Home Movie Making Tutorials for Beginners
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Most people after creating a home movie like to share it with friends, family, and often the whole world - via YouTube. In these days of hi-tech, sharing can be done in various ways. You can send your movie to cell phones, upload them to YouTube or iPod, or just make DVD copies and distribute. Although DVD's came to the market just a few years ago, to me it already seems like lo-tech! But let that go. In this section I shall discuss how to make DVD copies (techies call it DVD burning) of your videos or home movies by using Corel VideoStudio Pro X2. Let me tell you right now, Corel can make DVD's that look like commercially made DVD's. I was so excited when I made my first DVD using Corel. When you first open Corel, the screen looks like Screenshot #1.
 Corel VideoStudio opening screen Screenshot #1 As you already know, Corel VideoStudio has three components: VideoStudio Editor, Movie Wizard, and DV-to-DVD Wizard. You can start with any of these to burn DVD's. You will eventually come to the same screen for DVD burning. Just make sure you check the box in front of 16:9 ratio before you begin. Since it is always a good idea to dress up your videos before sharing or burning into DVD's (I always do, and so should you), I always start with VideoStudio Editor to edit my video first. We have already covered a lot of editing in the preceding sections. So let us assume, that our videos or home movies now look excellent for saving in a DVD. Please make sure that you have saved your finished movie as a .VSP file first. I have already discussed this in details in Tutorial 3. I would like to sidetrack a little here, before going into actual DVD burning process. DVD's can hold an enormous amount of data - much larger than CD's. They come in various capacities too. I think one common size is 4.70GB, and that is what I use. Now my home movies that I upload to YouTube are MUCH SMALLER (YouTube allows 2GB maximum, any way). So I put anything from about 10 to 13 movies in one DVD. I make DVD's not for sharing usually, but for another reason. Video files are generally large, especially MPEG files. They take up a lot of hard drive space. So after I create about 10-12 videos and upload them to YouTube, I make a DVD copy of those videos for myself and then delete them from my computer to save hard drive space. I think most people who make videos regularly, do the same. You should do that too.
You can make DVD's from raw (unedited) footage (i.e., video clips) straight from your camcorder, or from project files (.VSP files), or from video files (like .MPEG, .WMV, .FLV etc.) Whatever you do, I recommend, before burning, you add a title page with background music (this is different from your movie's background music) and create a menu (like commercial DVD's) provided, of course, you have more than just one item (one movie) in your DVD. Now let's straight go to DVD burning. I shall illustrate this process while I actually make a DVD with my latest YouTube movies. Open your Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 editor and click on the Share tab on top. You will come to the next screen. Since you have nothing on Timeline, you will see most of your options in the Edit area are dimmed out except Create Disc, DV Recording, and Share Video Online (YouTube). Click on Create Disc. A little menu will be displayed as shown below (Screenshot #2). Click DVD on that menu.
 Create Disc menu Screenshot #2 This will bring you to the next screen (Screenshot #3) that will let you add media of various kinds (to burn into DVD). On the top left of this screen you will see 4 different icons representing different media. These are pretty much self-explanatory, but if you do not understand which icon is for what, just hover your mouse over each icon and it will tell you it represents what.
 Add Media screen Screenshot #3 I am making a DVD of my last 10 completed movies (i.e., 10 video files). So I clicked on the first icon (add video files). Remember raw videos are also video files, but project files are different. You have to click on the second icon if you are using VSP files - common sense, isn't it? Each time you click on add media icons, your computer's folders and files will open up. You navigate through them to choose the file you want to add, click on it to highlight it, and then click Open. That file will be added in the Storyboard and the first frame of that video (if it is a video) will be displayed on the Preview window as shown in Screenshot #3. Since I am using finished movies, the title of each movie is also being displayed in the Storyboard. This will be very helpful in creating a commercial-looking menu. That is why I finish my movies first before burning them into DVD's.
