In search of a consumer DVD Author tool for Home Videos

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I have been searching for a DVD Authoring tool that is less than $100. I cannot find anything that works well. Here is what I have tried so far.

Pinnacle Express - This program is absolute garbage. You cannot import any file into it. the encoder it used is very fast but VERY poor quality. JUNK.

Sonic MYDVD 3.1 features are OK but Crashes all the time. Very unreliable. Even if it actually does manage not to crash it takes me 20X the time to get the video on a disk than the UIF in Nero. requires you to wait after each step instead on loading automatically. has unfixed bugs that load the files out of order. last-first first-last

Sonic DVDit, too complex for the simple menus I need for home video.

NEROVISION Express - Demo won;t let me make a DVD. SVCD is more difficult than Nero. I like to put a fade-in at the beginning of the video, nerovision does not let you select what appears in the icon like NERO or MyDVD, big step backwards.

Dazzle DVD complete - As many of these programs are structured you can only load in one file at at time. With Nero and SVCD's I just drag and drop a bunch, go watch tv for a while and its done. none of the messing around with single files. Biggest limitation of this will be the 20 file limitations. I can see that chapters will be useful if you have just digitized a huge amount of tape. I use Video Factory 2.0 to edit the clips that are auto scene detected from my DV camera. The 3-5min clips are easier to manage in the editor. Dazzle assumes you will only use their program. Most programs assume that. yuck!

Ulead DVD tool - Did not work well when I first downloaded the trial. Did not have a DVD writer at the time and was evaluating for SVCD. Can't revealuate now because the timer on the trial version cannot be reset. So I cannot re-evaluate. Since I already have shelfware from Ulead. I won't buy any product without a trial. It's off my list.

Hope there observations will help anyone else who is on this quest.

[Craig Tucker]

Well it is more than your budget, but I guess you get what you pay for. I find Ulead DVD Workshop to be very good. Easy to use but not too simple, supports moving menu's and animated thumbnails, you can also create your own buttons, using software such as paint shop pro. And use these in your DVD project.

[ItsMe]

I'll second that. DVD Workshop is easy to use and has loads of features.

[epo]

DVD Workshop is good, But I don't find anything really bad in MovieFactory either. At least for me it makes DVDs better than SVCDs. But now I'm using mostly IFOEdit and it surely fits into Your budget