Vista Review

So the other day I needed to create a DVD on my new Windows Vista installed Toshiba laptop. I had taken some video with my awesome new Panasonic Lumix FZ7 digital camera, and I wanted to publish it to a DVD to watch on my television. My Lumix FZ7 camera takes great video, but it’s in the Quicktime (.mov) format. I know how I would have gotten this done on my old Windows XP system – now I need to figure out how (and if) I can get it done in Windows Vista.

I noticed on my shiny new start menu that my new Toshiba Laptop came with something called “Toshiba DVD Authoring” and I thought I’d check that out. I know Windows XP used to come with Windows Movie Maker, I wanted not just to edit a movie, but to publish it to a DVD. The included Toshiba DVD Authoring software that came with the laptop turned out to be Ulead Video Studio with a little “creation wizard”. I fired that up and was able to import the quicktime .mov files just fine. I chose a custom menu, added some text – point, click, burn, and 20 odd minutes later I had a DVD. I popped it in my home DVD player and the menu and videos were great, but the audio was completely static and white noise for everything. It turns out that Ulead could import the quicktime video files from the Panasonic FZ7 digital camera just fine, but couldn’t decode the audio tracks at all.

Then I remembered when I popped in the blank DVD just before I burned it in Ulead Video Studio, I got one of those “what do you want to do” Windows prompts…only this time there was an option I hadn’t seen before called “Windows DVD Maker”. Ok – cool, Windows Vista has a new tool to create and author DVD’s with – but will it work? Here’s what I found…

Problem #1 with Windows DVD Maker in Windows Vista

You can only import Windows Media (wmv, asf), MPEG, or AVI video files. I guess I should have figured this, but don’t plan on sucking in any quicktime .mov, DivX, xVid, or other non-supported types of file formats into Windows DVD Maker. If your video files aren’t already in one of these formats, you’ll have to convert them (like I did) using software….I usually use IMToo. If you prefer a hand-holding easy to follow picture based tutorial, read here about how to convert your DivX, xVid, and WMV file to DVD using Windows DVD Maker in Windows Vista at DVD-Guides.com.

Problem #2 with Windows DVD Maker in Windows Vista

You can’t edit anything. You can drag in video files, picture files, or mp3 files for background music – but that’s it. You can change some fonts and colors for the menus and nothing more. I was more than a little pissed off that I couldn’t even add title text to the imported video clips, or add any fade-in or fade-out transitions. If you just drag in video clips and choose a menu and burn the dvd, the end result will be a really choppy dvd that jumps directly from one clip to the next.

Problem #3 with Windows DVD Maker in Windows Vista

If you want your video files edited (in advance) to import into Windows DVD Maker, your only choice (using software that comes with Vista) is Windows Movie Maker. You have to add all of your transitions and title text there, and then export that movie, and then exit Windows Movie Maker. Then, you fire up Windows DVD Maker, import the movie you just created, choose your menu, and burn – but you’re going to have to wait to Windows DVD Maker to “render” your DVD. What this means is – you’re export of the edited movie in Windows Movie Maker could take 30 minutes+, and then your “rendering” of the movie before burn in Windows DVD Maker could take 30 minutes+, possibly doubling the time it takes to get the finished playable DVD burned and ready for your home entertainment dvd player, and that’s only if you “render your movie in DVD quality”. If you choose to render your movie in any of the new Hi-def HD high definition options, like 1080i, 1080p, or 780p, you could be waiting 3+ hours for that movie to export. Windows DVD Maker could have been a killer , but it’s pretty apparent that they didn’t have the time to integrate Movie Maker and DVD Maker before Vista launched. This makes Apple and OS X look pretty good, and Microsoft look pretty stupid.

<h2>Problem #4 with Windows DVD Maker in Windows Vista</h2>
It seems only to be for making and authoring DVD’s to play as video or a video-slideshow. I didn’t find a single option for creating a DVD data disc, not even for archival or backup (a big mistake in my opinion). If you read this article about 30 days with Windows Vista over at Free Republic, the have this to say:

My DVD burner technically worked in 32-bit Vista, but Vista uses a new file system on burned CDs and DVD which prevents them from being used in even Windows XP computers. There’s a mode that is supposed to make these discs compatible, but it didn’t work for us.

I haven’t tested this yet, but if I can’t make a data DVD and be able to open it up on all my XP and Linux boxes to use – I am going to be really, really pissed off!!

Problem #5 with Windows DVD Maker in Windows Vista

Last night I wanted to create a new dvd picture slideshow. I added 250 jpg pictures from our digital camera, choose a nice animated dvd menu, chose the “slideshow” option, and added 3 mp3 files for background music. The dvd failed to preview or burn. I removed the mp3 files and preview worked just fine. I added just one mp3 for background music and it failed to preview or burn again. I began to play around with different mp3 files to see what would and wouldn’t work and found that some mp3 files worked fine, and some wouldn’t work at all. They were all good mp3 file that played without problems in Windows Media Player. Was Windows Vista trying to not allow me to use certain files it thought I had no license for? I don’t know, but I can tell you that while figuring out which mp3 files would and wouldn’t work – I did get the Windows DVD Maker to just outright crash and close (without any error at all) several times. So much for bulletproof stable Vista software.

Some people would have you believe that every little issue you have is because of Vista’s evil new DRM, but others like some of the posters to this topic over at Vista Forums believe that DRM in Vista is not a problem at all.

What I actually did like about Windows DVD Maker

• If you don’t have to edit your video clips – it’s fast and easy to use
• The included (animated) library of menus to use for your dvd are killer, much better than what Ulead had
• It seemed to render my DVD pretty quick
• You can create a DVD slideshow with pictures and background music pretty fast as well

What Other People are Saying about Windows DVD Maker in Windows Vista

• Christopher Null at Yahoo! Tech Windows DVD Maker is pretty useless
• Erik has problems trying to import mpg files into Windows DVD Maker…
• Geo and Lon are both trying to figure out how to create multiple slideshows on the same dvd using Windows DVD Maker…
• “New to Vista” is wants to Make a Copy of a DVD using Windows DVD Maker in Vista…
• And Bob has Problems with Vista DVD Maker Burning and Playback on set top TV boxes…
• If you like your kool-aid straight from the source, you can read the official Microsoft Windows Vista Blog

There’s a lot of discussion about Digital Rights Managment or DRM in windows Vista.? I just came accross this article over at ZDNet that discusses whether or not it’s limiting? (drm).? So the author has been running Vista for over a week, and reports that he’s able to view and play both DRM’d and non-DRM’d content in both mp3 files and DVD’s.? He also talks about the the discussion of DRM being used for gaming and it slowing down video playback performance – but no games really seem to be doing this.? The only DRM they seem to use is for copy-proof CD’s and DVD’s.

The thing I find surprising is that he doesn’t mention anything about the apparent driver “lockdown” of the CD/DVD drive in Vista.? I too have been testing Windows Vista on a new laptop and I had a DVD of my own video footage.? I wanted to “rip” that to the hard drive for editing.? I installed 3 different programs (that I used to use to rip video in XP) and each one generated an error saying that it “didn’t have access to the drive” (my internal DVD burner drive).

So sure – I can play non-DRM’d content all I want, but only certain software programs (approved by Microsoft) are able to “access” the optical drives for ripping content.? Now – that’s DRM at the hardware and driver level isn’t it?