DVD Architect, ready for prime time?

BillyBoy wrote on 3/16/2003, 11:09 AM
Not in my opinion. Not even close. I've made lots of DVD's using other products like Ulead's DVD Movie Factory. Before that I've burned hundreds of VCD's, I'm aware of all the steps involved. The process in DVD Movie Factory is simple, quick and the results good. I ordered DVD Architect, thinking I would be getting a superior product. Boy have I been disappointed! The steps in DVDA are clumsy, not well documented and as you'll discover, misleading, resulting in much effort and time being wasted.

To begin with the interface is clumsy, klutzy even. Worse the released version is buggy, riddled with mickey mouse errors that should have been caught by beta testers and weren't.

Doing simple tasks in painfully clumsy. And not well explained in the manual. Like setting up a series of thumbnails for Chapter Points. A nice feature, the Insert Scene Selection Menu is glossed over and no illustrations are provided leaving users to guess and fiddle.

Navigation button actions are improperly programmed resulting in videos played off a DVD set top player returning to the main menu instead of to the sub menu they originated from. Yet the built-in preview works correctly. Again, this is simple carelessness meaning NO or POOR testing and hints at a product rushed out the door leaving end users to suffer and come up with klutge fixes.

Most annoying to me is I spend hours yesterday tweaking my first project to be burned in DVDA. Late last night I was ready to burn to DVD and so I clicked on the Make DVD button. I get a bunch of nitpicking error messages that are informational, so I click the Optimize button and I'm shocked to see a sea of yellow warning meassages indicating all kinds of problems.

Where where any warning messages when I was building the project?

Why does DVDA accept a MPEG-2 video/audio file and allow you to go through all the bother of setting up a main and sub menu pages, add background music and all the rest, the after you spends hours doing that say, sorry, I'll need to recompress?

You just wasted a bunch of my time.

Now a couple in the forum said, well just re render the audio in Vegas. I grumble, try one file as and render as a AC-3 file. OK, now what?

I spent another half hour thumbing through the DVDA manual, the online help, reading forum posts.HOW to you replace the MPEG-2 audio stream with a AC-3 file?
If you can, and I'm not sure you can, the how-to is hidden. The Optimize page in DVDA does NOTHING except tell you there's a problem. There is no way to replace a file with another.

So now what?

I could just let DVDA recompress and optimize, and hours, days? later I may have a DVD. But what quality?

This is Micky Mouse!

Comments

Hunter wrote on 4/2/2003, 8:34 PM
BillyBoy, I felt the same way when I first cracked the seal on DVDA. I was used to Ulead DVD workshop and it's many wonderful ways of making menus, saving my templates, highlighting of thumb nails and so on. Then the agents came to my house and I'm all better now. LOL

All I can tell you is relax, it will get better. I don't think the fine folks at SoFo will let us down, unlike the guys at Ulead, who's GUI is for children.
SoFo is a company I trust to all ways be "customer friendly".
As for SoFo rushing DVDA out, well we (the users) are to blame for that. Hundreds of e-mails about DVD burning in the next VV in your mail box would make you jump the gun too. I know I sent a few.

As for your problem with AC-3 and where to change the stream settings, if you rendered the MPEG-2 file with VV4 and selected the right template for DVDA i.e. video only stream, then render the audio as a AC-3 file DVDA will find the AC-3 file that matches the video file - they need to have the same name. You should have no problems making a quality DVD. I've made DVDs with both now and I find that DVDA will make DVDs that play in settop players that in the past have not played DVDs I made with Uleads DVD workshop i.e. second gen pioneer, something about how many pages or sub menus and how many clips you have on the disc.

Hunter
Norman wrote on 4/3/2003, 7:57 AM
For some time, DVDit has had, in my estimation, the dubious distinction of being the all-time WORST software I have ever encountered. In fact, it was my long-festering resentment of DVDit as the only practical option I had that made me leap at Sonic Foundry's introduction of DVD Architect.

But I have to agree with you, BillyBoy. While offering features that DVDit OUGHT to have given us at its price point, this new software on the block, DVD Architect, is a mess.

Apart from being unintuitive and confusing, its documentation is mystifying. Its like someone doing double-talk. It may sound like language, but just try and make sense of it!

