Must admit I hadn't given much thought to ULead and they do offer a trial version, I've got a trial version of DVD Producer as well. Guess I should install both of them and see what I can make of them.
I rather like the look of DVD Producer, the idea of Open DVDs appeals a lot but the price is rather steep.

The best software for dvd authoring is SONIC SCENARIST.

The best *bargain* is probably DVD Workshop. I have DVDWS with AC-3, and the demo of DVDWS 2 looks sharp, with subtitles and so forth.

I use Vegas to edit, but DVDWS has been great.

That's sort of where I'm heading but it does seem to COST!
I'm not talking just about the purchase price either. Just the support program costs more than I'd care to spend. Throw in a SD2000 card and OUCH!

Given that I'm unlikely to be dealing with source better than DV25 the whole thing would be vast overkill and I'd have to be using it 24/7 and charging $200/hour to even look like getting my money back.

DVD Producer or DVD Workshop seems to offer what I should need at a more realistic price.

You really need to give DVDLab a test drive. It's only $99 to buy and the upcoming DVDLab Pro will give you most of the power of Scenarist for $169. Don't let the low price fool you, I've done some very complex and sophisticated projects with it.

www. DVDLab.net

John

I have to agree with John at this point. I have tried DVDWS 2 and had many issues with the demo. I am now using DVD-Lab and other than a few strange quirks I really am liking it. As John said they are working on a "pro" version that will allow for subtitles and multiple audio tracks, there is a bets available of the pro version, but as far as I can tell it doesn't add too much extra yet.

I think if you use Photoshop you will find the interface a bit easier than if you don't, especially on the menu side of things. You have to have some knowledge of pre-encoding files with DVD-Lab, it isn't as 'simple' as DVDWS - but I think the flexability is there more...you can burn several VCD's onto a DVD with the DVD feel, chapters for example. DVD-Lab seems to be one of the few programs that also will accept DTS audio.

You basically have 2 choices to get out of these very Basic DVD authoring packages like DVD-A, Ulead DVD Worksop, DVDIt, MyDVD etc. IF you want to stay on the PC platform go with ReelDVD from Sonic, if you have a Mac lying around go with DVD Studio Pro 2. There are higher level programs but they will cost you in the tens of thousands of dollar range (like Fusion and Scenarist). Both of these are very complete packages that will allow you to do most of what you want to with DVD's.

P.S. Avoid DVDLab like the plague if you plan to do any professional DVD authoring.

Reel DVD from Sonic Solutions works great and uses the same DVD formatting technology as Scenarist....it's about $600 and will do what you need. DVDA has been sitting on the shelf waiting for its much needed upgrades! Hope this helps.... http://www.sonicsolutions.com/products/reeldvd/default.asp

P.S. Avoid DVDLab like the plague if you plan to do any professional DVD authoring.

I keep wanting to try DVDLab, but then I see comments like this. Whan you say "professional DVD authoring," are you referring to specific compatiblity or other problems actually getting the disks to play on specific machines? If so, what sort of problems? Or, is it a problem with the program's workflow (e.g., too clumsy to get any real work done against a deadline)? Or, finally, is it too buggy?

I keep hearing these vague snipes at DVD Lab, but except for bug reports, I never hear anything specific.

I am not defending it -- but I'm interested in trying it. If the only problem is that it has a few quirks and bugs, I can workaround lots of those (once I know what they are), if the product has the features I need, and a reasonable workflow.

I have Reel DVD with Dongle sitting in a drawer because of the ease of use of DVDA. I'd sell it for $200.00 but don't know if I am allowed to. I don't need to spend days and weeks creating menus.

JJK

Personally, I use Adobe DVD Encore. I hate to recommend anything by Adobe since most of thier software is bloated crap, but Encore gets the job done rather well. End Action support is sorely needed in DVDA and I have seen nothing to make me think it will be in the next version.

The Sonic Reel DVD with a dongle is an older version...the new release is 3.1 and works great! It's capability is well in advance of DVDA. I am not knocking DVDA- I own it...it just needs to mature and have some needed enhancements. Hey- it has to start someplace- it will get there eventually. But if you need flexability-at an affordable price- Reel DVD works

OK,
firstly having to prepare the assets outside of the authoring app I see as a plus, I certainly don't need something that's going to hold my hand every step of the way, in fact I prefer things that don't. For example I'd much rather make my own choice of encoder. I guess my needs are about this:

Multiple soundtracks.
End actions but nothing very complex. At least having the thing go back to the menu from whence it was called. The way DVDA handles this is a bit sad.

