I've begun work on the DVD covering my trip using the underpowered but good enough iDVD, part of the iLife suite. For some reason, I get some kind of strange satisfaction from using the iLife tools - maybe it has to do with me pretending to be cooler and more interesting than I actually am. Regardless, they're a great set of programs for someone who has no skills at all, and can result in professional looking results. If you see enough iDVD projects however, they all start to look strangely similar, because of the reliance on templates.

To avoid this generic looking DVD, I've been figuring out ways to customise the DVD as much as possible. One way I'm customising the DVD is to put my own backgrounds for each of the menus, which can just be dragged and dropped into iDVD straight from Photoshop. What you see to the right is a menu from the Berlin section that I photoshopped up. Those little East german crossing guys are cool.

The actual main content for this DVD will basically be a slideshow with a music track playing in the background. Now I'm back amongst my music, it's a lot easier to pick good (and appropriate) music to have as background noise while the slideshow is playing. You can choose from a whole bunch of canned transistion effects, but I always end up looking for the one that is least likely to cause nausea after watching it 100 times. As with all good DVDs I am planning to add a directors commentary track to the DVD, where I sit down and make fun of all the photos. The most interesting commentaries though are when you have a few people together and the commentary veers off into a random tangent. With any luck I will be able to sort out some celebrity commentators for sections of the DVD.

I've actually got to go to work tomorrow morning. First time in 3 months. I can see myself not doing very much at all.