Best DVD authoring program?

[Boisv]

So now that Apple has abandoned both iDVD and DVD Studio Pro, what is the best alternative? What do you use?

I'm looking for a program that will not just burn a DVD, but let me design the menu. I know that Compressor and Toast burn DVDs, but I don't think they're what I'm looking for. I need full color motion menus, text, music, submenus, etc.

What would you guys suggest?

[JasonA]

I still use DVD Studio Pro.

[simsaladimbamba]

DVD Studio Pro.

Look for used Final Cut Studio 2 or 3 offers on eBay, some can be had for as low as 100 USD sometimes.

The other "affordable" solution is Adobe Encore, but it is a different beast altogether.

[LethalWolfe]

What do you need to do that DVD SP currently does not do? If you already own it, I'd just keep using it. If you don't, you can probably find a copy really cheap on eBay because DVDSP has been at version 4 since like '05.

The first DVD SP alternative that comes to my mind is Adobe Encore (I don't have any first hand experience with it though).


Lethal

[Boisv]

Originally Posted by LethalWolfe

What do you need to do that DVD SP currently does not do?

Nothing really. I have iDVD and DVDSP, and I'm still using them (as well as FCP7). I'm not in any hurry to switch; I'm really just wondering what alternatives (if any) are out there right now. I'm hoping to find a program that I actually like better, but I'm not holding my breath.

Also, I'm sort of shocked by the whole thing. I knew last June that Apple was abandoning DVDSP, but I just found out about iDVD fairly recently. I'm shocked because there doesn't seem to be another company offering any comparable alternative. I guess Encore is the closest thing we have.

Usually, when Apple suddenly drops support for a product, it is because either Apple has a better product, or it is a need already being covered by a third party. Apple dropped iWeb along with MobileMe, but at least one could argue that there are cheap alternatives to iWeb out there. I haven't found a program comparable to iDVD.

It's funny. In spite of all the fuss being made over Final Cut, I'm actually far more upset over iDVD and iWeb. I use them all the time.

[alksion]

I would say Adobe Encore given that fact that you can literally do whatever you want in terms of design. Only downside is that it is quite buggy actually and often force closes more than I would like.

[harddriveowner]

Apple stopped them because it tries to stay ahead of the curve not behind. Thunderbolt (just like Firewire years ago) was a year or two ahead of its time. Steve Jobs believed correctly that DVD's are going to go the way of VHS, CD's, 8-tracks. Those of us who still like DVD's, such as myself, can keep making great DVD's with DVDSP. It still is a great program, but you have to be blind to not see that DVD's will be extinct very soon. The internet and the Cloud are the future, (maybe even Apple TV who knows what they have in store with that at this point in time). DVD's are so limited in their size and their durability. Open your eyes.

[LethalWolfe]

Originally Posted by harddriveowner

Apple stopped them because it tries to stay ahead of the curve not behind. Thunderbolt (just like Firewire years ago) was a year or two ahead of its time. Steve Jobs believed correctly that DVD's are going to go the way of VHS, CD's, 8-tracks. Those of us who still like DVD's, such as myself, can keep making great DVD's with DVDSP. It still is a great program, but you have to be blind to not see that DVD's will be extinct very soon. The internet and the Cloud are the future, (maybe even Apple TV who knows what they have in store with that at this point in time). DVD's are so limited in their size and their durability. Open your eyes.

Lightpeak (aka Thunderbolt) is from intel, not Apple. IEEE 1394a was developed by a consortium, not just by Apple (and it might have taken off more if Apple did charge high fees for the FireWire name). After a decade of plummeting CD sales digital downloads have finally, by 0.3%, outsold CD sales in the US (vinyl is having record breaking sales btw).

Apple stopped developing DVD SP because it doesn't fit in their version of reality (not to mention that Blu-ray is a competitor to the iTMS) and, unfortunately, Apple's version of reality isn't always, well, real. Questions about authoring apps come up all the time on many of the forums I go to. Posting a video on YT or sending someone a small H.264 file via YouSendIt doesn't always fit the bill for what people need or want.

You might want to take your own advice and open your eyes because the world is a bigger place than just Apple's walled garden.


Lethal

[Boisv]

Originally Posted by harddriveowner

The internet and the Cloud are the future... Open your eyes.

Huh? I just asked what people use to author DVDs. Why do you assume that I'm clinging to optical media like a life raft? Believe me, my eyes are very open to this.