Fancy menus with animation and sound effects. This is the one the client is excited about, you move to an object and it responds, you click it and the button moves and it makes a sound. For example the cursor could be a plane, when you hit a button on the remote plane 'flies' over to the object making plane engine noise. Not a very good description but hopefully you get the idea. In other words menu system is a bit like a very basic console game menu.

Open DVD support, this is more a wish of mine than the clients. Seems like a damn good idea.

THe appearance and animation of the menu system seems to be the big thing rather than complex navigation. Things like having complex transitions / animations between the menu pages would seem to be the most needed features.

You know, I just don't understand some peoples hatred of DVDLab. Yes, the early beta versions of DVDLab had compliance issues. The newer versions seem to have them ironed out. I have sent off a half-dozen DVDLab-authored projects for replication and they have been tested using the official Philips compliance software and none of them have been rejected as being non-compliant.

I guess that no one who has spent thousands of dollars on a piece of software wants to find out that a $99 program can do it just as well.

I've played with DVDA, but its lack of end-actions is a deal breaker for me. I have DVDLab, ReelDVD, DVDit PE, Adobe Encore and DVD Workshop. I'm starting to like Encore quite a bit (particularly since they released the first update), but I normally go straight to DVDLab because of its power and ease of use. It's among the best $99 I've ever spent.

John

I would like to concur with John on the DVD Lab. I have been using this exclusively since I had nothing but problems with Sonic dvdit, Ulead DVD workshop and another one I think reel dvd the demo. I have had no problems with DVD Lab (version3.1) and every disc I have made has played in various players. I only do wedding/event type video and photomontage projects and have found DVD lab has a lot of flexibility. I felt that the low price meant I would get a worse product than the other more expensive ones but I was pleasantly surprised. I do not work for DVD Lab :-)

DVD Lab is fine if you're making home movies or copying DVD's, if you are going to use it for any kind of professional work or for anything that you will be sending to clients or basically you want to be a Professional DVD Authorer I would not use that program. I work in a place where we do DVD duplication and have seen a lot of problems that come out of people not really knowing what they are doing or fully understanding everything within the DVD spec and they can really casue a lot of problems.
I have no problem with the people that make the software, I absolutely love their CD-Rom authoring program Multimedia Builder, but think they need a lot of work on their DVD program to make it equal to things like Fusion, DVD Studio Pro and Reel DVD. To me and a LOT of people in the professional DVD world it is in the same category as DvdIt, MyDVD, DVD-A and programs on the lower end of the authoring scale.

I have to agree with JJK – I see no need to "spend days and weeks creating menus." What's the point? Personally, I find it tedious and annoying when I have to sit there and wait until some elaborate animated menu gets around to finally offering a set of choices; kind of like waiting for a slow web page to load. If the 'content' behind the menu isn't going to impress the client, well then ok, I guess you might try to dazzle 'em with a fancy menu ;-)

JL

jsnkc said, "I work in a place where we do DVD duplication and have seen a lot of problems that come out of people not really knowing what they are doing or fully understanding everything within the DVD spec and they can really casue a lot of problems. "

DVDLab won't make someone a professional DVD author no more than MIDI synthesizers made someone a professional musician or Vegas makes someone an accomplished video editor.

I have quite a bit of experience authoring with Scenarist and I understand the DVD specs. You're right in one sense, DVDLab won't prevent you from doing something stupid but, if you know what you're doing, it has a lot of power. DVDLab is a perfectly capable program and it's much more than the "low end" program you make it out to be. You are, however, entitled to your opinion. By the way, have you ever used DVDLab?

John

I've used pretty much every authoring program out on the market. I played around with DVD Lab for the 30 day trial period and wasn't impressed with it at all. Seems like a bad Maestro ripoff to me. Finally after months and months of trying out bad software I went with a Turnkey Sonic Fusion system with SD-1000 card and another system with DVD Studio Pro 2 on it and I have never looked back.

Jjkizak: I assume you can sell your ReelDVD dongle. I would recommend eBay, where stuff like that appears all the time.

I've had a chance to try a half-dozen authoring programs over the past few years, including (in no particular order) MyDVD, DVD Workshop, DVD Lab, ReelDVD, Studio8, DVD-A, DVD Junior, DVD Wise, Maestro, and Scenarist (wait, that's 10 programs...).

