DVD Authoring Software

JackW7 wrote on 11/11/2004, 1:26 AM
Just looking for views. I bought Vegas 5 (not the +DVD) version. I have DVD Architect Studio 2.0 as I upgraded from Movie Studio but am now looking for somehting a littel better. Problem is, to upgrade to DVD+, and Architect 2.0, will cost $300. It would have been only $200 more if I had fully upgraded from Movie Studio. I see that DVD-Lab Pro costs $200. Do pepole have any views on whcih is better. I woudl rather stick with DVD Architect but would be strectching to meet the $300 asking price.

Comments

logiquem wrote on 11/11/2004, 5:43 AM
You can try DVD-Lab std at no risk. The upgrade path is 100$ to pro, so you loose nothing.

Good soft i like to use (i got it when Architect was only the basic v.1), logical layout (just compare it to DVDit!) many very good ideas, but still some stability issues.

I would try before buy for this reason. BTW, you'l not find anything with so much features and a non toy-like interface in the market et this price. I also tried Sonic reelDVD but was totally rebuted by interface and workflow...
ScottW wrote on 11/11/2004, 5:51 AM
Download the trial version of DVD Lab Pro and play with it. See if it meets your needs.

Speaking for myself, I find that the 2 products complement each other (obviously you probably don't want to purchase both though). I'm planning on purchasing Pro and will use both DVDA and Pro for authoring.

DVDA is quite good for fairly simple menu based projects and in some cases having access to a "built in" MPEG encoder can speed the work flow for certain types of projects.

DVD Lab Pro is excellent for more complex authoring projects (you can't write a complex trivia game in DVDA but you certainly can in Pro). Plus Pro can do some nice things that folks would typically associate with "basic" functionality (like actions based on navigation movement).

The work flow for Pro is a little different than DVDA, mainly because it has no built in encoder - for example, with motion menus you have the extra step of rendering the background (DVDA hides this step from you).

All in all, Pro provides many more features than DVDA does, but more of the mechanism for building the DVD is exposed. DVDA hides a lot of the details related to building the DVD, but is missing many nice features that Pro has.

The GUI for Pro does take a little getting used too, but then if the DVDA forum is any indicator, so does the interface for DVDA - both products have thier quirks.

I know that DVDA sometimes has trouble producing a DVD structure that all players can handle (I'm not talking about media/burning issues) - I've not had enough experience with Pro yet to know if it has similar issues, but a quick look at the structure with IFOedit suggests that it may be better than DVDA in this area as well.

Like I said, download Pro and give it a try. You get 30 days free trial on a fully functional authoring tool - nothing is disabled.

--Scott