Okay, today I am going to burn a DVD containing the following movies:
So I added the above 10 movies to the Storyboard of Corel VideoStudio Editor using the Add Media screen (Screenshot #3). Notice a few things here. First, as you add video clips or completed movies to the Storyboard, the white bar on the bottom of the screen fills up with green showing you the current file size and duration (playing time of the DVD). This bar will also tell you if you are adding more files than your DVD disc can hold. Additional files will be marked as RED. In that case, you should delete some of the files (common sense)! Second, in this same screen (Screenshot #3), I have checked the box in front of Create menu (this is actually default), because I would like a menu to be created in my DVD. If you don't want a menu, just uncheck that box. Third, just above Create menu box there is an option for Adding/Editing Chapters. Chapters are like bookmarks. You can mark the beginning points of different scenes of your movie as chapters so that while viewing the DVD, you can jump to a particular chapter right away without viewing the preceding scenes (just like commercially available DVD's). Now chapters can be added automatically or manually. If you click on Add/Edit Chapters, the next screen will let you do that either way. To manually add chapters, you play the video on the Preview screen, stop where you want to begin a chapter, then click on Add Chapter (see Screenshot #4). You have to play with it a little bit to figure it out completely, but it is not difficult at all. I do not use it because while creating menu the software automatically marks the beginning of each of my movies as a chapter and that is exactly what I want. For the sake of illustration, I have put just one of my movies Fashion Modeling on the Storyboard and clicked on Add/Edit Chapters. Then I marked a few chapters while previewing the movie. Chapters show up as red marks just under the Preview area - on the blue line over which the jog slider moves. (See Screenshot #4). Also note on the left of the Preview area the different options that are available to you. Play with them to master them. I assure you they don't bite! When you are happy with adding/editing chapters, click OK on the bottom of the screen. You will return to Add Media screen (Screenshot #3).
 Add/Edit Chapter screen Screenshot #4 Lastly, in the Add Media screen (Screenshot #3), put a checkmark in the box in front of "Use first clip as introductory video" if you want to do that. Now click on Next.
It is time to choose a menu template and create a title for your DVD. It is time to be creative and artistic! In my case, for the DVD I am actually making, the next screen looks as follows after I chose a menu template from left, AND created my title and positioned it where I want it. For the text of the title the font face, font color, font size, title position, title angle etc. everything is customizable - just like creating the title for your video. So I won't repeat the details here. By now you know it, I hope. (Hint: Double-click on "My Title" to edit or customize the title.)
 DVD Title screen Screenshot #5 Notice the menu of my DVD has already been created just like commercial DVD's. You can choose to show highlight buttons in this screen by putting a checkmark in the box in front of "Show highlight button" on the bottom. The above screenshot shows I have chosen it. Now it is time to preview your DVD. You should always preview your DVD before burning it. In case something is not right, hit the Back button on the bottom of the screen to go back to the previous screen to rectify the defect. In the above screenshot, you cannot see the Back or Next button because I have truncated that screen to make it small for the Web. To preview your DVD, click on the "virtual" Remote Control. The next screen should look like this:
 DVD Preview screen Screenshot #6 Did you notice I used the word "virtual" Remote Control? I used it because it is actually a "virtual" Remote Control. Just click on its Play button as you would in a real Remote Control. Your DVD should start playing. You can use all the buttons of this Remote to go Back, Forward, Up, Down, Pause etc. Make sure everything is showing or working as you planned. If not, go back and corrcet it. Especially check the menu, if you have created one. My menu is 4 page long (3 movies listed on the first 3 pages and 1 movie on the last page, totalling 10 movies on the disc). I am particularly fussy about menu, because I actually use it. So I want my menu to be perfect! Assuming everything is perfect, click on the Next button. You will come to a screen that looks like the following screenshot.
 Disc Burner screen Screenshot #7 You are almost done. On this screen, put a name (Label) for this DVD and the number of copies you want to make. Create disc should already be selected. Now before you hit the Burn icon on the bottom of this screen, make sure you have inserted a blank DVD disc in the DVD drive of your computer. Your Disc type should be displayed on the above screen. In my case it is DVD-R. The Drive and Recording format will also be automatically displayed. If you are using a number of video clips to burn into a DVD disc and you know the sound level is different in them (some loud, some not so loud, some very soft, etc.) you should click on the box before "Normalize audio" to make the sound level uniform throughout the DVD. Now hit the Burn icon.
Your DVD burning will begin. Remember it takes quite some time to burn a DVD. It could be anything from one or two hours to several hours. It depends on several things - the speed of the DVD disc you are using, the speed of your computer's processor, and total file size you have put on the Storyboard of the Editor to burn into DVD are the most important factors. Complexity (or simplicity) of the contents of your DVD is also a factor. Anyway, Corel will show you the progress it has made in the form of two progress bars (Total progress and Detailed progress) as shown below (Screenshot #8).
 Progress screen Screenshot #8 When the DVD burning is completed, the following screen will be displayed by Corel (Screenshot #9):
 Operation Complete Screenshot #9 At this point, click on OK. Your DVD disc will be ejected. A few notes here:
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Copyright © 2010 Silabhadra Sen
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