They all have their places. For my own needs, I didn't care about built-in MPEG2 encoding, but wanted the ability to use moving menus and multiple audio programs (for things like commentary tracks). At first I thought Reel DVD would be the Holy Grail in the $500 price range; after playing with the demo I realized that, yes, it can incorporate multiple audio programs, but has no way of putting those alternate audio programs in a menu. Instead, they suggest you put in some text on the menu telling people to hit the "audio" button on your DVD remote in order to gain access to the alternate audio!

Once I found DVD Maestro for sale on eBay, my search was over. This is truly a magical program. It can do virtually anything, and yet the user interface is laughably simple. Scenarist, by contrast, seems much more for Rocket Scientists, yet has about the same power and flexibility. To me it was a no-brainer for Steve Jobs to buy Spruce (makers of Maestro) and take it off the market in order to re-tool it for the Mac. DVD Studio Pro 2 is the recent result, and by all accounts it's the new champion of the authoring business. Seriously, one could justify getting a cheap Mac and treating it as just a rather sophisticated dongle in order to get access to the Studio Pro 2 software.

I have no experience with new versions of DVD Workshop, and for some unexplainable reason I loathe anything Adobe does, so I've never tried Encore. Nero (www.ahead.de) now has an authoring program as well. To me, DVD Lab is the dark horse; the user interface is suspiciously similar to Maestro. I would not be at all surprised if Oscar, the fellow developing this program, is doing some serious reverse-engineering of the Maestro code. I can guarantee that if he succeeds in getting most of the functionality of Maestro in a sub-$200 price, he will capture much of the PC authoring market in a matter of months. For that matter, wouldn't it be sweet if Sony bought him out just like Jobs did to Spruce?

>>>DVD Lab is fine if you're making home movies or copying DVD's, if you are going to use it for any kind of professional work or for anything that you will be sending to clients or basically you want to be a Professional DVD Authorer I would not use that program. I work in a place where we do DVD duplication and have seen a lot of problems that come out of people not really knowing what they are doing or fully understanding everything within the DVD spec and they can really casue a lot of problems.<<<

So you are saying that all of the out of spec product that has come into the place you work at has been caused because of DVD-Lab? I would be willing to bet that isn't the case. I have worked on films with first time directors who screw up a lot of things because they don't know what they are doing...it has nothing to do with the equipment. I know people who have done layout with QuarkXpress and have had missing fonts and 'out of spec' bleeds and colors for printing....not because of the software but because of user issues. I am 100% sure you can talk to people at labs like Fotokem and Deluxe who will tell you about underexposed or overexposed film coming in - film that was shot with Panavision gear. And damn those Carl Zeiss lenses for allowing people to shoot out of focus!

My point is that DVD-Lab is not a one click piece of software. If people use it expecting something that does it all with no brainwork they will probably do things out of spec. Perhaps duplication houses should do what many printing houses do - have specs available. Many also have layout templates for various programs. Software like Flight Check Pro aid in the whole process - so now that DVD authoring has become so afforadable and "easy" maybe it is time for places like the one you work at to come up with guidlines and "templates" for various software, that way you won't see "people not really knowing what they are doing or fully understanding everything" when they turn over their 'masters' to you.

Excellent posts. I guess the problem many of us have to deal with is laziness. Vegas/DVD-A is so remarkably simple to use I find myself rationalizing rather too often -- why spend the time screwing around with Photoshop to make fancy menus for Encore or ReelDVD when I can just stick in markers, render as MPEG2 then build the DVD in DVD-A in a few minutes?

Unfortunately many of my end users (I build Safety and Training programs 95% of the time) are locked into this silly paradigm wherein they don't want to jump all the way back to the Main Menu when they leave a module accessed via a Sub Menu. Yes, there are some work arounds but, alas, I usually need the darn end actions.

Your options for "sophisticated" authoring are ReelDVD, Encore and, though I have not tried it yet and cannot justify buying it, the new Ulead DVD Workshop (which does DVD-9, DLT, end actions, etc.) If you don't like using Photoshop I'd recommend you investigate DVD Workshop 2 (unless it too requires Photoshop). I am blessed with having trained people available to do the Photoshop work at my day job but at home I have to do it myself and I really am not very skilled with the program, not at all.

I wish there were programs similar to ToolBook II Instructor 8x for DVD authoring (yeah, I know there is no correlation betweeen openscript programming and making DVDs for TV) because at this stage of my life I am heartily fed up with having to learn to use new software every few months. Oh for the days of Sony's BVE 910/BVW 65s&75s being the penultimate editing solution!

Peter