The Windows DVD Maker found in Vista is a clever little application. It makes DVD movies with slick title menus. You add your pre-edited video files (and/or photos), choose a look-and-feel for the menus, and click ‘Burn DVD’.

It’s a perfect example of a “95% solution”. The DVD Maker deliberately doesn’t account for roughly the other 5% of options you might consider when producing a video DVD, because frankly, providing for those options would make the app unnecessarily complicated… and probably wouldn’t make a real difference to the final quality of your home video.

I was asked to edit together a Christmas Party video for some friends (a “24″ spoof called “24 Minutes”), and decided that DVD Maker would be a great way to deliver the final product (which was going to be viewed offline).  I was really happy with the results.

"24 Minutes" DVD Menu (screenshot from DVD produced by Windows DVD Maker)

So now I have this video DVD…

Dude… that’s so 1990s!  Videos are meant to be streamed, not held!

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a little app that could take a video DVD, and with a few clicks, turn it into a Silverlight Streaming site, complete with streaming video and a Silverlight-based replica of the DVD’s menus?

I wish I had a little utility that would take my DVD, my Silverlight Streaming ID and password.  It would crank away for a bit, do some re-encoding, and deliver me an “online DVD” all uploaded to Silverlight Streaming.

Sure, I’ve already re-encoded the movie myself with Expression Encoder and uploaded it to Silverlight Streaming.  But the menus that DVD Maker automatically produced for me, with video highlights playing behind the menu options, are kinda funky, and tie the whole thing together.

Someone should make that utility… or if it exists, please send me a link.  :)