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Mastering DVDs

Homemade DVDs don't have to look homemade. Here's how to create slick discs that hold more than video and that work in any player.

Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.

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Step 1: Pull Together Your Materials

Click here for full-size image.To import photos and video into Premiere Elements, click the Add Media button at the top left of the taskbar; the program then sends those files to the Media window on the left side of the screen. You will want to import your photos at the same time that you import your video--which is before you start editing.

Premiere Elements' multipurpose Timeline window is a typical video-editing environment, though you can drop photos and other media files here, too. You can always access the Timeline via the Edit button (with the razor-blade icon) in the center-right portion of the taskbar.

For our season highlights DVD, we wanted to include video, still photos, and PDFs of our soccer team's roster and its league certificate. Premiere Elements permits importation of all major video, audio, and graphics file formats; but you might want to save space on the DVD by first converting very large graphics files, such as TIFFs, into a more compact form, such as JPEG files. If you want to include file types that Premiere Elements doesn't support, such as Word documents or PDFs, either you have to convert them to a format that Premiere supports or you have to use a second program to put them onto the disc after you've done most of your authoring. (In a folder on your hard drive, collect all the materials you won't be including in the Premiere Elements project; you'll come back to them later.)

A popular way to share photos is by putting together an animated slide show--an easy trick with Premiere Elements' Timeline. To create a slide show, use the Add Media button to queue your still photos in the Media window. Select the pictures that you want to include by clicking each one with the mouse while holding down the Shift key. The next step is to click Project, Create Slideshow. This will open a dialog box where you can specify the length of time each photo should appear on screen (the default value is 150 frames per slide, which keeps each slide on screen for 5 seconds if your video runs at 30 frames per second). You can choose the kinds of transitions you want, too. If you have a copy of Adobe's Photoshop Elements on hand, you can use the Send To command in its Organizer section to export a file or set of files directly to Premiere Elements' Timeline window.

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