Creating DVD Movies with Windows DVD Maker (part 5) - Changing Other DVD Options

2/7/2014 2:36:13 AM

5. Changing Other DVD Options

To fully configure your DVD movie, and appreciate what effect the various DVD menu options will have on the finished product, you'll need to preview the movie and access the other options that are available in this step of the wizard.

5.1. Previewing the Movie

Even if you don't think you'll need to make any changes, you should always preview your DVD before committing it to disc. You do so by clicking the Preview toolbar button, which brings up a Preview Your DVD view with a virtual DVD player, complete with DVD controls such as Menu, Play, Pause, and so on, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. While previewing your DVD movie, you can see how it will behave and look in a real DVD player.

Here, you might discover that the font used for the menu text is ugly, that you made a bad decision about how the menu comes up, or that you might want to change to a different menu style all together. To make any changes, click OK (or the Back button) and get back to work.

NOTE

And yes, you can also go back from the Ready to burn Disc phase to the first step of the DVD Maker wizard. The application will remember the settings you configured regardless of which direction you go in the user interface. That, at least, makes sense.

NOTE

Each "scene" in the DVD menu correlates to a video or photo slide show you imported into the Windows DVD Movie Maker project.

5.2. Changing the Menu Text

To change a variety of options related to the DVD menu text, click the Menu text button. Here, as shown in Figure 10, you can change the font (including color and bold and italic attributes, but not, curiously, the size), the disc title, and the text used for the Play, Scenes, and Notes links. You can also write a block of descriptive Notes text that will appear on a subpage of the main DVD menu.

Figure 10. Here, you can change a variety of menu text options and add an optional block of Notes text.

NOTE

By default, the Notes link and corresponding Notes text will not appear. You have to add the text first. You can add up to 255 characters in the Notes block. The previews on the right side of the window will show you what the optional Notes page will look like, and of course you can also see it in the DVD preview described previously.