CD Authoring?

papaf1 wrote on 6/6/2004, 8:00 PM

I don’t know if this is the Wright place to be asking this question, but what good CD Authoring Software is out there other that Director that has a long learning curve?

Comments

farss wrote on 6/6/2004, 8:12 PM

CD Architect is (was?) the industry standard but see my post below.
I've used it quite a bit with 100% success.
Critical thing if you're burning masters is to have a good drive, good media and check the error rates.
I've used a Plextor drive which comes with a utility to measure error rates. I only had one CD with an unusual spike in the C1 error rate so I ditched it, next CD was fine and I could see a minor imperfection in the plastic of the dud.

Don't believe the hype over burning at 1x either. To do that you need hard to get CDs and obsolete drives. Better results can be had from mastering grade CDs burnt at 20x. Reason is at that speed the disc spins with less wobble giving a cleaner burn.
The CDs made for low speed mastering have shallower pits so the old 1x burners with lower powered lasers can burn them. I'm now using CDs that are exactly the same except pit depth is increased for higher powered lasers.

papaf1 wrote on 6/6/2004, 8:20 PM

I was mainly interested in CD Authoring in the lines of CD Presentations or Interactive CD Authoring; sorry I didn’t make myself clear.

farss wrote on 6/7/2004, 1:17 AM

Sorry,
should have picked that up when you said "Director". I know very little about that but Director is a name that keeps cropping up.

watson wrote on 6/7/2004, 3:49 AM

Interactive CD Authoring- There wiill be no dumb down version for this type of work. Mediachance MMB is the least exspensive / biggest bang for the buck. It will take learning though. If you give me a better example of what you are looking to do as in "interactive" I could possibly suggest a simpler program.

cheers,
W

Jsnkc wrote on 6/7/2004, 11:58 AM

Multimedia Builder is an amazing program and I would have to say go with that one, I've been using it for many years and it is great for CD-ROM authoring. The only problem with it is that there is no Mac support. We get lots of clients that do need cross-platform applications so for that we have to use Director. The learning curve on Director is a LOT bigger than it is for Multimedia Builder...both are great programs though.

Caruso wrote on 6/8/2004, 2:01 AM

So, what is interactive CD authoring? A totally new term to me?
What does it do, what are its benefits?

Thanks.

Caruso

kameronj wrote on 6/10/2004, 5:10 AM

So, what is interactive CD authoring? A totally new term to me?

It may be a new term...but not a new concept. You have seen it a billion times. Put in a CD that you purchase at the store, it autoruns, lets you do stuff like install applications - play video - play games - just about anything.

For the money...Director is my drug of choice. Having not played around with anything less....I definately am not the one to answer this one for you. I'm hooked on Director and appreciate the learning curve. But it is steep.