Roxio MyDVD and Slideshow

Following its recent purchase by Sonic Solutions, Roxio is looking to cement its already strong position in the media creation market with the release of MyDVD and Slideshow. With a very competitive price, the package is ideal for home users looking to make their own DVD presentations and videos.

Roxio has gone to great lengths to make MyDVD and Slideshow as easy to use as possible. On startup it gives you instant access to options that let you create a new project, perform a quick direct-to-disc transfer, edit a current disc or open a previously saved project.

If you have VHS tapes and just want to get the video onto a DVD, selecting Direct-to-Disc simplifies the whole process. Select one of a range of templates and the package will import video from any source, such as a video recorder, and burn it straight to disc. It takes less than a minute to get things going.

However, the package is capable of much more. Click on the New Project option and you'll be taken into the main interface. Roxio has used large buttons and clear icons to keep things uncluttered, and it doesn't take long to work your way around the various options.

You can add video to a project simply by importing clips already stored on your PC - each file will automatically appear as a new menu option on the DVD title screen. Alternatively, if you hook up your video camera, you can capture footage directly with the appropriate hardware.

It's important to realise that MyDVD and Slideshow isn't a video-editing package. The only form of editing available is the ability to trim individual clips. This is a little restrictive, but at this price you can't expect any advanced video-editing tools, and it does make the whole process very uncomplicated.

Once you've imported your clips, a range of customisable templates lets you spice up the presentation of your DVD menus. You can use moving images as backgrounds, animate buttons, and include audio tracks for each sub-menu to give a truly Hollywood look.

As its name would suggest, MyDVD and Slideshow is also able to create impressive slideshows of your favourite images and burn them to CD or DVD. With a maximum of 1,000 images per slideshow, you can add an audio track to play alongside your photos and even time the slideshow to complete at the same time as the music.

Once you've decided which video to include, chosen the audio and worked out how you want the menus to look, it's time to burn everything to a DVD. Hit the large red Burn button and you'll be taken to the pre-burn menu, where you decide how many copies you want, which optical drive to use and at which speed to write the data. Then it's simply a case of clicking the OK button to start the encoding and burning process.

MyDVD and Slideshow is an OpenDVD-compliant application. This means it allows you to open and edit discs that have already been burned using MyDVD or another OpenDVD-compliant package. You'll be able to add more content, re-edit it and then burn it to be viewed on a standard DVD player.

After using MyDVD and Slideshow for some time, we were extremely impressed with its sheer ease of use. Menus are well laid out and easy to understand and, if you don't want to use the advanced features, it takes next to no time to burn everything to a DVD or CD. Even creating a flashy title menu with moving images and audio was a quick process.

If you want to burn video, audio and images to DVDs and CDs with the minimum of fuss, Roxio MyDVD and Slideshow is worth a look. At this price it's a real bargain.

Contact:
Roxio
www.roxio.co.uk

System requirements:

• Windows 98SE/2000/XP
• 800MHz Pentium III
• 128MB Ram (256MB Ram for video capture)
• 10GB hard disk
• DVD/CD writer

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