Comments

msorrels wrote on 1/16/2003, 5:35 PM
It doesn't seem to. Looks more like a toy. Or maybe a nice toy with a good UI. I don't see any support for video angles, multiple audio tracks, or subtitle tracks. It appears to be yet another "themes" based DVD authoring tool. Or am I missing something? The beta won't import mpegs only AVI files and it won't render, so perhaps I'm just missing it. The help file doesn't talk about any of these features either. Vegas 4 looks nice though, not quite a full version increase of stuff in my book. But solid, good features. Well solid until it crashed the first time I touched the scrub UI. But it didn't do it again, must have been me :-)
yirm wrote on 1/16/2003, 5:44 PM
It seems to have a lot more flexibility in the creation of menu systems than Dazzle's DVD Complete, which is all I have to compare it to, and is mostly what I care about. Personally, I'm not worried about angles or multiple audio tracks.

-Jeremy
pb wrote on 1/16/2003, 7:12 PM
Guess I'll wait until you lot are finished downloading because it goes at snail's pace at the moment. All I want for DVD authoring is the same object property flexibility as ToolBook Instructor which is not a video editing program at all but designed for CBT or kiosk apps. I want to be able to set my own bitmap for the background, define the screen location and dimensions of buttons and choose whatimage to put on the button. DVD complete kinda sorta does it but not very well. I guess Pinnacle Impression will do it but when Impression was Minerva's product it was horrible to work with so I won't go back there. IF SOFO's DVD program does it for me I won't go to Reel DVD et al. As for editing, 90% of my work is audio so improved video tools are not all that important. Looking forward to trying the demo though.

Peter
RoyS wrote on 1/16/2003, 10:12 PM
Well, that's what I want to hear. I'm tired of DVD (in)Complete.
Paul_Holmes wrote on 1/16/2003, 10:23 PM
You can design your own bitmaps, or use any video for any menu's background, define the screen location and dimensions of buttons, place any bitmap on any button, surround the bitmap button with any of about 25 frametypes (rounded, rectangular, square, etc), or use no frame, and it does it all easily and flawlessly. You can also create motion buttons by simply dragging the avi or I assume mpg file onto the menu. You can choose any frame from the movie as the picture displayed in the button, or simply cast it as a motion button. In that case the movie will play silently from the frame you chose as first. Of course you can resize at will. So imagine a menu with a cool animated background with music, and 4 or 5 or whatever motion buttons all playing their movies at the same time, just waiting for you to choose one!

This is a dynamite app! Really, really, easy to use!
Paul_Holmes wrote on 1/16/2003, 10:30 PM
What'd you expect from Sonic Foundry, huh! Only the best! And if this is their entry into the DVD authoring field I can't even imagine the improvements in Vr.2
RoyS wrote on 1/16/2003, 11:14 PM
I agree!! I think this is great. Easiser to use then most others I have tried/purchased. I can imagine if they added multi angle/audio tracks .. WOW!

However, all we can do with the beta is play with the editing .. don't know how the burning is going to work (beta will not let you do anything but create the menu system and preview it). I would settle for a way to create the ISO and use my regular DVD burner to do the actual burning, but I guess we will have to wait for the release before we can test how well it does conversions to MPEG and burning.

So far, I really like what I see.