Menu Creation:  

With DVD-Lab you can create menu based movies, a single chapter movie with no menus, and slideshows. You can also include your slideshows as chapters in your movie.

With a menu you can add, edit and move chapters. They also feature an automatic chaptering function that depending on the sensitivity you set the software will detect changes in scenes, lighting and camera angle.

Menu construction for DVD-Lab is interesting and different. Instead of the software automatically including all links in predesigned templates you can create your own linking structure on the "Connections" screen. This feature provides you a considerable amount of control, but at the same time creates a larger margin of error for the structure of the DVD.

DVD-Lab also includes an assortment of created backgrounds and buttons you can use as templates. Or you can import your own background images and pictures. However, unlike our top products you cannot save your created templates.

Additionally, you can set motion menus or thumbnail images just by dragging the video or your selected clip into the menu screen.

Although DVD-Lab does support background music for your menus it is limited in the music files it accepts. It supports Dolby Digital, AIFF, WAV and a few other unusual formats. DVD-Lab will not support MP3, AAC or WMA file types.

Features:  

Although we found that DVD-Lab menu creation options to be very strong, it doesn’t offer much with regard to additional features. However, it is one of the few DVD authoring programs we reviewed that included true drag and drop functionality. Just about everything can be dragged from one section of the software to another.

In order for your DVD video to come out as recorded you go through the Demuxing process. This feature separates the imported video and audio for better synch in the finished copy. It is highly suggested you do this; however, the Demuxing process is very slow. For us it took more than a half hour to Demux a 10 minute video clip.

You can find some additional features like automatic chaptering, scene selection menus and menu transitions using the “Wizard” button in the tool bar, but we noticed that the “wizard” isn’t really a traditional wizard that will walk you through a process step-by-step.

One feature we are disappointed to be missing is a video playback for your final DVD copy. Although you can watch your imported scenes the software can’t show you how your DVD would function or be displayed if it were in a traditional DVD player. Although this isn’t the only DVD Authoring software we reviewed missing this feature, we feel DVD-Lab complex Connections process makes the inclusion of a real-time playback display more important.

DVD-Lab does not include any direct import features. All video on your camcorder needs to previously be loaded on to your hard drive and then imported into the DVD-Lab software. However, the manufacturers see the exclusion of this feature as a plus.

Ease of Use:  

Much like our #2 program, DVD Architect Studio, DVD-Lab is a very powerful and intricate DVD authoring program. However, this is directly what contributes to its overall difficulty.

Everything in the DVD-Lab interface is clearly labeled, but it uses some technical jargon that most users would find unfamiliar, like import assets, frame index, Auto-Deinterlace and more. DVD-Lab would greatly benefit from built-in tutorials.

Additionally, the almost required Demuxing process takes a very long time and takes away from DVD-Lab ease.

Quality of Copy:  

The quality of DVDs we created using DVD-Lab was inconsistent. The first copy we made was very choppy during playback. The DVD frequently froze, skipped and missed audio. However, this was the copy where we opted to skip the Demux process.

On future copies where we chose to Demux the video and audio the DVD played just fine; however, we found that you could not skip to the next chapter. We're pretty sure this was collateral damage in the construction process.

Ease of Installation/ Stability:  

We didn’t have any difficulties installing DVD-Lab DVD Author. Additionally, this is one of the few programs we reviewed that didn’t crash on us at all.

We did find that when we finished burning a DVD a bitrate error would display, but those DVDs played just fine.

We were disappointed to find that DVD-Lab standard is not compatible with Windows Vista.

Help/Support:  

DVD-Lab doesn’t exactly include a built-in help manual. Their help files are located online, but if you are connected to the internet you can reach them directly from the software. The online help also includes a quick tutorial that is pretty easy to follow.

They also include fairly active user forums and email support.

Although DVD-Lab includes a link to a knowledge base the website URL was blocked indicating that it has been used to host malware. For the sake of research we ignored this warning (you probably wouldn’t) and found that there really isn’t a knowledge base at all and every time we tried to search said knowledge base we are redirected back to the warning screen.

Overall, DVD-Lab is an advanced DVD authoring program that gives users an immense amount of design control; however, it’s ease of use and output inconsistencies are what kept it out of one of our top spots.

For a similar DVD Authoring program with better output, instructions and just as much versatility see Sony DVD Architect Studio.