Richard,

From what I have read and heard, it just uses 4:3 menus and can play back 16:9 footage no problem, its just can't use a 16:9 menu.

Paul

Richard my 16:9 experience with Ulead DVD Workshop 2 is very limited. I tried to do one project recently, but at the final stage I had a problem with (a) it insisted on re-encoding my files which had already been encoded with CinemaCraft Encoder (for some reason the option to tell it not to re-encode material was greyed out) (b) I had a couple of inexplicable crashes.

It was more of a test project than a serious one so I didn't persevere. Anyway it's quite a while since Workshop 2 appeared, so I take the announcement that Workshop 3 is "on hold" as meaning that it is practically dead.

If you want a program to learn now, and with good potential for you still to be comfortable with it in the future then I don't think Workshop 2 is a contender.

My recent bad experiences may perhaps be my own fault, but certainly Workshop 2 cannot do 16:9 menus.

Sorry I should have added that (as with other programs) the copyright protection is only applicable to projects mastered onto DLT and which you then have replicated at a duplication plant.

It's of limited value as there are widely available programs to get round it and you can't use it with discs you burn for yourself.