DVD Architect automatically determines the navigation. You cannot customize this.

"DVD Architect automatically determines the navigation. You cannot customize this."

Why not? This is my biggest hang-up with using DVD-A.
Make it more controllable and it would be hard to beat.

DVD Architect automatically determines the navigation.

How does it do this? I sometimes get odd navigational inconsistencies between pages of similar layout and its very frustrating. It there any way I can place objects on the screen, or anything else I can do, to ensure where the cursor will go next? I don't see a pattern.

It does seem a bit randome, but believe me... this is the fourth authoring package that I'm trying in my search for something stable and usable, and the button order issue on DVD-A is much better than the others. It's a common problem, and Sonic Foundry seems to have it tamed better than most in this price range.

I'm having a real hard time with button order. I tried to create a chapter menu with 15 items on it. It came up with 3 rows of 5, and everything works great, as far as the up/down/left/right navigation. But when I rearrange the order (basically made them all text, and tried to do two columns), the left/right navigation was all screwy. How to get around this?

-jf

Thats why they need a manual mode.
I would much prefer that over a
computer program automatically
doing it!

IMHO, DVDA is more akin to DVD Workshop than any other authoring app. For pro use, it's extremely limited. The NLE integration is nice, but Ulead now offers the same with MPP 7 and DVD WS-AC3. In fact, again IMHO, the DVD authoring is far more intuative in DVD WS than with DVDA. Menu order and construction is visable throughout the process whereas the layered presentation in DVDA is harder to work with.

However, neither is usefull for pro work. The lack of control over subpicture creation and use, the lack of dynamic button creation and button order creation and the lack of access to Prev, Retn, Next and commands (even to the limited set with ReelDVD) will likely keep the VV4+DVD an unbalanced offering. VV$ is an excellent and powerful NLE, but the limitations of DVDA essentially means that the extra money is really for the AC-3 encoder. Someone has already pointed out that DVDA is basically free under SF's pricing strategy.

Why do we keep harping on this? It's frustrating always having to deal with the 800 pound gorilla.

I would cut SoFo some slack. It's the first version of the program. Vegas is at Version 4. I'm sure SoFo is watching. They have a track record of listening to their users, so I'm sure that a lot of things on this forum will turn up in version 2 - maybe even in a 1.x release (that would be great).

I previously used DVD Complete by Dazzle -- a $90 program. It has a lot of features that DVDA doesn't. But it has a lot of downsides as well. For example, don't even *think* about checking your email while it's doing any kind of crunching.

Despite DVDA's limitations, I'm probably going to continue using it and take Dazzle off my system. I know it's going to rock in a version or two.

-Jeremy

My guess would be that with the great importance all of us users are putting on adding end action functionality to DVDA that they are working on it as I type. The product is excellent in what it does; it just needs more user overrides. As a software designer myself, if I were on the development team of this product, I would be hard at work adding this functionality. At the same time I wouldn't rush to release this major of change as you would want to make it a "sort of" hidden function to the casual user. I agree "give 'em time" and praise for what they've already accomplished--great product Sonic Foundry! Please continue the tradition with a "fix" for the current version rather than a "cost" upgrade. The AC3 is fantastic--allows much more video than PCM.

I'm pretty stoked about the 24p templates which also can allow more video on a DVD as well as shorter render times. I have yet to A/B video rendered both with 24p and standard. But it's apparently a great option even for those of us who don't have a 24p camcorder, and great they added it in an update rather than upgrade.

-jeremy

Sonic Foundary,
The way the most common hardware included software package does it (trying to avoid competitor's names) is to allow right clicking on a displayed menu. This brings up a properties dialog that displays all the current actions and allows changing them using pull downs for button numbers and edit boxes for time delays. This method works for me. Its simple and unobtrusive. Just a thought.
thanks,
Gold

Dazzle DVD Complete has a cool way of doing it (I don't mind naming names). Inside each button, there are four little circles right inside of the edges of each side. Those buttons correspond to a remote button (up, down, right, left). You click and drag a circle from one button to the circle of another button. Arrows are created to show the relationship. I've created menus that "wrap" around (it works on my DVD player). It's a very nice implementation and extremely flexible.

-Jeremy

As long as we're listing navigational wants, how about the ability to skip to the next or previous menu page by pressing the right or left arrow buttons on the remote without having to land on a button and press enter.

I think the last request should be made to dvd player manufacturers and not to dvd layout software programmers as it would be a dvd player firmware function, am I wrong?

I would have to respectfully disagree with the Ulead DVD-WS comparison. That was the tool that I was using previously, but have switched camps, and only look back a little bit. (Don't even get me started with Sonic MyDVD...)

In general, DVD-WS did what I needed it to do, with some rough edges. Then they added the AC3 support, so I paid the $200 only to find that this upgrade just allowed the program to TOLERATE Dolby audio, not to create it! The documentation was non-existent. After a week of trying to get some help, I saw an ad for Vegas+DVD and downloaded the trial. After two hours, I ordered the full version. It's true that now I'm fighting the quirks of DVD-A, but $-for-$ I think DVD-A stands up very well against DVD-WS.

DVD-WS, as I said, does not encode AC-3, it has a VERY random button ordering, and creating animated backgrounds is quite quirky. It also doesn't have an alignment grid, or those pop-in alignment guides, just to name a few things.

Things I miss from DVD-WS: the ability to "timeout" a menu after a set length of time which is nice for kiosk-type operation. Also the "Space evenly vertically/horizontally" feature.

Things I wish DVD-A had, besides the above, are the ability to zoom into the workspace at GREATER than 100% magnification. On a hi-res screen, it's tiny, and the zoom feature works BACKWARDS as far as I'm concerned. I also wish the color picker was more flexible, and could display a set of colors already used in the project, so I didn't have to manually set them for the masks, page to page.

DVD-A bugs that really bug me: I can't get Intro Play to work using MPG/AC3 at all. I have to feed it a multiplexed MPG/MPG and then it recompresses it. I can export the exact same video & Stereo AC3 from Vegas 5 times, and sometimes DVD-A plays no audio, sometimes it works perfectly, and sometimes Optimize shows that the files will be recompressed to 5.1, sometimes stereo, sometimes recompress, sometimes not... it blows my mind what this thing is doing! I wish it would explain WHY sometimes it feels it has to do one thing over the other.

Are these professional programs? Not really, not yet in this price range. But they re getting there.

I think the last request should be made to dvd player manufacturers and not to dvd layout software programmers as it would be a dvd player firmware function, am I wrong?

I have a number of DVDs that do this so the players are capable of it, as long as the software is.