DVD authoring programs...

[rhuala2]

Just wondering what everyone out there is using for a DVD Authoring program and what you have experienced as some of the pros and cons of each. I am pretty confident in my capturing abilites now, and I just received my Sony DRRU500A, so now it's time to optimize the authoring/burning part. Personally all I want in a DVD authoring/burning program is to be stable, have nice buttons and menus I can add to my burns, and be efficient in the burning process so that the orginal file size and the DVD finished burned size are similar.

Here's my list so far:

1. DVDWise - Didn't like interface, maybe I have old version but couldn't get to work properly

2. Maestro - Quite confusing, still working on this program. Have to save to .mv2 format in TMGEnc, doesn't like any of my mpeg, mpeg2 files. Seems very powerful, just need more time to learn.

3. Sonic DVDit - So far my favorite, slick interface, very usable, not sure about saving efficiecy?

4. Sonic MyDVD - I heard this program is not effiecnt at burning, see Q's below. Nice interface

5. Sonic Scenarist - Trying to obtain demo, unknown

6. Ulead Workshop - Trying to obtain demo, unknown

7. Ulead Movieshop - Trying to obtain demo, unknown

Couple questions

1. How can u be sure if you program is not uncompressing somthing when burning it. In other words if say ur mpeg2 file is 100Mg, yet when you burn add menus and the mpeg2 file to the DVD, the total space becomes say 130MB, is this acceptable? What is acceptable for starting file size and size used on DVD?

2. I read the Sonic MyDVD uncompresses the audio portion of movie files making htem much bigger when they are finally burned, does Sonic DVDit do this also. It's seems to be a better program?

3. The programs I have been playing with don't seem very receptive to SVCD, they seem more DVD or VCD compatible. Is there a better program that deals with all 3 fromats seemlessly?

rhuala
---system---
Windows XP Pro
AMD 1700+, 512MB RAM
MSI Geforce 4 Ti4400, Latest detonator drivers
Creative Soundblaster Live
MSI K7T266 Pro2 Motherboard, Latest 4-in-1 drivers
Maxtor 80GB, 7200rpm, ATA66 Hard Drive
Sony DRU500A DVD Burner

[n6nfg]

Please consider trying out the newly released Intervideo WinDVD
Creator. You can download a trial of it from:
http://www.intervideo.com./jsp/Product_Download.jsp?p=WinDVDCreator

I haven't tried it it, but the capabilities look good for the "home" user.

I would be interesested in how it compares to the other "inexpensive"
authoring solutions. I like the idea of the storyboard or timeline access
that it provides. I suspect the MPEG encoder is marginal, as with most
of the <$100 packages, but for creating DVD's of VHS home movies,
I found MyDVD 3.1 good enough (No don't laugh, I'm not expecting
hollywood quality )

I want a simple all-in-one solution that will produce results that are
"good enough", so I am not really interested in the multi-step/program
solutions that give the wiz-bang results typically discussed on this forum.

With this in mind, I would be interested in your results of comparisons

-n6nfg

[TSChris]

I have been searching through pages of old posts so that I didn't have to post the same question that you asked.

Since I am new as well, what program did you settle on and why?

Thanks

[ashtones]

I have had my DVD burner for about a month and a half and I have tries a few different apps. I have kind of settled into using DVDit PE but there are drawbacks with using this. It re-encodes any audio which I have found to be the most time consuming part of the entire process. Useing DVDit it takes roughly 3 hours from when I click on made DVD disc to get my finished product. So I can only make one maybe 2 dvd's a day. I tried spruce up but it always crashes my computer. MyDVD is way to simple for me. The Ulead products are a little better but they tend to crash my system as well. I just recently obtained pinnacle DVD Impression Pro mainly cause I want to try out motion menus. I have not yet learned how to use it so I can't tell whether or not it will be better then DVDit. I had Sonic Reel DVD but I didn't know it is not compatable with windows ME. I am planning on upgrading to XP in the next few days and then I will test that one out as well.

[mol3000]

i would like to no how that windvd creator works also...... so somebody try it and let me no cause i am lookin for another authoring program myself but want it to be as easy as movie factory w/o da glitches

[n6nfg]

Ok, since nobody else seems to have tried windvd creator, I downloaded
the trial and tried it myself.

