Best DVD authoring program?

[salacious]

Originally Posted by mBox

Adobe Encore for both Mac and PC.

i find it hilarious that i was looking for a goo dvd authoring app when i had encore all along.. thanks for the reminder..

[floh]

Originally Posted by WRP

I bought FCS3 a few months ago for my work system. You have to call Apple and order it specifically through them.

I heard about that. But I'm not going to pay 1000 euros for a DVD authoring program (the only thing I'm gonna use from FCS). As you can see in the last post, I'm struggling with spending 500 on the whole Adobe suite... I'm just a poor PhD student with an expensive hobby...

But in general you are right, they do sell FCS, just not DVD SP individually.

[LethalWolfe]

Originally Posted by floh

I heard about that. But I'm not going to pay 1000 euros for a DVD authoring program (the only thing I'm gonna use from FCS). As you can see in the last post, I'm struggling with spending 500 on the whole Adobe suite... I'm just a poor PhD student with an expensive hobby...

But in general you are right, they do sell FCS, just not DVD SP individually.

I'm sure you could find a copy of FCS 1 or 2 on eBay for cheap. DVD SP has been at version 4 since '05. The only possible problem is if you are running Lion then the older installers won't work, but if you are running Snow Leopard (or earlier) you should be fine.

Lethal

[floh]

Originally Posted by LethalWolfe

I'm sure you could find a copy of FCS 1 or 2 on eBay for cheap. DVD SP has been at version 4 since '05. The only possible problem is if you are running Lion then the older installers won't work, but if you are running Snow Leopard (or earlier) you should be fine.

Lethal

Thanks for the tip, but I'm on Lion. Might be interesting for future readers though.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[DanWilt]

Helpful thread.

On iDVD, I am getting better design results than the guys I hire with DVD SP. I'd rather not buy and learn DVD SP for obvious reasons if I like the looks and functionality I'm achieving with the. No-frills iDVD.

Question is, I'd like to run with iDVD until the DVD apocalypse for some lower end commercial projects for statewide school systems, etc.

Any qualms, if all the players/computers on which I test run it fine? I.e. If I manufacture 1000 DVDs, are there any hesitations I should have about going from an iDVD master?

[mBox]

Originally Posted by DanWilt

Helpful thread.

On iDVD, I am getting better design results than the guys I hire with DVD SP. I'd rather not buy and learn DVD SP for obvious reasons if I like the looks and functionality I'm achieving with the. No-frills iDVD.

How so?
Can you create your own designs in both Motion and static Menu?
How about dealing with compression, I didnt know iDVD has that many options.
Of course it wouldnt be fair to bring in other tech such as Dolby.
Its all moot now since you cant buy DVDSP anymore.
Well maybe on eBay or if you call up Apple personally but itll have to be in FCS (Final Cut Studio 3).

[DanWilt]

To clarify - iDVD templates are enough for me - I can work layout magic on the menu to suit my taste and the application. I don't need to alter template design.

My question remains - should I have qualms going to manufacturing from an iDVD master? Am I missing something, if my local laptop/dvd player tests all work fine?

I see that Final Cut Pro X authors menus, etc. and I'd be open to upgrade if necessary.

[mBox]

Originally Posted by DanWilt

To clarify - iDVD templates are enough for me - I can work layout magic on the menu to suit my taste and the application. I don't need to alter template design.

My question remains - should I have qualms going to manufacturing from an iDVD master? Am I missing something, if my local laptop/dvd player tests all work fine?

I see that Final Cut Pro X authors menus, etc. and I'd be open to upgrade if necessary.

For mastering its up to you. If you are happy with it then go for it.
FCPX basic DVD options are less than iDVD.
It matches with the way things have gone as far as DVD Authoring is concerned.
Basically an afterthought and is pretty low in the scheme of things when it comes to today's standard in deliverables.

[BigNick79]

I'm glad to have found this post. I have a G5 I run FCP 4 and DVDSP 3 on and am now going to get a new iMac to run FCP X on and I thought for sure Apple must be making a DVD authoring program of SOME kind right?? Shockingly the answer is no, which means I'm going to hold on to the G5 to author DVDs on.

The only reason I can see consumer DVD authoring software is disappearing would be because of putting finished video onto devices directly and streaming though the internet on YouTube and the like.

But we still have movies & TV shows released on DVD/Blu-ray, what programs are used to produce these?

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by BigNick79

But we still have movies & TV shows released on DVD/Blu-ray, what programs are used to produce these?

Probably Scenarist, as mentioned three times in this thread, but I cannot find an official website for it, only this Wiki entry and some other threads. Seems the company sold itself.

[Borntorun]

I use adobe encore cs5.1. Added benefit is that it authors bluray as well. You can convert from bluray to DVD within seconds, without having to rebuild anything.

And the integration with photoshop creates endless options and virtually limitless creativity.

[Crowmobe]

Originally Posted by LethalWolfe

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

Thunderbolt was developed by Intel with Technical collaboration from Apple.

[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.

[Byrnes3969]

This topic is very interesting

I have been presenting my films in an online format only. I don't ever bring up DVD's as an option and yet about 20% of my customers still want their film on a physical media.

I'm not going to tell my 20% that they are living in the past.

I still use iDVD and SELL them the product they want! Then I make copies for them and make a hundred dollars MORE! The DVD business is still making money.

If change HAS to come I would suggest learning Adobe Encore a little bit - maybe a casual product sale or two BEFORE Apple kills off iDVD completely. Again as someone pointed out, Apple pulled the trigger on iDVD years too early.

[CaptainChunk]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

Probably Scenarist, as mentioned three times in this thread, but I cannot find an official website for it, only this Wiki entry and some other threads. Seems the company sold itself.

Yep. Rovi bought Sonic Solutions back in 2010 and in late 2012, they EOL'd all the Scenarist authoring applications.