When mandarin programmers foist bad programming on the public and advertisers do a spin on all its bells and whistles that the end user cannot access in any meaningful way, it is effectively bait-and-switch: forget the dream, all that's on offer is a nightmare.

I'm very disappointed in Sonic Foundry, which I once held in high regard.
Cheno wrote on 4/3/2003, 11:40 PM
can't run before you can walk. Give 'em time.

mike
PeterWright wrote on 4/4/2003, 1:34 AM
Norman,

Firstly your "critique" is very vague and abstract - never mind your mandarins - could you list which tasks you are finding difficult.

And remember that "intuitive" is a subjective concept - there have been many posters who have praised DVDA for it's intuitive design! Depends how your intuition operates!

Most would agree that some further functionality is looked forward to, but I have found it a very easy program to get started with.
craftech wrote on 4/4/2003, 7:04 AM
And remember that "intuitive" is a subjective concept - there have been many posters who have praised DVDA for it's intuitive design! Depends how your intuition operates!
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I would have to disagree. If one is making a generalization about whether a particular software is "intuitive", then that observation would have to refer to how "most people" find the software. In my opinion "most people" would NOT find the software intuitive.
BillyBoy wrote on 4/4/2003, 9:42 AM
DVD-A certainly is not at the same level as Vegas as far as being intuitive, which I think, certainly for me at least is the root of much of the criticism, actually more disapointment than criticism as is the thin manual which just glosses over most topics and totally ignores the finer points in other areas and is lacking in illustrations.

That combined with Vegas setting the bar so high and you paying a premium for Vegas +DVD when in fact it is closer to a bare bones DVD authoring package than a "professional" version I was expecting. True, it has some nice features, but the real justification for the price appears to be the inclusion of the A3C encoder. Again, nice feature, but not what many needed, wanted or asked for. Being forced to pay for something I likely won't use much if at all, rubs me the wrong way. It should have been an option.

That fact combined with being forced to buy Vegas in order to get DVD-A and not being able to buy DVD-A as a seperate application considering it IS a stand alone application that doesn't need Vegas to function, just points to SoFo dropping the ball on this one, in my opinion. I expected more features, tigher intergration with Vegas, like being able to use some of its features like transations for slideshows.
wobblyboy wrote on 4/4/2003, 7:58 PM
If you purchased DVD Architect when it was first offered you paid $150 for it. The closest thing to it in that price range is DVD Workshop, at $299, and it dosen't have moving menu and button previews, automatic scene selection menus, time line editing for end points and chapter points, or AC-3 encoder. Ulead's AC-3 encoder is priced at an additional $299 so that would bump the price up to $600. The next closest program to it appears to be Sonic DVDit priced at $299 and it does not support motion menus and buttons. Adobe Encore seems promising but will not be available until Fall and is priced at over $500. To get what everyone seems to feel that Sonic Foundry should have put in DVD Architect for under $200, you would have to purchase Sonic ReelDVD for $999. Also don't forget that you can buy Vegas with DVD Architect for not much more than it costs to buy DVD Workshop or DVDit alone.

All in all it's one hell of a bargin. It seems like people are complaining because they somehow expected Sonic Foundry to come out with a DVD Authoring program that would have all of the features and documentation of the high end systems (over $1000), run perfectly, do it on a limited budget, have it available with what was a very quick release of VV4 and provide it as an add on to Vegas4 at a minimal cost. I know it has appeared in the past that the Sonic Foundry Program God's could do anything. I also recognize that DVD Workshop not doing all things for all pepole was a disapointment to some. However, in this case I think we should give them a break and see where it goes from here.
clearvu wrote on 4/4/2003, 9:17 PM
SOFO may have rushed DVDA out, but I'm sure that it will eventually be a star product. SOFO is no doubt aware of complaints, etc.. on the forums and will no doubt add them in the future.

I too hope that the "future" is soon. I've used DVDit!, and have looked for certain features within DVDA, but to no avail. Yet at the same time DVDA has some features that DVDit! doesn't have. Overall, however, I think DVDA comes out on top. I'm sure Sonic Solutions next DVDit! version will include features that it now lacks, perhaps making it a bit better than DVDA. But remember DVDA is just version 1, can you imagine what version 2 will be like? Lookout world.
BillyBoy wrote on 4/4/2003, 9:42 PM
The AC3 encoder while nice, (if you have use for it) has NOTHING to do with DVD Authoring in of itself. Its another plug-in. An expensive one to be sure due to licensing. The fact other DVD Authoring applications don't have it is totally irrelevant to comparing the pricing of one product to another. That's apples and oranges.

