Menu Creation:  

With Roxio MyDVD you can create DVDs of your home videos with easy navigation. MyDVD includes more than 70 well designed templates with the software and you can purchase more on Roxio’s website. MyDVD’s template designs are almost as good as DVD MovieFactory. You can also choose to set your own pictures or video as your menu background.

Most of MyDVD’s templates already include a button style, submenu layouts and background music. Although you can change your background music and some buttons you can only change some aspects of a template’s navigation.

If you right-click on a button and go to the settings screen you can change a text button/link to a thumbnail button/link by selecting one of the options. However, choosing a button style takes some trial and error, the settings display doesn’t show what each button looks like. From there you can choose to have an animated or still thumbnail button.

You can also insert images, text and text effects, transitions, overlays, video effects and an opening sequence.

Creating chapters with Roxio MyDVD is easy. Select the video you would like to chapter and choose the edit chapters link in the left navigation. Simply scroll through your video to where you want to chapter and select “add chapter here.” Your chapters will appear in order along the right side of the screen. You can also allow the software to automatically chapter your videos by adjusting scene sensitivity or timed intervals. If you decide to change your chaptering you can easily delete your chapter and that section of video will be reabsorbed into the previous chapter.

Features:  

Roxio MyDVD includes many additional applications and features including video capture, copy and convert for mobile devices, a DVD player, a basic photo editor, a label maker, data disc support, CD ripper and more.

One of the most interesting DVD Authoring features is Roxio’s CineMagic Assistant. The CineMagic Assistant is kind of a cross between a DVD Author and slideshow creator. Add your videos and photos to the program, select your favorite scenes and images, add background music, choose a transition style, and CineMagic will create a video slideshow based on your selections and duration. You can adjust the duration of your production.

MyDVD also includes VideoWave a small video editor where you can cut and split video clips, add audio, text effects, narration, transitions. You can use VideoWave in conjunction with MyDVD and edit your DVDs without leaving the authoring program.

Roxio also includes their popular copy and convert program. Here you can import your home videos, your created Divx videos or saved CineMagic projects and convert them to popular formats compatible with mobile devices like iPod and PSP.

In addition to the fancy additional applications, Roxio MyDVD also has most of the features commonly associated with DVD Authoring software including a built-in previewer, burner and video player. However, we’d like to see MyDVD include a little more drag and drop support.

Ease of Use:  

Once you get the hang of Roxio MyDVD it is really easy to use. Your most frequently use functions are located in the left navigation and a large portion of your screen is dedicated to your menu construction. You can navigate your DVD using the Project View or by simply clicking the links already on your screen.

All of MyDVD’s features can be found along the top tool bar and many are accessible using right-click.

Perhaps the most difficult part about using MyDVD is finding everything the software is capable of. When you initially launch the software from your desk top you are presented with more than a dozen applications and it takes some exploring to figure out what each of them do. Some are related to MyDVD, others are completely separate programs.

Quality of Copy:  

Although MyDVD created a pretty good menu based DVD we expected a little more from a company with Roxio's reputation. After getting to know the rest of the program we were hoping for a phenomenal output. The menu screens looked alright on our standard television screen; however there was a small amount of flicker most notably around letters. Also, the default thumbnail sizes provided by the software made the pictures look squished. You would defiantly have to adjust your thumbnails during the editing process.

Aside from some aesthetics, all navigation buttons worked fine and our imported video looked great.

Ease of Installation/ Stability:  

Installation for Roxio is a double-edge sword. Since MyDVD includes many additional programs you are installing many files and applications requiring more than 1 GB of hard drive space. That is twice as large as any other DVD authoring software we reviewed. It tool our computers more than an hour to install this software. Thankfully, we installed Roxio MyDVD with a disc not a download.

In some cases we had a couple of programs on our system that performed the exact same functions.

In future versions we would like to see Roxio offer users the option to include or exclude this additional software somewhere during the installation process. Even though we like many of the features included with MyDVD that fact that the software is system intensive and takes up so much space works against it.

We also experienced at least one program crash while using MyDVD. However, that is not uncommon in this type of software and almost every DVD authoring program we reviewed crashed at least once.

Help/Support:  

One of our favorite MyDVD help features is the “help with this window” option. When you are struggling with a specific aspect of the MyDVD software you can choose this link in the help section of the tool bar and get help regarding directly relating to the screen or section of the software you are in.

MyDVD also includes a built-in user guide, online tutorial directly accessible through the program, an online knowledge base and user forums. Registered users can contact Roxio customer support though email or telephone. Phone support costs $1.89 a minute.

Roxio MyDVD is a large, comprehensive DVD authoring program that provides the user an enormous amount of control over the look, feel and general design of their menus. In addition to menu construction MyDVD also has dozens of additional multimedia applications. This software is great if you want to do just a little bit more than create menus for your DVDs.

Really the only two reasons keeping MyDVD out of one of our top spots is the slightly lesser quality of our authored DVD and inability to pick and choose which additional application you want installed on your computer.

If you are interested in other DVD authoring software see our top three reviews, DVD MovieFactory, Sony DVD Architect Studio or AVS DVD Authoring.