DVD authoring software recommendations

[armyofquad]

I've been using DVD Lab Pro 2 for years, and am really getting sick of running into limitations every time I try to do something different.

For quite a while I've authored DVDs of music that contain only a DTS track. I have no use for Dolby Digital, it's total crap, and I resent that the DVD standard calls for it. It seems most DVD players can handle a single audio track of DTS fine....but every now and then I run into a player that can't handle my technically out of spec authoring.

So, ok.....lets author within spec. But....I still want the discs to act seemlessly like they normally would. A disc with 4 albums, each album a separate movie with 2 audio tracks, track 1 DD, track 2 DTS, to be within spec, a simple menu with 4 buttons, 1 for each album, that when selecting the button automatically plays the album and automatically selects audio track 2, because DD is crap and is only there because of the stupid spec that calls for it.

Except....in DVD lab pro 2, a button can set the audio track, or go to a movie chapter. Not both. Arrrgggghhhhh.....

Which means I'd have to set a separate audio selection menu for one to be able to set the audio to DTS before selecting the album. Which I've done....but I hate. Trying to keep this simple.....after all, I'm making a music disc, I want it to play music with as few clicks as possible. Normally I just want it to start playing automatically, which is why I prefer to have only a DTS audio track....but since I'm making discs with multiple albums, a menu is fine in this case.



Is there a simple DVD authoring program that supports any of these options?

Slideshows that allow easily editing slides to custom time lengths, so that one could make an album DVD that doesn't require an mpg of still slides, but you can set each slide to be the length of a song?

Able to handle DTS audio timing? (when trying to do slideshows in dvd lab pro 2 with a DTS soundtrack, it stops short, because it reads the length of the DTS track incorrectly....a well known bug that was never fixed)

Set the default audio track to always be something other than the 2nd, so that if I create a DVD without a menu, it automatically plays the 2nd audio track instead of the first (if one insists on DD, they can use the audio select button on their remote)

Ability to set a menu button to select a chapter AND set the preferred audio track

[Skiller]

I am not exactly familiar with DVD Lab Pro in particular but from what I just gathered, similar to other authoring software that I am familiar with, it does provide the option to let the user program commands.
You should be able to tie any "play this" button to a command list. In this command list you set the current audio track to 2 and play the desired titleset/chapter.

[aedipuss]

since you are putting audio albums(stereo) onto dvd why the h are you using anything other than wav(pcm)? no other track needed, and better audio than dts. and even if you have to have dts for some unknowable reason make it track 1. the dvd standard only says one of the 8 possible audio tracks has to be dd or pcm, not that it has to be track 1.

[armyofquad]

since you are putting audio albums(stereo) onto dvd why the h are you using anything other than wav(pcm)? no other track needed, and better audio than dts. and even if you have to have dts for some unknowable reason make it track 1. the dvd standard only says one of the 8 possible audio tracks has to be dd or pcm, not that it has to be track 1.

The answer to your question is hidden in my username. I'm putting quadraphonic material (encoded to 5.1 with silent center/sub) on DVD.

Good to know about my misunderstanding of the standard.....I could've sworn I read somewhere the first track has to be dd. But, you've always demonstrated that you have a better knowledge of this than myself. I'll give it a try with dts as the first and dd as the second. Thanks again.

[usually_quiet]

since you are putting audio albums(stereo) onto dvd why the h are you using anything other than wav(pcm)? no other track needed, and better audio than dts. and even if you have to have dts for some unknowable reason make it track 1. the dvd standard only says one of the 8 possible audio tracks has to be dd or pcm, not that it has to be track 1.

The answer to your question is hidden in my username. I'm putting quadraphonic material (encoded to 5.1 with silent center/sub) on DVD.

Good to know about my misunderstanding of the standard.....I could've sworn I read somewhere the first track has to be dd. But, you've always demonstrated that you have a better knowledge of this than myself. I'll give it a try with dts as the first and dd as the second. Thanks again.

The "Technical Info for DVD-Video" section for VideoHelp's "What is DVD" reference states that one audio track must have DD or PCM Audio for NTSC DVDs, while PAL DVDs must have one track with MPEG1, DD, or PCM audio. I agree that is where your recollection about the requirement for DD as the first audio track on is DVD probably came from.

