What's the state of things with DVD authoring software?

4th Jun 2005 02:40 #1

Member

The last time I dabbled with DVD authoring, I narrowed my process down to the following:

* CCESP for encoding (unbeatable)
* Some program (forget the name.. anyone know it) to turn the stereo audio into stereo AC-3.
* DVD Maestro for authoring
* Several miscellaneous programs for achieving the frustratingly difficult process of creating and finetuning subtitles

Gonna give the subtitling a miss this time around. The reason I used DVD Maestro was because it WORKED and it also let me do a few things that it seemed no other software could do, such as set up chapters at specific keyframes, add subtitles, and introduce an animated menu with audio. Fairly straightforward and desirable things, one would think.

The problem I had (and would still have, obviously) with DVD Maestro is that it looks and feels like a kludgy relic from the Windows 95 days, and there were still things that I could not get it to do, such as jump to a specific part of the menu, as opposed to playing the introductory material every time (again, a very common thing in any DVD one would buy).

My hope is that these days, two years further down the road, there is finally a package that does it ALL, without being thoroughly, seemingly deliberately non-intuitive in the manner of Scenarist. DVD-Lab Pro looked like it might eventually get there, but its subtitle support was incomplete and it utterly failed to find keyframes for chapters. It also, I believe, lacked any real support for multiple audio channels.

This isn't a "what do you use" query. I know people like TMPGenc. I am not a fan. Chances are it still lacks most or all of the specific capabilities I needed two years ago, and its encoder, while okay, is no CCESP, which incidentally is the only encoder I have ever used which seems a good match for what one gets from a standard professional DVD. But, hey, I may be surprised.

Thanks for reading!