SoFo, like almost all software companies have a policy of not revealing beforehand what may be in the next release. I hope they include DVD authoring or at least soon develop a seperate application. I agree, most of what is out there is either very basic, or if it does have a lot of features is way over priced costing hundreds of dollars for what is IMO simplisitc processing.

Someone needs to fill in the middle ground. A nice balance of feature at a reasonable price. I think the big thing missing from the lower priced packages is little or no control over HOW the pages for chapters look being forced to pick from a limited handful of canned templates.

So far I've settled on Ulead's DVD Movie Factory for my personal needs. Its main fault is a limited choice of templates.

What I would like to see is a menu driven template builder, that the end user could customize, maybe something along the lines of Flash or Visual Basic where you could drop in buttons, maybe have some basic graphic tools, stuff like that.

As far as generating the necessary overhead files, picking chapter points, burning the actual DVD, that's all very basic and straight forward programming. Why I'm not about to give any company hundreds of dollars for what I know is at best a week or two work for any reasonablly talented programmer. I'm old school. Software Engineer, is a bit over the top for me. However that said, I do have to tip my hat to the SoFo guys, for the job they did on Vegas which is one slick piece of work regardless if they fancy themselves programmers or software engineers. <wink>

So far I've settled on Ulead's DVD Movie Factory for my personal needs. Its main fault is a limited choice of templates.


What about AC-3 audio? It doesn't have it and I would consider that a bigger fault.

Not for personal use it isn't. At least not for my purposes.

I use DVD Complete, written by DVDCre8 and marketed by Dazzle. It has good menu customization (albeit through a scripting language), motion menus, motion backgrounds, chapter points, etc.. It does NOT have AC-3 however. $99.

What really need is possibility to make surround 5.1 sound. Alike Acid4.0.
But UI of VV close to Spruce Maestro (dvdauthoring program) :-))...

No one has mentioned one of the "biggies" in DVD authoring. Sonic (www.sonic.com). Their ReelDVD will encode Dolby Digital, it also handles 8 different audio streams, and subtitles. It's also $999.00. Sonic's DVDit PE is $600 and encodes Dolby DIgital but only 1 audio stream, not sure about subtitles. DVDit SE $299 cuts out the Dolby Digital. Ulead DVD WOrkshop is a real nice program. It feels more professional than alot of the other programs. IT's more inline with DVDit SE. DVDWS is $299 it handles 1 audio stream, no Dolby, no subtitles. Like the others it has motion menues, motion buttons and such. It will also not regender DVD "legal" files. I create mpg2 in Vegas and find the authoring in DVDWS to be very quick and easy.

jack

DVDit PE currently does NOT do subtitles or motion menus.

Motion menus are slated to be added to the next version which was stated to be released "this fall" but is quickly looking more like "this winter" or "next spring".

If I were looking to purchase today, I would seriously look at ReelDVD.

DVD Workshop will handle AC3, but it has to be muxed with the elementary video stream into an mpg before bringing into the program. Not a big deal, IMO.

Its amusing how people see things differently. Because others were raving about it, I downloaded a trial of Ulead's DVD Workshop, already having their DVD Movie Factory. I expected something special. I found the interface clumsy and anything but professional. Considering the price difference ($49 verses $299)and the minimal additional features I wouldn't use it if was totally free. In other words a huge rip-off, in my never humble opinion. I should pay SIX times the price just to get motion menus and some other questionable "features"? Not this consumer.

Come on, SoFo, I know you guys can come up with a really good DVD authoring package at a reasonable price that will blow the others out of the water. What are you waiting for?

It may use AC-3, but how do you encode it? DVDit PE and ReelDVD have a built-in encoder for AC-3.

Pinnacle Impression Pro will allow two video angles , 8 audio tracks , 32 subtitle tracks for quite a bit less cash than DVDit PE let alone ReelDVD.

It will also allow you to import ac-3 files (stereo or 5.1) but doesn't include an encoder for it. With the Acid Pro ac-3 plug-in due this month encoding won't be a concern.