I am already moving my company away from DVD, offering videos as quicktime and avi files on USB drives as an alternative. It's starting to take off, but right now, in the present, not the future, most of my customers still want a DVD or a blu-ray. I've been expecting Apple to ditch these programs at some point, but IMO they pulled the trigger a bit too soon.

And Apple is right, optical media is going away. But that's besides the point. They can talk about the future of the industry being totally online until they're blue in the face. It won't change the fact that we are living in the present. DVD and blu ray are certainly on their way out, but they're still long from dead. It's a slow process.

And believe me, I want them to die. Burned DVDs are the largest area of complaint that I've noticed in the event videography industry. That's speaking from my own company's experiences as well as other companies I've worked with. They're unreliable, they're cheap, they're slowly becoming obsolete, and many players have a difficult time playing them correctly. They skip. They freeze. Sometimes they can't even be read. I hate them. I'll be happier when I can export a video, put it on a thumb drive, maybe upload it to Dropbox or Vimeo, and move on to the next project.

But until then, DVD is still king.

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Originally Posted by Keebler

Compressor 4 offers blu ray support, but very basic menu design... I certainly would like to 'dress' it up a bit more as it won't even do chapter selections (like you can in DVDSP).

Will do. I'll give Compressor a go too. I've actually never used Compressor to author a DVD.

Originally Posted by Keebler

I've been looking at Encore, but from what I can see, not a product which can be purchased by itself unfortunately.

I was just saying yesterday in another thread...

"Right now Adobe is pushing to get disgruntled FCP7 users to switch over to Premier. I'd like to see them do a similar push with Encore. Offer it as a stand alone program. Market it to Premier/FCP7/FCPX/AVID editors alike as an alternative to DVDSP. It seems they could make a killing. It could also help to eventually convert people to Premier."

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Originally Posted by WRP

You asked for the BEST DVD authoring program and the answer is Scenarist. But it costs a ton and you have to buy a PC.

Thanks. I'm probably not switching to a PC anytime soon, but this is good to know.

Heck, if Apple discontinues the 17" MBP and the MacPro, as has been rumored*, then I'll definitely check this program out.



*But personally, I doubt it.

[phrehdd]

Originally Posted by harddriveowner

Apple stopped them because it tries to stay ahead of the curve not behind. Thunderbolt (just like Firewire years ago) was a year or two ahead of its time. Steve Jobs believed correctly that DVD's are going to go the way of VHS, CD's, 8-tracks. Those of us who still like DVD's, such as myself, can keep making great DVD's with DVDSP. It still is a great program, but you have to be blind to not see that DVD's will be extinct very soon. The internet and the Cloud are the future, (maybe even Apple TV who knows what they have in store with that at this point in time). DVD's are so limited in their size and their durability. Open your eyes.

How interesting - while streaming is at an all time high, so are DVD and Blu Ray disc sales.

As for CDs, they are still being sold quite well. Items like 8-track died out because of cassettes - this was akin to beta vs vhs and not due to "advancements."

All sorts of media and their reader/writers hang for a while and later are replaced. The most obvious was the floppy drives. However, they had a long long life and one can still buy floppy drives and also transfer any data on them to other media or drives. What Apple is doing is not staying ahead of the curve but forcing a change to the "curve" given they sell/rent downloads. This is rather obvious and blatant.

Firewire came out with not enough support and cost way too much at that time. It lost out to USB early on and now USB3 pretty much killed Firewire. Thunderbolt is nice but way too expensive for the average user. It might go down in price but will still be a premium in costs compared to items like USB3 and the upcoming version of USB. Apple is not giving us advancements but priming its buyer base and that is the reality of how Apple controls various markets.

- I use Apple because I can't stand Windows and OS/2 is gone.

[mBox]

Originally Posted by LethalWolfe

What do you need to do that DVD SP currently does not do? If you already own it, I'd just keep using it. If you don't, you can probably find a copy really cheap on eBay because DVDSP has been at version 4 since like '05.b

No kidding, and its not like DVD technology has been updated of late.
For one offs Ive been spitting them out of Toast and now FCPX.
I use DVDSP for older projects and sometimes new ones (rarely).

[Atomic Ed]

I am also trying to find a decent authoring application for the mac. I was using dvdit on the pc and idvd on the mac.

However dvdit is pc based and at this stage im not sure it is even supported anymore, the people that say the optical media is being phased out are somewhat correct, but only in the sense the industry wants it this way, not so much the consumers. For many financial reasons, the industry would love to enslave us all into making monthly payments or fees for doing such things as we always have on our computers for free. Optical media to them is a dead end to them being able to charge us constantly because once you own the software and content, it is yours to do with what you please secure on your own personal storage. Now the whole cloud concept is basically the same thing for them, wishing us in to digital slavery. There are many out there that do not see the cloud based computing as anything more than what it really is. I and many others, do not care to store my personal data outside of my own secure storage and believe it or not optical media is a big part of that for us.

