Ulead has been supporting the DVD authoring market for a couple of years, with strong products such as MovieFactory proving popular among new users. However, Ulead’s professional level DVD Workshop 1 and 1.3 have been unable to reach the same level of success in a market dominated by products such as DVD Architect and Adobe Encore DVD.

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DVD Workshop 2 packs some powerful features such as output to DLT, the ability to write multiple DVD discs and support for Macrovision and DVD-9 dual layer discs. These new features place DVD Workshop 2 well and truly within the professional market. However, when you need to simply create a quick ‘work in progress’ DVD for a client, regardless of your expertise you will appreciate the click-and-create features of DVD Workshop.

The wizard-style creation process, which is common across other Ulead products such as MovieFactory 3 and VideoStudio 7, remains from version one, with menu controls and media libraries changing to reflect each stage of the DVD creation. Although this ‘step by step’ procedure may initially frustrate users who want to take control of the whole DVD authoring process, it quickly becomes apparent that you can go into the program and alter most of the settings and options at any time.

It seems a ridiculous statement, but experienced users should not be daunted by the ease of use of DVD Workshop 2; below the surface is a powerfully effective tool for anyone wanting to create specialist titles or even commercial release DVDs. Hopefully, DVD Workshop 2 will enjoy more success among serious users once they realise that a high-end DVD authoring program need not have a steep learning curve and boring interface.