DVDit! demo no longer available?

[wesmoc]

Of course, now I found DVDit! which looks to have all of the features of SpruceUp. SpruceUp does have some limitations (watermark on menu, themes and styles are horrid and a pain to work with, the company no longer exists (bought by Apple in July 2001), so I thought I would try out DVDit!, but, alas, Sonic does not have a demo available for download.

Anyone know where one might be so I can try out this software?

Thanks!

[twinegar]

Try Limewire and Bearshare. You can get them at Download.com. Make sure and get Ad-Aware while you are there so you can kill the spyware that Limewire and Bearshare will leave behind. I got DVDit on Limewire.

[robboughton]

i got it off kazza the other day but spruceup is still alot better than dvd it

[twinegar]

Do you have the full Spruceup?

[robboughton]

i sure do

[wesmoc]

The advantage of DVDit! PE is that it has an AC3 encoder.

The interface is kind of nice, except when you try to make chapter marks (talk about pain). The main disadvantage is that it will ALWAYS re-encode your video rather than, like SpruceUp, take your m2v file as is.

The SpruceUp demo is kind of a pain to find, but it is out there. The crack to make it the full version is out there, too, and a little easier to find.

[wesmoc]

Oh, unfortuantely, the DVDit! PE that I have found is version 2.0. Apparently, 2.5 has a lot of improvements, but I couldn't say for sure..

[twinegar]

I managed to find DVDit PE 2.1 on Bearshare. If you have the M2V & AC3 files, how do you load them into DVDit? Do you just load the M2V like in Spruceup and it finds the AC3? After using Smartripper and Rempeg the audio was left behind when I built the DVD folder in DVDit. I then tried multiplexing the two and I still lost the audio.

[wesmoc]

No.. you have to load the m2v file and ac3 file as two different 'files to the theme".

Then, drag the m2v video on to the 'DVD screen' to the left of the screen that you are working on and it will create a button. Finally, drag the ac3 file on to that same button.

DVDit gives you the ability to mix and match audio (not sure WHY you would want do to that, but, hey, it is more features. ..

[twinegar]

Thanks for the help. I will try it.

[twinegar]

I tried it with Titanic in DVDit PE and it worked flawlesly For some reason, long movies after going through the REMPEG process generate a Parsing Error in Spruceup. I did the same process with Independence Day and it worked perfectly in Spruceup. Any thoughts about the Parsing Error?

[wesmoc]

So far, I have only had to use ReMPEG on one movie, and the resulting file worked perfectly in SpruceUp. Unfortunately, that really isn't much to go by..

When did you get the parse error? During the import of the m2v file or the ac3/wav file?

[twinegar]

During the m2v import is when I get the Parsing Error. I know it isn't a problem with the computer as I tried it on 3 different ones. That is when I moved to DVDIT PE and completed the operation. It's nice to know that I have options now.

[wesmoc]

I thought it was from the m2v file.. I just wanted to make sure.

Odd that you would give a parsing error, but in thinking it over, with SpruceUp, I am not surprised. The app is getting old and no updates are ever made to it since the company was bought by Apple.

ReMPEG is probably tickling something that, in some cases, SpruceUp cannot handle. Most likely, if you re-ran ReMPEG on the same file (not that I would even bother since you have DVDit! PE to work with) it would probably be accepted into SpruceUp..

[twinegar]

I am still kind of new to this. I like Spruceup and DVDIT. I must admit that once I drug the m2v & ac3 files into DVDIT it just worked like a charm. When it was finished I just drug everything into Nero and burnt a perfect disk. I had had some trouble with ReMpeg but once I formatted my drives in NTFS it solved that problem along with some problems I was having when trying to multiplex in TMPG. It's always a relief when I run accross a movie that is small enough to just copy with my Pioneer DVR-7000. I wish Apple would quit sitting on Spruceup and release some updates. Later.