So while apple and many others who have great financial dreams of controlling all that you do via their online stores, storage mediums, etc, I believe there are many out there who are not falling for it. It all kind of remonds me of the DRM era the industires were all pushing down our throats for years and back then everyone was convinced all media will eventually contain DRM, but now over the years we saw that approach not only bankrupt some players in the industry but most by now have since abondoned placing drm in their files, yes even the apple itunes store no longer uses drm, except for video.

Anyway the sad fact here on why we are all suffering trying to find decent modern dvd burning, authoring, slide show making, etc softwares, is due to this whole greddy industry push to phase out optical media and therefore push you right into their costly model they are building.

It is my hope this concept eventually suffers the way DRM did and in a few years we will all be able to enjoy our media on our own terms again with software advancements again.


Just grabbed this program and thought I would share it with everyone http://m.free-press-release.com/news...334569469.html
Nice to see new applications still coming out for dvd slideshow making. I havent tried it yet but it looks good if not basic.

[SPG]

One of the big reasons why DVD authoring programs haven't changed in years is that the DVD spec hasn't changed. In fact, I do most of my DVD authoring on a Sonic Creator system running on OS9. Yep...OS9. I don't do any encoding on that machine, which brings me to another point...Compressor SUX for MPEG2 encodes. It does a lot of other things quite well, but DVDs compressed at anything less than wide open look like poop with lots of artifacts.
To the point of whether optical discs are going away, yeah, sure, eventually. But right now they're still a great delivery medium with near 100% saturation in developed countries, and for producers of content they're still a big chunk of the revenue. They may be selling more online views, but the returns are still so much lower per unit that for a lot of producers they actually lose income as those cheap views online eat away at the more lucrative disc sales.

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Oh yeah..the original question. Encore if you have CS, but be warned that it is bug riddled. DVD SP still gets the job done and it's more stable. I personally don't like either of them for discs going to retail, but unless you're going to make a career out of DVD authoring (ha!) you shouldn't even bother looking at Scenarist or Creator.

[mBox]

Originally Posted by SPG

One of the big reasons why DVD authoring programs haven't changed in years is that the DVD spec hasn't changed. In fact, I do most of my DVD authoring on a Sonic Creator system running on OS9...

Wow that's really dating back for me Funny you mentioned Creator. We just moved our dept to another building and I had the pleasure of throwing away all the recyclables in this case a ton of Adobe manuals and a set of Sonic DVD Creator ones.
I used it for a few years but it held us back with Motion menus and other tidbits that was easily replaced by DVD Studio Pro (at the time).
I do have to agree that Sonics real time encoder was by far the best.

[WRP]

Originally Posted by mBox

Wow that's really dating back for me Funny you mentioned Creator. We just moved our dept to another building and I had the pleasure of throwing away all the recyclables in this case a ton of Adobe manuals and a set of Sonic DVD Creator ones.
I used it for a few years but it held us back with Motion menus and other tidbits that was easily replaced by DVD Studio Pro (at the time).
I do have to agree that Sonics real time encoder was by far the best.

Oh, you mean back when half the DVDs you burned turned out to be coasters and would only play on a handful of the DVD players on the market? At a whopping $6 per DVD. Yeah, those were the days... haha.

[mBox]

Originally Posted by WRP

Oh, you mean back when half the DVDs you burned turned out to be coasters and would only play on a handful of the DVD players on the market? At a whopping $6 per DVD. Yeah, those were the days... haha.

Wait wait when did you get $6 DVDs? Crap the DVD-A we're almost $30 each when I was doing it
Again loved the Encoder hated the system.
Im sure Scenarist and whatever Sonic is offering is better now but who authors DVDs these days

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Originally Posted by Boisv

Is there an alternative program or process that you'd recommend for creating mpeg-2?

For DVDs we used BitVice.
Very powerful on the Mac side.
Not sure if its still available.
We havent upgraded since nothing has been done to DVD encoding in many moons.

[Boisv]

Originally Posted by SPG

Compressor SUX for MPEG2 encodes. It does a lot of other things quite well, but DVDs compressed at anything less than wide open look like poop with lots of artifacts.

Is there an alternative program or process that you'd recommend for creating mpeg-2?