Digital Home Thoughts: Ulead's DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus

The QuickDrop


Figure 10: The QuickDrop module, shown here at actual size.

If the giant Launcher doesn’t seem like your thing, just fire up the QuickDrop program. The QuickDrop is a seriously tiny program that sits on your desktop just waiting for your next burning desire (sorry, couldn’t resist). You just drag whatever files you want to burn onto the QuickDrop, and it will automatically guess what type of disc you want to burn. For instance, drag a folder of music on it, and it will format the disc for music. Then you just click the Burn button and the disc is made, all without having to open up a big program and click through that same next-next-next-burn sequence you’ve already done twice that day. As you can tell, if you frequently burn discs for friends or coworkers, the QuickDrop can be not only a time-saver, but a sanity-saver as well.

WinDVD and DVDCopy
Included in the Plus version of MovieFactory 6 are ‘silver’ versions (whatever that means) of InterVideo’s WinDVD 8 and DVDCopy 5. They’re not really part of the MovieFactory package, and must be installed from their own disc, but they are included in this version, so I’ll touch briefly on them.

WinDVD has been one of the leading DVD players for a number of years now. It doesn’t really do anything but play DVDs, but it does do that well. If you can’t stand Windows Media Player or MCE (or whatever else may have come preinstalled on your machine), WinDVD is an excellent alternative.

DVDCopy is an interesting addition here, seeing as Copy Disc is one of the features of MovieFactory, but upon launching DVDCopy, it’s obvious the two programs are in two completely different leagues. Put succinctly, DVDCopy has every feature that I found lacking in the Copy Disc feature. Copying and ripping DVDs was much easier, and I was even able to rip to a Divx .AVI file. Nice.

So, Is It All That?
In all, I’d say Ulead’s MovieFactory 6 Plus stood up well to my expectations. While I found certain parts of the package less intuitive than others, it is a very comprehensive package, and did everything I asked it to do. I found it to be quite comparable to the other two disc authoring programs out there, and a pleasant addition to my computing experience.

Damion Chaplin is a graphic artist and digital media connoisseur living in the San Francisco Bay Area with his lovely wife Lorri and the ship's cat Grimalkin (The Kitty). He finds programs that automatically remove commercials to be über-cool.