This is the best DVD Authoring Softwear

[Amish Electrician]

Ok after trying about all the DVD Authoring softwear on the maket & being disapointed with all or most i have found what i think is the best.
DVD Architect by Sonic Foundry
It will do AC3 DD5.1 sound and the lay out is so smoooth & easy to use it reminds me of spruce up with its easy of use.I never had to read the manual to use it thats how easy it is.
It works with both dvd-r & dvd+r
I use Vegas Video for my editing so its a nice fit for me
The only thing is cant do that i have found is import .MV2 files

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/

[gcutler]

What price range is that? What is your criteria? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[BJ_M]

it can only be purchased as part of Vegas , price w/ vegas is $995 .
This includes vegas , ac3 5:1 encoder and mpeg2 encoder and of course DVD Architect

you can use m2v file with it also ...

[MrSnake]

I use DVD Maestro.
It's the most user-friendly lay-out I've seen so far and I never had problems with it.

Granted, they discontinued the software and Apple bought Spruce to ruin this fine software.

MrSnake

[basky727]

$995? I just downloaded the Vegas Video 4+ DVD for ~$500. check out http://www.videoguys.com/vegasvideo.html

And I agree, Vegas BLOWS away just about every other software I've tried but I have not had a chance to play with Architect. In fact, I came here to get some reviews

[BJ_M]

i was listing the list price -- since also the price goes up this week from that special intro. price... ..

lots of reviews around .. see also creativecow.com vegas forum

[Amish Electrician]

Dvd Architect does not need Vegas Video to work they can be used separatly.
Ok eye of the beholder
1. motion menus
2. motion backgrounds
3. motion buttons
4. ac3 audio not just 2.0 dd
5. chapters
6. multi page menus
7. converts many vid formats avi Rm WMV but conversion is slower then if you do it b4 hand
8. Create into to your dvd
9.Preview your menus on an external monitor before rendering using the Vegas clipboard viewer.
The preview is real nice but the image looks bad so dont think thats how your finshed vid will look
10. Resize your video on the fly to better fit the disk most dvds are 8mbps there is a slider that you can move to what ever bit rate you would like so your video will fit on a dvd of course qualty goes down with lower bit rates.
I could go on all night but i would suggest you just go try there demo.

[Felix_2000]

I agree with Mr Snake DVD Maestro rocks, supports all DVD features like Scenartist except with an easier layout. Too bad it was bought out.

-=[ Felix2000 ]=-

[Amish Electrician]

opps on # 8 i ment intro not into

[Amish Electrician]

I would like to hear from others that have usd DVD Architect by Sonic Foundry or have tryed the demo.

[spidey]

I've used Vegas since right when 3.0 came out. I'd highly recommend it as an excellant vid editor and compiler. As far as your encoding though, I'd stick with TMPG and CCE, but to make all your menu's and nicety's you can not beat it.

If you do encode in it, it does encode very well, it's more of the fact that I am more used to doing the long batch jobs in the other util's, etc

Vegas has the Main Concept engine in it, as well as full ac3 encoding capabilities.

Got to sonicfoundry.com if you wish to check it's full features list.

As fara s DVD architect, it looked OK. But, the big downfall I saw was it wants ONLY Mux'd clips. Then it would encode and output the audio after the fact. This seemed a waste of time, as well as a little limited as to your total options.

For authoring I'd say, SpruceUp DVD Maestro, or Sonic's DVD Producer. Both produce different title sets per movie, so you can mix and match Mpg1 and Mpg2 source streams (m1v / m2v)

[BJ_M]

DVD architect will take seperate streams , just name your files the same and put them in the same dir . it will not re-encode your mpeg unless you want it to ..

[Amish Electrician]

DVD architect will take seperate streams
Yes it will if they are avi & ac3 but it will not take mv2
As for remuxing allmost all the dvd pogams i have used seem to want to do this Spruce up was one of the few that did not..
But spruce up could not do motion menus or motion anything and i never found a way to make an intro on the dvd. Spruce up uses bitmaps for the backgrounds & those look like crap on the TV.
I think Dvd architect will be getting an update soon that will let you uses MV2 files cause lot of people ask for it on there site & Sonic is good about listing to what people want.

[pb]

I bought Vegas+DVDA, but am a little dissapointed in it. The text and menu images suffer from interlace flickering and the scene select menu navigation is bad. Unlike Ulead DVD MF2, it does not return you to the scene select menu you started from if you interrupt the clip. I love Vegas, and will always use it, but until these basic things are fixed or someone shows me a work around I cannot use it. I have tried all the suggestions on the SoFo forum. I will keep it in the hope the next version fixes these problems.

[BJ_M]

the text thing was fixed in the updated out this week for DVDA