The thing that is sorely lacking in MyDVD is the ability to add chapter points when authoring. You can only add them when capturing which makes no sense at all if you’re going to edit your movies. You want to be able to control the chapter points when authoring. Why is this important even for amateurs? Your typical child’s birthday partly probably consists of the guests arriving, some kind of games, cut the cake and sing happy birthday, and opening the presents. So at a minimum you will want those chapter points so that if you just want to cut to the singing or game playing or opening the presents you can. MyDVD doesn’t allow you to do this. You must watch the hold video or try and use fast forward. At that point, you’d be better off copying the video to VHS tape. It has far better fast forward capabilities.

Also MyDVD is template based only. I don’t think you can design menus any way you want. You must use a template that they provide. DVD Architect allows you to design your own templates or start from scratch and design the DVD to look any way you want. You are also getting an AC3 encoder that will compress the audio and allow you to have more video on your DVD. I’d say it’s worth the upgrade.

~jr