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Topic: DVD Authoring Software? (Read 4842 times)
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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I'm looking for DVD authoring software that doesn't suck ass and is around $100. I've been trying all kinds of different ones and they all suck. I've tried Sony's DVD Architect, WinDVD Creator 5, MyDVD LE, MyDVD Studio 6, Easy Media Creator 9, DVD Styler, Magix Movies, an older OEM version of Nero, and probably some other crap I can't remember.
They all suck or are missing features. MyDVD LE worked fine but it couldn't do chapters. Easy Media Creator 9 which has MyDVD 9 in it is the biggest piece of shit ever (and I bought it). I thought it would be an upgraded version of MyDVD LE but it is completely different. Did I mention it was a laggy crashy slow broken piece of shit? I can't even count how many hours I've wasted trying to make it work. Sony DVD Architect was acceptable except it didn't do animated menus that I could find. MyDVD Studio 6 blue screens over and over. The trial of Magix Movies doesn't let you trial the DVD menuing system. OEM Nero is laggy and crashy. WinDVD Creator 5 seemed to be more for a single movie and not multiple movies on the same DVD.
What have you used that wasn't a piece of crap and did animated menu items? Do I have to move up to a higher price range to get something that doesn't suck?
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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Seems pretty good so far. Kind of hard to tell as the trial doesn't have all the layouts available. The burn DVD time where it has to render the menus is horrible :(. My original attempt I canceled after two hours.
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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Seems pretty good so far. Kind of hard to tell as the trial doesn't have all the layouts available. The burn DVD time where it has to render the menus is horrible :(. My original attempt I canceled after two hours.
How many different motion menu clips were you trying to create for your menu? On my A64 X2 3800 machine (it's only using one processor, though) it takes about 5 minutes to render a motion menu with a 15 second excerpt from a single clip to my hard drive (the 05_OneSD2 template if you have the same ones). |
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grebo
Terracotta Army
Posts: 638
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Why don't you try our other games?
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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Took about 10 minutes to do a single video clip with maybe 5 chapters. P4 3ghz hyperthread. I'll have to try it on the dual core 3ghz.
I've been able to speed it up by disabling the menu fades. Originally I tried it with 8 videos with each ~6 chapters and it was rendering a fade for every chapter.
I'm using 5000kbps WMV files. I have raw AVI files but they are 15 gigs each and seemed slower in the other dvd author programs.
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Big Gulp
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3275
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That's what I use, and I love it. |
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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That's what I use, and I love it. DVD-lab doesn't do MPEG-2 encoding, though, so Krakrok would need something else to do that part. |
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Big Gulp
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3275
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DVD-lab doesn't do MPEG-2 encoding, though, so Krakrok would need something else to do that part.
To be honest, I haven't really found a good all-in-one solution that provides the ease of use and results that I like. I convert my movies into .m2v and .mpg files with TMPGEnc and use DVDLab to do the menu creation. It also automatically converts the MPEG2 files into DVD format, inserts chapter breaks, etc. |
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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DVD-lab doesn't do MPEG-2 encoding, though, so Krakrok would need something else to do that part.
To be honest, I haven't really found a good all-in-one solution that provides the ease of use and results that I like. I convert my movies into .m2v and .mpg files with TMPGEnc and use DVDLab to do the menu creation. It also automatically converts the MPEG2 files into DVD format, inserts chapter breaks, etc. Yup, like much of multimedia production, you can get better results by using specialized tools for each task -- heck just to make MP3s I use 4 separate programs though these days that's really not necessary (I put together that workflow way back when). |
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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So I bought DVD MovieFactory. Authored the DVD how I want and click burn to ISO. First burn it crashed encoding video #2. Second try it crashed encoding video #7. Doing a defrag now and then I'll try burning it again to a dir. If it dies again I may also try pre-encoding the MPEG files with MediaCoder. DVD MovieFactory defaults to 7000kbps and I upped that to 9000kbps so maybe that is causing the problem.
None of the auto chapter detectors work on my videos. I've just been setting them every X minutes.
I tried DVD-Lab as well. It's a little obtuse but I made some progress with it as well. Only encoded one video to MPEG to try out in it. I may end up using it if I can't get DVD MovieFactory to burn.
The quality of the menu I was finally able to burn to DVD from Easy Media Creator 9 looks like crap (which took 15 days). It flickers all over the place and the motion thumbnails are all pixelated. Go me.
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bhodi
Moderator
Posts: 6817
No lie.
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Have you ever considered that the programs may just find your video offensive? You know, maybe you were never meant to author animated menus in your animal erotica DVD production...
Good luck, you'll get there.
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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You know, maybe you were never meant to author animated menus in your animal erotica DVD production...
Yes, I have considered that someone out there may not want Milk Maids 4: Trouble In The Barn to be released upon the world but I shall persevere! In any event the latest DVD MovieFactory burn worked (with only 1 menu bug). 58 minutes to render the DVD. Edit: Quite a few menu bugs actually. |
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« Last Edit: November 26, 2006, 09:54:00 AM by Krakrok »
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Big Gulp
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3275
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DVD MovieFactory defaults to 7000kbps and I upped that to 9000kbps so maybe that is causing the problem.
Good rule of thumb? Don't encode over 8000kbps. Most DVD players can't cope. Hell, most of my movies after running a preliminary scan and then a final conversion (a process that takes around 8 hours) come to around 5000kbps, and that's in their optimized form, completely filling a DVD. 7000 as a default is drastic overkill. This doesn't sound like good software to me, man. |
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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Easy Media Creator 9 defaulted to 9000. Windows Media Encoder defaults to 5000. I'll use 5k in the future though.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42666
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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I use Adobe Encore DVD at work, but that's definitely not in the $100 range. I also use TMPEnc to encode movies in the MPEG format for DVD's.
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Trippy
Administrator
Posts: 23657
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DVD MovieFactory defaults to 7000kbps and I upped that to 9000kbps so maybe that is causing the problem.
Good rule of thumb? Don't encode over 8000kbps. Most DVD players can't cope. Hell, most of my movies after running a preliminary scan and then a final conversion (a process that takes around 8 hours) come to around 5000kbps, and that's in their optimized form, completely filling a DVD. 7000 as a default is drastic overkill. This doesn't sound like good software to me, man. 90 minutes on a single-layer DVD is 7000 kbps (but that includes audio). 120 minutes is ~5000 kbps. |
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Krakrok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2190
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Having to get a copy of MenuEdit so I can hack the Play All button out of the DVD MovieFactory menus. I can't believe everything else about it works but it puts a Play button on every menu. You would think the Play button would play the video of the page you are on but nooooo it plays the first video no matter what. And hiding it doesn't remove the button functionality (only the graphic).
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