Spruce DVD Maestro or Sonic Scenarist

[FT Shark]

Which is a better DVD authoring tool DVD Maestro or Scenarist?

[housepig]

which is better, an apple or a tomato?

[FT Shark]

I like both myself.

Which program will allow you to produce the most sufisticated menus? Which will allow you in import the most angles, sound tracks, and subtitles? Which is used by more professionals? Or simply put, which is better?

[adam]

Scenarist has many more features but has a steeper learning curve and costs much more.

Scenarist is the industry standard. Pretty much any commercial DVD you can buy was authored with Scenarist.

When it comes the the # of angles, subs audio tracks etc... its the same for both. They are limited by what the DVD standard supports.

As far as I know, Maestro is no longer being sold or supported so that's a major disadvantage.

In my opinion, Scenarist is much better but I haven't used Maestro all that much so I'm not the best judge.

[Jolard]

Yeah, as above.

Scenarist is the most powerful, but is very difficult to learn. Maestro is also powerful, and very close to scenarist in that respect, but much easier to learn.

Maestro, as said above though, is not easily available anymore, although you could say scenarist isn't either, since it is extremely expensive.

[FT Shark]

Does anyone know what scenarist will give me that Maestro will not?

[Doggiedaddy]

When mixed with the big three [Scenarist NT & the big 3 (DoItFast4U, DoCCE4U & ReAuthorist] it gives you the best B/U possible [IMHO] on large projects. Be advised though, this is not a nOOB process or a fast one button solution for those who say things like "DVD2one or DVDShrink do a great job for me" kinda people.
The process is slow and has a rather steep learning curve and is always a work in process system. There is a lot of info on Doom9 about the process if interested. I run the system on a single focused machine because it takes so long.
(;-{> Dd

forum
http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=66

Also take a look at the guids under MiniDVD>DVDB/U
http://www.doom9.org/
Using Scenarist NT & the big 3 (DoItFast4U, DoCCE4U & ReAuthorist)

[Vejita-sama]

Apples are better than tomatos. Scenarist is better than Maestro. But personal tastes vary. Many consider Scenarist to be overkill and it does have a very steep learning curve. Maestro is much more user friendly (but also takes some time to learn, manual is ~688pages).

[SaSi]

Does anyone know what scenarist will give me that Maestro will not?

Endless ... Sleepless ... Nights

About that steep learning curve Adam pointed out; Have you seen those people klimbing walls with their bare hands? Not steep enough compared to Scenarist.

Although I mainly use Scenarist and have grown to like it there is one thing in which DVDMaestro seems "smarter". It doesn't double multiplex streams during compilation. And, perhaps, has an easier menu/branching design system. And I think the documentation is at least 10 times better. (At least it makes sense).

BTW, all the James Bond DVD's that I've come across appear to have been authored by DVDMaestro. I guess so because parsing the contents with DVDShrink it shows random "Spruce" bitmaps (the ones used for menu linking in "dead" tracks). DVDShrink removes them as un-referenced, which is interesting, but the idea is that thes 007 ultra complicated navigation, 6 soundtrack 20 subpicture titles are done with DVDMaestro.