I'm looking at DVD AUTHORING features, which sadly DVD-A in its virgin release is LACKING. Lacking some basic features that should have been there for a "professional" application, which it what it is being marketed as.
jetdv wrote on 4/4/2003, 9:55 PM
I'm sorry but I must disagree - AC3 is VITAL for DVD authoring. I routinely make 2 hour DVDs. This is not possible at a reasonable bitrate without AC3 (and MPEG2 is NOT an offically supported format in the US so I won't use it - PCM is too big).
BillyBoy wrote on 4/4/2003, 10:42 PM
We can agree to disagree, I guess. :-)

If AC3 was "vital" it would be the ONLY audio format supported for DVD's. It isn't. Further if it was so vital other DVD Authoring applications would include an encoder as well. They don't.

The way I see it is like this. To be blunt, its half-ass backwards. Right now you need to render video seperate or do the audio portion over or just let DVD-A recompress your MPEG-2 audio stream. A royal pain no matter what happens.

Worse, surely from a time standpoint if you begin by dropping a MPEG-2 file that has an audio stream you really have no idea how much room the same video with a newly rendered AC3 audio track will take, UNTIL you render it. More mucking around. If you are including three, four or more videos on the DVD, rather typical, I would think, that means you go through this process that many times.
jetdv wrote on 4/5/2003, 5:53 AM
Yes, we will have to disagree. While I usually create the AC3 in Vegas, you left out another option: give DVDA the AVI file and let it do BOTH. As for making sure everything fits, I encode the MPEG2 file with the DVD size and AC3 audio in mind. And, contrary to your last sentence, all my DVDs are a single video (i.e. one complete wedding, one complete event) so I would think that 3 or 4 videos on a DVD is not necessarily "rather typical".
BillyBoy wrote on 4/5/2003, 8:56 AM
My goodness...I hope you're not assuming wedding videos are all most forum users use DVD-A for.
jetdv wrote on 4/5/2003, 5:19 PM
No I am not. BUT, I still wouldn't necessarily say "most DVDs contain 3 or 4 videos". A large percentage will only contain one.
Paul_Holmes wrote on 4/5/2003, 8:23 PM
As a future buyer, I'm sure, of DVD Architect, I disagree with Billy Boy about intuitive. I played with the demo for a few days and found it extremely intuitive. Maybe that's because I've been authoring DVDs for about a year and a half now. Sure, there were some hidden things, but I found them a lot easier to ferret out than stuff in Vegas, mainly because Vegas has hundreds of options in it.

What Billy Boy does convince me of, however, is that DVDA WAS rushed to production. Impressive interface, lots of great features, but lots of bugs to fix.

It's funny, though. When I first got My DVD I and 16 million other users were on forums complaining about all the problems. Slowly but surely, through tutorials and forum helpers, all the things Sonic didn't seem able to anticipate it's users would need to know were revealed. Now MyDVD and DVDItSE work like a charm for me. However they didn't work at all until little arcane bits of information were imparted to me that I would never have found in help or from Sonic. Maybe this is true with DVDA.
DigVid wrote on 4/6/2003, 7:10 AM
"The AC3 encoder while nice, (if you have use for it) has NOTHING to do with DVD Authoring in of itself. Its another plug-in. An expensive one to be sure due to licensing."

Yes, and that encoder will provide you with 1.0 -> 5.1, as well as Dolby Pro-Logic flagging, those little "plugin" features alone could set us back around $1K (from other software companies) and I happen to like DD for my DVDs!

So from my point of view, DVDA is free (as it was ONLY sold as a package piece) and for free it's pretty damned professional.

Also, for me, DVDA's interface is much better (intuitive, easier, etc.) than those of DVDit!PE, SpruceUp, or ReelDVD (those I know). Each has it's strong point and each has it's weakness.

I'm sure DVDA will get the bug fixes it needs and become even better in future versions. But geez, DVDA's basic design is good and give it chance folks, it just came out...