SONYs version of DVDit

[lathompson]

I'm going to burn DVDs but MUST HAVE as much compatability and quality as I can from my machine, but in reading deeply into SONYs information supplied with this new VAIO PCV-RX580, 1.8mhz, 512RAM computer with DVD burner, I find I may be working with a proprietary version of burner and/or software.

In a small FAQ booklet, it answers questions about what to expect and one of the answers disturbs me: All compatability refers to ONLY SONY DVD machines. In talking with several people at SONY, they will only vouch for SONY players reading the DVDs made with this computer/software. I see that the software it uses is DVDit but it is called: DVDit FOR SONY.

Does this mean that I'm stuck with SONY products to play back or is this just marketing? I really don't want to be stuck with proprietary workings since I will be selling the DVDs to my video customers. Does anyone have knowledge on this.

[zounds]

I have a VAIO PCV-RX554. Sony's DVDit is actually a "lite" version of Sonic Solution's DVDit. I believe that the DVDs it produces are standard, and I've been able to play them in my Pioneer deck just fine. Sony's wording is probably for liability reasons. The only "problems" I've found are these:

- Sony's DVDit is really "lite". It can create menus, but no chapter stops, so I can't use the "jump forward/back" buttons on the remote to go to specific points in my home movies. You can put on multiple movies, but I don't know if you can get them to auto play one after the other, so maybe it's possible to cut up a long movie into submovies, but that seems like a hassle.
- Sony's DVDit can import MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 movies, but not AVI. The bundled software on the RX554 can edit/convert AVI's to MPEG-1, but not the higher quality MPEG-2. I've used TMPGEnc to do the AVI-to-MPEG2 conversion, but again it's an extra step in the whole process.

Other than that, it all seems to work.

[lathompson]

Do you think that stepping up to DVDit (full version) would take care of the handling of bringing in an AVI, creating chapters and converting to Mpeg, thus taking these extra steps away? Or, within this price range, is there another program that might be suggested for minimizing all these steps?

[zounds]

From their website (www.dvdit.com), it says that DVDit SE can import AVI directly, so it must include its own AVI-to-MPEG2 encoder. I don't know much else about the product. I will eventually get some more full featured software, simply to create more elaborate menus and content and to make the process more integrated, but for now I can't afford it, and I don't know how various products compare.

FWIW, TMPEnc is very highly rated as far as the quality of its encoding, but it is software-only, so it's slow. Some video capture cards can do encoding in hardware, which should be faster. Lots of tradeoffs.