Next level up from DVDA

farss wrote on 7/27/2003, 12:44 AM
I know this should be in the DVDA forum but not many listeners over there.

I've used DVDA a fair bit and I'm 100% happy with it, so much so I've convinced a medium sized duplication house to use it for authoring.

My question is, what does anyone see as the next level up, I've seen a Scenarist system for hire here at $5,500 per week and thats a bit out of my league.

What I'd like is multiple audio tracks and end action controls.

I kind of feel there's so many low end products that do a job not that much inferior to DVDA that its hard to differentiate what I can do with DVDA and what the kid next door can do.

While I'm on the subject I also auther many VCDs using Nero and TMPGEnc, again it produces a good playable result but like DVDA I cannot utilise the full capability of the VCD format.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated, I guess I'm looking in the USD 1,000 price range or under.

Comments

pb wrote on 7/27/2003, 10:12 AM
Sonic Solutions ReelDVD. Multiple audio tracks, subtitling, DLT output and Scenarist compatibility. I got it for 599 USD but I think it is back up to 699$. It is not easy to learn but once mastered able to do pretty well whatever you want. You also need Photoshop or Photo Impact for making the Menus. DVD-A is far more pleasant to use and not nearly as fussy about media specs but, as you pointed out, a bit limited in its present state.

Peter
craftech wrote on 7/27/2003, 11:34 AM
A hardware encoder would be the most logical next step for a dramatic improvement.

John
alfredsvideo wrote on 7/27/2003, 4:23 PM
Have a look at DVDLab at: http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/index.html
farss wrote on 7/27/2003, 5:17 PM
I did know about DVDLab, maybe I should give it a go, you certainly cannot complain about the price.

I don't think a hardware encoder is going to have much impact on the finished product, sure its going to make the process a lot faster but that's about all.
riredale wrote on 7/27/2003, 5:23 PM
I've tried lots of different authoring systems, and agree that ReelDVD is probably the next logical choice. Problem is that, while it claims to do multiple audio programs, those programs cannot be selected from a menu, so you need to put up some sort of page saying "pick the other audio language using your remote's 'audio' button." That's not how it's done in Hollywood.

DVD Lab may be a big hit, since it is already pretty nice and the author (just one guy) says he has big plans for it.

It could turn out that the new authoring program from Adobe might be spectacular, though I personally intensely dislike any program that comes from them--don't know why.

The ultimate programs are Scenarist and Maestro. Scenarist, as you mentioned, is currently available but expensive. Maestro was a program from Spruce and was bought out by Apple two years ago and promptly discontinued. You can find copies for sale here and there (try Google), and it's wonderful--easy to use and incredibly powerful.

Apple presumably has had the Maestro guys working on the next version for the Macintosh. I guess you could always buy a Mac and just consider it as a rather heavy and expensive "dongle" for the Maestro-like software that you could then run on it...

As for hardware encoding, I have never seen the benefit. In theory, a software encoder could do a much better job of encoding, simply because it would be able to take its time and it would be easily modified as improvements are discovered. The real killer to MPEG2 encoding is video noise. Hollywood gets beautiful results at low bitrates because their images are noise-free compared to what we get with prosumer miniDV camcorders.
wobblyboy wrote on 7/28/2003, 2:15 AM
If you're not in too big of a hurry, I would wait and see what the next version of DVDA looks like. With all the talk about multiple tracks and end of play action I expect that we will see some goodies in the next version.
farss wrote on 7/28/2003, 6:36 AM
Riredale,
you are absolutely spot on abou noise. I've done one DVD from Beta SP that was shot with broadcast cameras. Even though we had first down converted to DV it looked great!

From what I've seen with mpeg encoders even the bad ones do a good job on very clean video, anything that comes off VHS really shows up the difference.

Wobblyboy,
maybe yours is the best idea, I've invested not just money but also time coming to grips with DVDA, not that it's not a breeze to use, but its a bit quirky in places.

There's just he odd thing that you come accross that you think would be just so much slicker if only you could do it in DVDA. For example I had to split one video accross two DVDs, so at the end of the first one I had a nice graphic that says Please Insert DVD 2, but I can't freeze on that, sure I can hold it for a while but eventually it goes back to the root menu. Much nicer if it timed out to a looping screen saver type of thing in case the audience had fallen asleep.

All the other smick things that others want to do don't hold much interest for me, I was reading a tutorial on DVD Studio Pro on how to create random playing orders. Great idea and very clever stuff but given that half the population can't program a VCR to do a timer recording, all these tricks are doing is putting the viewing public off your product.

End of sermon.
Jsnkc wrote on 7/28/2003, 10:10 AM
I would go with a Sonic Fusion system. You can get one with a nice SD-1000 encoder card for around $18,000-20,000 these days, maybe even cheaper if you get a used system. IT is a very professional autoring system that will allow you to do basically everything within the DVD spec. I messed around with DvdIt, DVD-A, MyDVD, ReelDVD, DVD Studio Pro, and programs like that, but none of them really offers everything you need in the DVD World. So gald I got my Fusion system!
farss wrote on 7/28/2003, 5:37 PM
I'm certain your Fusion system does a beautiful job!
Unfortunate thing is the cost, that's a year pay for Joe Average over here. You'd have to be authoring a lot of DVDs to recoup your costs or else authoring for people that are producing bulk impressions where the initial authoring charge can be justified.

For someone like myself and no doubt most of the DVDA users it just isn't a viable option.

On top of that it only takes a developer from the outfield (maybe DVD Lab?) to write something that can most of what the high end product can do and the value of that product takes a nose dive.

It seems like the world of high end DVD production is a closed shop. Those that have invested in the toolsets are not going to be very happy when us mortals can do the same job for a fraction of the price. Its obviously not in the interests of the existing software houses to rock the boat either.

But it does leave a gaping hole and nature does hate a vacuum.