Q. I'm on a 50th reunion committee for our football team. I have a DVD that came from a transfer of 16mm game film. The hope is to give each team member a copy of the DVD at the reunion.
The original game film has one play immediately following the next with no space or down time in-between. I would like to get some blank space between plays to put a text box with a message like "Joe makes a nice block here," or similar comments prior to the play, or put text directly on the football play. Is this possible for a mediocre to middling computer guy like me, and is there an inexpensive program that will work?
--B.D., Minnetonka, Minn.
A. Adobe Premiere Elements 8 sells for under $100 and can import footage from DVDs that are not copy-protected. As long as the person who transferred the film to DVD did not encrypt the content (which would have been a nasty thing to do if they did not own the footage) you can import it into Premiere Elements 8, add blank spaces, insert text wherever you want (including over plays) then create a new DVD. You can even add a menu with chapters. Included tutorials will guide you through the process. Once the disc has been created be sure to save it so you do not have to re-encode everything every time you burn a copy of the DVD.
I imagine you will be busy burning disc copies for a while. Enjoy your reunion!
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Q. I am interested in the $35 Dayton amplifier that you wrote about. It doesn't seem to have a balance control for the speakers. Wouldn't that be a big disadvantage?
--J.S., Lakeville, Minn.
A. You are correct that it does not have a balance control. As for if it being a big disadvantage, I would have to say," Not really." It may be a small disadvantage but it depends on your room, the speaker placement and what signal sources you will be using.
If your speakers are placed properly in the room the lack of a balance control should not be a problem. Balance controls are most useful with analog sources such as vinyl records, where you may sometimes get slight balance differences at the source. With digital sources such as iPods, CD players and DVD players the left-right balance is as precise as the master tape used to create the disc.
If you explore the market you will find that amplifiers without balance controls are not limited to inexpensive gear such as the Dayton DTA-1. For example, the $799 Neuhaus Laboratories T-2 vacuum tube amplifier I wrote about recently doesn't have a balance control either.
If you must have balance control you can buy a second DTA-1 and get a Y-cable to split the audio output. Use one DTA-1 to drive the right speaker and one to drive the left speaker, and then adjust the amplifiers independently to get the balance you want. This would cost $70, though, and at that point I would recommend looking for a refurbished stereo receiver from Onkyo for $100. It won't be as small as the DTA-1 and won't work on batteries but would give you much more for your money.
