Subtitles of the Movie

I feel I've known you for a while now and I think I'm getting to understand you. I reckon that like me, you like to learn something new every day but ironically, I'm not keen on change. Well, today I learned a new word; frangible. F-r-a-n-g-i-b-l-e. It means to shatter into fragments if squashed, a bit like a biscuit or a cheese cracker that splinters into lots of pieces when squashed. Fresh bread isn't frangible in that it just springs back into its original position. So what am I telling you this for? Well, apart from it's a new word to use, it's how some users feel about how Premiere Pro has progressed in terms of its DVD authoring component. As you know, previously, before CS3, Premiere Pro contained a simple but effective DVD authoring component. As we've just seen though, in an attempt to squash as many features into Premiere Pro CS4, then some original features of the program, i.e., DVD authoring, well, they splintered away into a separate program. So under pressure, Premiere Pro has become frangible. There, I've squeezed the word in almost naturally. Some like the idea Encore is separate. Some hate it so if you're a hater, here is a familiar-ish option. It involves spending a little money but it does a simple DVD authoring job without having to learn complex programs. I know you don't mind learning but you might be in the don't-like-change camp and yearn for the DVD authoring simplicity of pre-CS3 Premiere Pro. So here's the option; Premiere. No, not Premiere Pro but Premiere Elements. This is a cost Ðeffective option to running parallel with Premiere Pro for when you want to quickly and efficiently do a corporate film for example. It contains easy fade for video and audio so it obviates the need for manual keyframing. It allows import of VOB files, a thing Premiere Pro users have requested for a long time and additionally, it also contains the focus of this tutorial, easy menu making and DVD authoring. Now, I'm using a fairly old-ish version of Elements here so if you get the latest version, it will visually look slightly different. OK, my timeline has some clips on it so let's create a menu and DVD. First we want some DVD markers to allow us to have a DVD menu with these three clips individually named. I'll just click this Add Menu Marker Button and name our first clip. I'll call it One. I'll skip to the next clip and add new marker again. I'll call this Two; good a name as any. Then skip to the third clip and add again and call it, can you guess? Three. Now if I don't want this first frame of the clip to be the thumbnail that shows up in my menu for this clip, I just click and drag this small time code to the right to get a more suitable frame. OK, I can click this button to take me back to previous markers for further adjustment if required. Right, that's menu markers set up. Let's click this Create Menus Button up here to browse the Presets. Like Encore, we can browse the templates by category by clicking this drop-down. I'll choose this one. It's as good as any. If I double click it to open it, I get a preview of what it looks like. I'll close it. It's suitable. Now I just grab and drag the template over this area to start the process of tailoring the preset to my requirements. I'll call it Lymm Damsels by clicking this movie title here. It throws this up to allow me to adapt the name appropriate to my film. And OK it. Now this is the main menu you'll see when you load your completed DVD into your player and you would click this Play Movie Button to run it from the start. But if you want to select a scene, any of the three we set up, we click Scenes here below it. Even though we've set our scenes already, let's have a look at the Scenes Menu to check it's OK. I'll click this to open it. Now up here, notice our three scenes with their numbers; one, two, three and they show here. And when we click a scene thumbnail, we can edit it over here; the name, type, size, color, et cetera, all editable. I'll click Done once it's all suitably sorted. Then Apply. Final part; nearly there. Go up here to this green Share Tab and choose the format required. DVD at the top here, then YouTube format and further options for PC and mobile phones. Excellent. So that's all there is to it. You can choose to burn to different DVD formats, name the disk here, how many copies you want. I've not switched my DVD burner on at the moment, hence the yellow triangle warning message. So that's a very quick and inexpensive way of creating a DVD with your film. And if you create a film originally in Premiere Elements, you can open it in Premiere Pro for further tweaking. Encore, as the French say.