The short answer is, I don't think it is quite ready for prime time yet.
The video quality is on par with MyDVD 3.1, which is not real good.
At least on my setup, I had several glitches that limits a lot of the useful
features. First my system details:

AMD 1.3G, 512 MB ram 120 GB raid 7200 rpm, SB Live 5.1,
VIA KT133A motherboard, WINME, Pioneer 104, ATI AIW 128 Pro.
This setup has been stable for video captures using the ATI MMC7.1,
or from a 1394 DV camcorder (using Adaptec 1394 board). This
setup also seems to work OK with MyDVD 3.1, within the "lite" version
that came with my burner.

The DVD output in the 1 hour mode was very similar in quality to what
MYDVD 3.1 produced with this setup. In fact it is almost like they use the
same MPEG encoder, as the video was "identical". It was watchable on a
small screen TV (20") but when taken to a 55", the artifacts were quite
noticable. Fast motion had both a pre and post "ghost" image evident on
freeze frame, and slow pans of trees in the background were quite blocky.
The DVD output in 2 hour mode was noticably worse to the point that I
wouldn't consider using it (and I am not THAT picky!) Note as I said
earlier, the 1 hour output was the same as MYDVD 3.1, which came
packaged with my burner.

If you simply capture from DV, or import existing MPEG captured from the
ATI MMC7.1, and then do a real simple authoring with no special effects,
I got a DVD burned that works as above. The problems came when trying
to use the additional editing features, or capture features.

1. Capturing from the AIW card produced very bad results. First few
seconds of video OK, then frame rate goes down to less then 1-2
frames per second (audio still ok however). The MMC7.1 had no
problems with dropped frames with this same hardware/software.

2. Capturing from DV seems to do on-the-fly MPEG encode to a file, which
is left around to examine later. The encode quality is poor, and this
same quality is later exported to the DVD during burn. The temporary
file used in the capture plays as a standalone MPEG clip by the ATI
DVD player utility that was part of MMC7.1

3. Scene detection take a while, and after it is done, the computer never
quite seems to be OK again. Any attempts to do anything within the
program produces constant disk thrasing which renders the program
unusable for minutes at a time. Note I have 512 MB ram, so local
memory shouldn't be a problem.

4. Cropping a file with the editor is quite painful. The computer response
to movement of the slider bar is very slow, and can take several
seconds to bring up the frame that you attempt to move the crop point
to. I also noticed this behavor in the timeline view, in that the program
becomes very sluggish as you try to navigate around.

5. Applying scene transitions seemed to work, but if a scene is the first
scene in the storyboard, and is less then 10 seconds long, a 2 second
transition seemed to elimintate the entire scene, instead of taking the
first/last 2 seconds of it. The whole 10 seconds was reduced to nothing
but the transition.

6. During the burn process, you have the option of burning to a disk
image, but the burn from saved disk image option is always greyed
out, making the save to image useless within this program.
This may be a side effect of the "demonstration" mode however.

7. During the burn process, the first step is "formatting" or something
like that. This takes a while, and seems to occur even if the program
is given valid DVD formatted MPEG. Sounds like it always re-encodes.

8. During the burn process, at the end of "formatting" the program would
produce an "error" message of some form and exit. This seemed to
only happen with 10 minute or longer vidoes. This could be a result
of the "demonstration" mode which is limited to 5 minutes, but this is
a pretty poor way of handling a demonstration limitation if so.

9. Acceptable output quality video that is MPEG formatted and DVD
compliant from the ATI MMC7.1 capture (at least the video is good,
the audio is 44.1 Khz instead of 48, so it needs transcoding) is altered
to something much worse in video during the burn process. Video
artifacts become unacceptable, probably due to re-encoding with a
poor encoder.

So, I am not ready to purchase based on this experience. If the glitches
I noted could be cleared up, I would still be left with video quality that is
less then I was hoping for with DVD output, so would probably pass on it.
In fact after watching my earlier MyDVD output on a larger TV screen, I
am retracting my earlier post that said "MyDVD 3.1 is good enough".

Well, I am left with the same question "What single program can produce
a DVD from either DV or MPEG captured ATI AIW captures"???

-n6nfg

[rhuala2]

Since I am new as well, what program did you settle on and why?

TSChris,

I ended up settline on Ulead Workshop. It's stable can add easy nice menus and doesn't seem to take as long as DVDit PE to create burn files. I burn to a TS_VIDEO dir first and then burn with NERO, unless I'm real sure it will fit.

The reason I went away from DVDit PE (btw PE compresses to DD audio where SE to PCM audio- much larger file size) was that DVDit PE doesn't accept my edited MPEG's in Winproducer because I find this is the the best MPEG editor that does limited re-encoding of my captured MPEG2 files (look at thread I started in Editing section for full run down on good MPEG editors). Hope that helps.

rhuala