Dumping encore - can someone recommend authoring software?

[clothesburner626]

I'm putting together a DVD for my wife's real estate company - in other words, need software to put together PROFESSIONAL LOOKING MENUS!!! Anyone have any suggestions? Prefer something with automatic encoding. Thanks!

[DaveS]

dvdlab pro is one suggestion...some learning curve but once you pick it up, it can do a ton of things...no encoding though (are you sure you need that and wouldn't just encode your video separately?)...it's got a decent # of objects, but no 'theme templates' (e.g. real estate business theme) .... it's good if you have an idea of what you 'd like to do or if you are comfortable designing the whole thing yourself...if you want to load a pre-designed template and pop in some videos and have it encode (e.g. simpler, w fewer steps)..maybe others can add suggestions

[guns1inger]

Still menus are a breeze in DVD Lab / Pro if you have photoshop. just work at a resolution of 720 x 540, and keep your sub-pictures on thier own layers. Save as PSD, then import as menu from the Menu menu.

[roma_turok]

You don't find anything better and easy to use than Adobe Encore DVD.

[jtoolman2000]

You don't find anything better than Adobe Encore DVD.

Agreed.

What exactly don't you like about Encore? I use it all the time as well as DVD-LAB when I feel like it.

You can't produce somthing " Professional " with Encore?????? Are you kidding???

[GeorgeW]

If you want a "user-friendly" interface, take a look at Ulead's just-released DVD MovieFactory Disc Creator version 4.0. It takes a variety of sources, and has a builtin encoder.

New in version 4.0 is the ability to have text-only buttons, and you can move them around and re-size them at will (prior versions only allowed thumbnail buttons, and you could not resize or move them around).

For real-estate, pick your favorite background image, and use it behind one of the builtin templates.

[guns1inger]

If you read some of his other posts you will realise that he has ditched Encore because of it's bugs and instability, and is now looking for something better.

[clothesburner626]

You don't find anything better than Adobe Encore DVD.

Agreed.

What exactly don't you like about Encore? I use it all the time as well as DVD-LAB when I feel like it.

You can't produce somthing " Professional " with Encore?????? Are you kidding???

I can't preview. Everytime I try to preview, I get Error Message 47003: No video decoder available for this stream type. I did a search online - plenty of others having this problem, but no one seems to know how to fix it. I've read where people were going to the extreme of uninstalling and reinstalling Windows to try and resolve this error but to know avail. One person even called Adobe and the person he spoke with didn't have a clue.... from what I've read, this error is a direct result of me installing either a program Encore doesn't like or a codec Encore doesn't like and for that reason, I am ineligible to use it unlike you Believe me, I'd love nothing more than to be able to partake of some of the best automatic encoding in the world, but until I get this situation resolved, it's DVDlab Pro and TMPGE for me.

[jtoolman2000]

Oh I see. Could there might be a conflict with something else in your PC? I can preview perfectly on my Encore 1.5 I am running it on a fairly fresh Windows XP Home install. I was having a few weird problems with strage things occuring on some programs so I re formatted and did a clean install. Everything is working perfectly now.