV shows from the TV tuner and even from your web camera. The application will also provide users with story line creation and customization, video effects, DVD authoring and burning capabilities.

At the first start, the software will automatically open the developer’s website - annoying thing, if you ask me, still not commendable due to the free nature of the program. The main window of SuperDVD Video Editor will allow users to choose from components like Capture, Editor, Effect, Author, Burner and Options. It has a sleek colorful design with useful expressive items. The problem seems to be the Help button which will take you to a broken link on the Internet (for now), given the fact that the software does not come with any other off-line documentation.

The Capture component of the application looks pretty neat and offers users the opportunity of recording from their cameras or TV tuners. The recorded clips will be shown in the lower part of the window and they are easily manageable through the command buttons placed above. Users will be able to access options such as DV Formatted AVI, MPEG2 VOB or DVD disc video format. Frames can quickly be extracted from the recordings and a thermometer-like bar will inform users of theoretical DVD disk usage.

So you now have the raw material to work within the Editor section. This component offers a number of special functions. For example, you can trim unwanted segments from both video and audio files, rearrange clips order, increase or decrease their speed or add numerous transition effects between your videos. Users will also be able to preview their files, switch from timeline to story board or view information regarding the Video, Audio or Voice Group. The selection of built-in transitions are quiet nice and they will surely help you with your collage flow.

You will be given the opportunity to add both images (BMP format only) and text to your video stream and apply Fade In / Out or Dissolve In / Out effects as well as set the Start / Stop Time within the Effect component of SuperDVD Video Editor. You can also choose to save the applied effects directly to a new VOB file. The Authoring section will allow users to completely customize the looks of their DVD menu with video, audio and pictures and select from functions referring to actions to be taken after the Root Menu or the DVD have reached the end.

The Burner feature of the application is the place where the project turns into the final product. First, the authoring process will take place, preparing the content for the burning operation. You will not find any information whatsoever regarding elapsed, estimated or remaining time in this window and that is a drawback. During the execution, SuperDVD Video Editor will go easy on the processing unit of your computer (35% load on a quad-core CPU) and the usage of system memory will fluctuate from fifty to one hundred megabytes of RAM. The speed will suffer from fairly poor resource management; however it will not have any impact on the quality of the processed video and audio streams.

Let’s not forget about the Options window! It will allow users to select the Image Ratio between 16:9 for widescreen displays and the classic 4:3 for standard TV sets, as well as he NTSC / PAL image standard. Furthermore, you will be able to choose the Working Folder, Output Format, Image background or highlight, Enable Capture Limit or DVD Menu Safe Distance for avoiding incomplete menu buttons.

The Bad

The Truth