[Cornucopia]

This is a little tangential the the OP's main question, but

1. Have you considered just encoding to 4.0 or 4.1? They are valid, legit modes in DD (not sure afa DTS), and should be supported by players. That would be more efficient with the bitrate than 5.1, even assuming nulled/silent channels (less overhead). Also should map more accurately.

2. Have you considered just authoring to Bluray? You have a lot more codec options there, including more support for Lossless versions, as well as cooler navigation. And tons more space.

For the main question, I would suggest a pro/semi-pro upgrade: DVDA, Encore (if you can still get it), or better (if you can get your hands on an old version of the rare DVDMaestro and ran it in XP/2k emulation mode you'd be golden).


Scott

[armyofquad]

Good points.

I was authoring to 4.0 for a while. But I ran into problems. Some players don't like 4.0. I've found 5.0 tends to do well. Although - I think the dd encoder I used for this recent disc wanted both sub and center, so I think I had a 5.1 dd on this - anyways, unimportant details, so I simplified by just saying 5.1 rather than going into 5.0, 4.0, 5.1, blah blah blah.

I have considered bluray. But - dvd is still more versatile - just about all bluray players can play dvd, but not all players play bluray. I suppose the biggest reason I hold onto dvd is that's what I have in the car (well....the car can do SACD and DVD. But I can't burn SACD. Well......I think I can burn SACD-R to DVD-R discs, but not all SACD players play those, and I know the car doesn't....but I'm off on another tangent there). For lossless, I tend to do hybrid dvd-a/dvd-v. Create the dvd-v using dvd lab pro, create the dvd-a in discwelder chrome, import the ts_video folder from there and create an iso. That gives me lossless discs on my Oppo players, but will also play on just about any dvd player you throw them in, including the car. But - someone I burned discs for doesn't have dvd-a, and his main player doesn't like the dts only discs, and the secondary player that does play them is starting to break down.....so I figured I'll just author some dvd-v only discs for him, include dd to get to spec, and see if that fixes the problem (I've not found any reason his setup shouldn't handle dts, so my discs being not to spec without a pcm/dd track is the only reason I can come up with that it doesn't work).

I'll certainly check out those other options - probably time I dabble in more authoring software. I have an XP virtual machine for the dts encoding - which is getting more difficult since the 2021 time bomb went off, but it's easy to turn the clock back in a vm.

[aedipuss]

a pcm audio track on a dvd can be up to 8ch. with a max bitrate of 6.144 Mbps

[armyofquad]

Are you suggesting multichannel pcm without lossy compression can be done within spec on standard DVD-V?

Isn't the whole reason DVD-A was created because it can't?

And even then - in DVD-A going more than 4.0 (24/96) requires mlp lossless compression.
(if it's a bitrate limitation, it occurs to me that may mean 16/44.1 in 5.1 may be doable in DVD-A without mlp - but I never thought to check or try that, as I stick to 24/96, and I have the ability to mlp compress, and it's lossless - but I don't want to include any technical inaccuracies in my responses if I can help it)

[aedipuss]

yes it's in the spec. it was never used for movies as the total bitrate of video plus the total combined of all audio tracks has to be under 10Mbps. using 6Mbps for audio didn't leave enough for video.

[armyofquad]

Hmmm....what's the best method of authoring to DVD with an audio only program (reduced video), and will most/all players support it?

[armyofquad]

Upon further researching the possibility of authoring a standard DVD with PCM audio, I've found this bit of info from someone that authors DVDs professionally:

Whilst it is indeed absolutely spec legal to use 4 channels of 24/48 PCM (you can actually use 8 channels at 16/48) there has never been a player built that can read such discs. Multichannel PCM in DVD-Video is theoretically possible though, if you can hack the player firmware and/or the authorting software to accept such files (no abstraction layer tool will allow this) although Scenarist supports 48KHz and 96KHz PCM audio at 16-, 20-, and 24-bit resolutions up to 6 channels for 48 kHz but only 2 channels in 96 kHz. The problem is not that you cannot do this, only that no player I am aware of supports this.