Very sad to hear they aren't going to keep going with it. As a disc author this is my go-to program at the moment.

I don't really know of any other program that can do what DVDA does, mainly because DVDA does everything I want it to.

The stand out for me compared to other people that my clients use is the super customizable menu systems, like animated thumbnails.

I guess the question would be, other than UHD, what else can they do for it. It is pretty much complete as a DVD and even Bluray authoring program. It will continue to work as is unless Microsoft makes drastic changes in Windows.

There is no reason that DVD Architect will stop working for anyone who already owns it. The reality is that, in general, disc authoring is being done by fewer and fewer people every year and that releasing the same version of DVD Architect with each release of VEGAS Pro and VEGAS Movie Studio Platinum was not a real benefit to many users. It made more sense for us to start bundling different software with our products that, 1) may provide some benefit to more of our users and 2) was still actively being updated and upgraded so newer versions were available every year.

Our research has shown that most of our users who burn discs already own DVD Architect and most of our new customers do not consider DVD Architect to be of any value to them. As a result bundling DVD Architect with any new versions of the code was rather pointless. Yes, some new users will be disappointed they will not receive DVD Architect with the software, and others will be upset that we are not planning to update DVD Architect for the foreseeable future and we understand that. However, doing development work on DVD Architect would be a tremendous undertaking for our small team that would provide very little benefit for a majority of our customers and would divert us from important work that needs to be done on VEGAS Pro and VEGAS Movie Studio.

I agree regarding the bundling, most people who use it already have it, like me.

The problem is that I can't find DVDA on the Magix/Vegas websites easily with a quick look. It's probably there but I would have no idea it existed unless I googled it and even then, on the magix or vegascreativesoftware website, I can't find an easy place to buy it.

A quick google search for DVD architect 7 shows a result that returns https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/ie/dvd-architect/ but when I click that result it redirects to https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/ie/ . So even if I wanted to buy it now it's seemingly very well hidden. That is how the program dies for good.

I would suggest putting it somewhere easily viewable to new buyers and do that for a while and see if it would benefit from further development? At least advertise you have it on your websites, maybe with a price cut and standalone? Maybe focus more on advertising the blu ray capabilities of the software more than regular DVD?

The product page for VEGAS DVD Architect used to be in the Add-ons section of https://www.vegascreativesoftware.com/us/

Those who want to purchase that software should contact MAGIX Sales directly (as has been advised on the forum by the VEGAS team). MAGIX marketing might want to also consider your suggestions.

I agree. If it's still available for purchase it shouldn't be buried.

Quite honestly, it seems kind of poor taste for VEGAS Creative Software to actively try to sell a product which we are no longer planning on doing active development support on. Our parent company, MAGIX, has been bitten by this with other products. (Go take a look at the forum where SOUND FORGE is supported and seei the people crying about SOUND FORGE Mac support, which is still actively being sold, but no longer works on the most current versions of the Mac OS.) We had discussions about continuing sales of this and we have made the decision to no longer actively promote the product because the risk of negative blow-back if something were to happen that we were not able to support.

@Stephen-Pohl

DVDStyler is free, open-source, and still being maintained by the developer. However, be warned that it has fewer features than DVD Architect, but the interface is so simple, you can easily author a DVD in DVDStyler in just a few minutes with the basic features that you'd expect (Basic menu, chapters, etc). It also only supports DVD (no Blu-ray) so you do sacrifice a lot of features. On the flip side, I've found DVDStyler to be rock solid, and generally more reliable than DVDA.

My suggestion would be to keep using DVD Architect, and if the software starts failing, you can switch to DVDStyler when you need to.

Quite honestly, it seems kind of poor taste for VEGAS Creative Software to actively try to sell a product which we are no longer planning on doing active development support on. Our parent company, MAGIX, has been bitten by this with other products. (Go take a look at the forum where SOUND FORGE is supported and seei the people crying about SOUND FORGE Mac support, which is still actively being sold, but no longer works on the most current versions of the Mac OS.) We had discussions about continuing sales of this and we have made the decision to no longer actively promote the product because the risk of negative blow-back if something were to happen that we were not able to support.

This is a valid point and very sad, as I didn't realize that Sound Forge Mac was out of date and not being updated, but since Mac OS has had a couple of dramatic code changes in the last few versions it would make more sense to NOT actively sell it (or better yet, upgrade it) if it doesn't work on the current OS. Windows 10 has been constant enough that DVD Architect seems still to be running fine for me, and it seems to have no alternative Blu-ray burning competition, so it seems like it would make more sense to at least keep it available as a legacy product (and clearly label it as such) until Windows 11 breaks it. It seems like the marketing is reversed on these two products.

@Stephen-Pohl

DVDStyler is free, open-source, and still being maintained by the developer. However, be warned that it has fewer features than DVD Architect, but the interface is so simple, you can easily author a DVD in DVDStyler in just a few minutes with the basic features that you'd expect (Basic menu, chapters, etc). It also only supports DVD (no Blu-ray) so you do sacrifice a lot of features. On the flip side, I've found DVDStyler to be rock solid, and generally more reliable than DVDA.

My suggestion would be to keep using DVD Architect, and if the software starts failing, you can switch to DVDStyler when you need to.

This is a few months late, but...

If DVDStyler doesn't support Photoshop menus, then it's a non-starter.
I used Adobe Encore, for years, because of it's Photoshop integration.
Once Encore was axed, I switched to DVD Architect as it had Photoshop integration.

"Why does that matter," you might ask?
I do a lot of rehash work (same company with the same menu - only different content).
It uses the automatic thumbnail creation for the menu choices and to have to manually create that, every time, would be quite a chore.
If there was some templating system, maybe DVDStyler would work.

JJ

If you have an older version of Encore, it still works. If you had the CC version, then I guess it is dead.