You will find that PC Magazine always rates the manufacturer’s that advertise with them as Editor’s Choice, the Best Software, etc. PC Magazine reviews are really infomercials. Most of them just regurgitate what’s written on the box. They rated Pinnacle Studio 8 the Best Editing Software also and it’s possibly the worst quality software this industry has ever seen.

In my opinion, MyDVD is one of the least functional DVD authoring applications you can buy. I downloaded a lot of sub-$100 DVD Authoring software a year ago before I made a purchase, and MyDVD was at the bottom of my list. It’s not even capable of setting chapter points in your video and their forums looked just like Pinnacle’s with people threatening to sue for their money back because it didn’t work.

I now use Vegas4+DVD but prior to that I select Ulead DVD MovieFactory. I also considered Dazzle DVD Complete which I thought was very good, but Pinnacle Systems bought it and killed it. There are a lot more DVD Authoring applications to choose from now, then a year ago when I was looking; so download all the demos and trials and see for yourself.

My rule of thumb is: if a company doesn’t offer a trial or demo, I wouldn’t buy from them. If they don’t allow you to use their product first, there is probably a very good reason. (i.e., they are hiding something) Also check out the support forms of each product and see if customers are helping each other get the most out of the software (like here) or if they’re just trying to get the software to work at all. This is a red flag to stay away.

~jr

shmulb: I had been using MyDVD version 5 until recently to author and burn captured MPEG files that I edited in other programs (first Studio 8 and now ULead VS7). I was unable to burn playable DVD's in Studio 8 (which came with my Dazzle DVC-150) so I tried Sonic and it worked. I would use Studio 8 to edit out the commercials and then would import the resulting MPEG files into MyDVD to add chapter points and menus before burning. (I tried editing one project in MyDVD and gave up... )

The main complaint about MyDVD 5 is that your options are _very_ limited. You can choose the main menu from one of the templates, and for that page you can edit the text heading and captions under the thumbnail buttons, and can also select the scene displayed in the thumbnail. But the submenus are fixed and cannot be edited directly: the title of the submenu is the same as the caption under the corresponding thumbnail in the main menu. On the submenus you cannot select the frame to be displayed on the thumbnail.
And the captions under the submenu thumbnails are generated automatically with a number added to the filename of the video file. The workaround for that last limitation is to rename your video files creatively... ;)

Your other options in MyDVD are very basic... they don't give you a lot of choices for anything. You can select the number of DVDs to burn but you cannot select the burn speed.

On the plus side, MyDVD does allow you to transcode your audio track to AC-3 (Dolby Digital) which gives you more room on the DVD for video. But there is no option for MPEG audio, only uncompressed PCM audio which is a real space hog. The sound quality of the Dolby Digital audio tracks leaves much to be desired and I find that it sounds better if I turn off Surround Sound on my AV receiver.

One last feature that I find to be indispensible: among the very limited options you can check a box in the Edit Style dialog box to "Set video to play first" so that the crappy looking menus aren't displayed when you insert the DVD. While playing the DVD you can skip ahead to the next chapter and if you really need to use the menus you can hit the menu button on the remote.

Summary: Sonic MyDVD 5 is a very simple program aimed at entry level videomaniacs, with very few options to customize your menus. But at least on my computer it managed to produce DVDs which play properly on the set top DVD decks I've tried.

Steve A.

P.S. The menu has an item to check for web updates, but it will just tell you that you have the latest version of the program... when in fact they have an update which I just tried out. The patch adds a "save to disk" option for burning which is okay, but it did mess around with the text displayed under your main menu thumbnails: if you try to edit the text it will automatically add the word "Chapters" after the text you entered. If you decide to edit the chapter points it will also add "Chapters" to the existing thumbnail caption (like "Episode One Chapters Chapters"). I believe that the patch also updates DVD burner support but unless your drive doesn't work with the shipped version you might want to avoid the patch. :(

P.P.S. I just switched to the trial version of ULead Movie Factory 3 Disc Creator and it does everything that MyDVD did for me, but much better on all counts.

Thanks for the info. I,m dropping this one from my list. I currently use Ulead DVD Movie factory 2. I,ve tried to download the trial for 3 but I cant get it to start the download. (Tried on 3 seperate PC,s with different operating systems and Internet connections.)
Does any body know if DVDlab can take an edited AVI from Screenblast and output it as an MPEG2 to a DVD after I,ve added menus, or will I need another encoding program.

DVDLab will only work with MPEG-2, but Screenblast can produce that. You just need to save it to your HD and then import it into DVDLab.

Ian G.

shmulb said; "I currently use Ulead DVD Movie factory 2. I,ve tried to download the trial for 3 but I cant get it to start the download. (Tried on 3 seperate PC,s with different operating systems and Internet connections.) "

Maybe the ULead FTP site was down... keep trying because the program is absolutely killer:

ftp://ftp.ulead.com/pub/Trial/dmf3/dmf3_trial_e.exe

You might want to make sure that your browser is set up to download files from ftp addresses.

I just tried out the full motion thumbnails and while they take extra time to render they sure look slick!

--Good luck!

Steve A.

I have a question along these lines. I got spoiled using Studio 8 as my first exposure to DVD authoring... the program was incredibly buggy for video editing and I wound up throwing up my hands and buying Screenblast. BUT, the DVD authoring in Studio was awesome; I could create custom menus, set my own chapter points and choose my own thumbnails (or select buttons that don't use thumbnails at all) and I could position the buttons anywhere on the menu that I wanted. I wound up editing in Screenblast, rendering each finished project to an AVI file, then bringing a few of them into Studio 8 to create the menu and burn. Worked great for my first few short DVD's.

The party was over when I burned my first long DVD's (3 copies each of 2 different 40-60 minute discs) and now I'm having trouble playing them with any consistency. After all the other problems I had with Studio, I suspect it's the software that's causing me problems with burning good DVD's.

If anyone is familiar with the features I described which are available for disc authoring in Studio, can you suggest an affordable alternative? As I said, I've already got the editing portion covered with Screenblast. Just need a good DVD menu creator and burning program. Is there anything worthwhile for $100 or less?