Review by Lisa Shea

I make the occasional YouTube video among other things. I’ve mostly used Adobe Premiere Elements over the years, though I also have used the various built-in Windows apps and other half-versions that came with DVD drives and the like. That said, I’m no expert at video making. I don’t delve into all the settings or do too many tricky things. Usually, I’m looking to just add a soundtrack to a video or to set up some simple menus and chapters to write a DVD. I use this software as a beginner just looking to get something done without a steep learning curve. From that perspective, this stuff was the best. It took me about a half hour to load in a 60 minute video, locate a half dozen chapters, and set up the DVD menus. That was perfect for my purposes. The most challenging thing I had to do was edit a menu template to allow more than the default three chapter buttons on a page.

The one hassle I had with the install was entering the product key. They need to do a better job with their printing of the product key sticker, as mine was hard to read. Took three or four tries with ambiguous letters before I got it to go through. Everything else about the install went very smoothly. It was also relatively easy to get updates and there is a library of additional themes a couple clicks away if you want to download someone else’s DVD menu ideas.

There are definitely some aspects of this software that aren’t quite right. Working with customizing menu pages was a bit clunky, but it seemed like it would go easy enough once one was thoroughly familiar with the way things worked. You certainly could get to what you want, it just might take a little more effort than you feel should be necessary to get there.

The one major reason for five stars is that I recorded a show off the DVR a few weeks ago and wanted to write it to DVD. I used a Hauppauge product to make the capture, and the video played perfectly on my PC. Then, I tried to cut it to an archival DVD and no software that I had access to would keep the audio and video in sync. It drove me crazy that any software I had would play the file just fine, but nothing could write it to a DVD. I ordered this product as a last attempt to complete that project and I’m pleased to say that it worked perfectly. That was enough to get my vote!