Can you recommend a DVD authoring program?

[Dave Watterson]

As has been said elsewhere on these forums, Edius editing systems have many strengths, but DVD authoring is not one of them. It is fine for basic jobs like: main film, making of, chapter selection. But it is hard to control what happens when a chapter is running and the user clicks the remote control for Menu.

Adobe Encore does a good job, but buying the Adobe suite just for that seems over-the-top.

I have tried freebies like DVD Styler and find them OK for basic jobs.

I need to be able to add a choice of subtitles and have several different options for getting around the disc content.

All help welcomed ...

[tom hardwick]

Not sure what you mean by this Dave, 'But it is hard to control what happens when a chapter is running and the user clicks the remote control for Menu.'

Control what happens? With Edius the film stops playing and page 1 of the menu page(s) appears, and asks you what you want to watch next. What else could happen?

[Dave Watterson]

Often the chapter replays.

[col lamb]

Dave

I am an Encore man through and through BUT a possible Edius workaround may be thus (if you have the disc space): -

Create multiple timelines (sequences) each with the same video content

(create the first one and then paste that into the others by dragging sequence 1 into sequence 2 etc)

Add what you want to each timeline

Point the menu buttons to the appropriate timeline.
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I must stress that I do not know if Edius will allow this as after a couple of attempts to use the very basic disc burning plug-in I gave up and now I export an MPG file and use Encore

[tom hardwick]

How strange Dave - you're using Edius6? So your multi-chaptered, Edius produced DVD/BD is happily playing. You hit the player's 'disc menu' button and you're not returned to the menu page, it simply restarts playing the chapter you're on, as if you'd hit the I<< button?

My Samsung player has three buttons, marked 'disc menu', 'menu' and 'title menu', and sometimes this confuses me as 'menu' is the player's set up menu.

tom.

[mentalgoat]

I know this thread was a while ago, but I'm tearing my hair out with authoring at the moment.
Using Encore, (probably a bit haphazadly, but I believe correctly) I've thus far made some shiny coasters, and a dvd that will only play one of the titles in one DVD player.

I used to use Nero before I upgraded my system, does anyone have any feedback on Nero burming Rom 12?

I upgraded my kit to use my new camera and have thus far failed to get any playable disc off the beast.

grrrrr!

[col lamb]

Encore is a good programme but it does have some quirks

Whenever a project is completed but before the disc is built you always have to perform a "Check Project" action, if there are any dead links then this will show which they are

The Flowchart is a great tool to use to check as the links are made

If all goes OK and as you are ready to burn a disc, do not do so, export it as an ISO file

If there is a problem the ISO writing will fail

Once you have the ISO file download and use IMGBURN to actually burn the disc, it is far better then Encore's inbuilt burner

There is a known problem that Adobe have failed to rectify and even in the CS6 suite it is still not resolved fully, if you look on the Adobe Forum there was a recent post (more a rant really) about this problem

[tom hardwick]

Col, can you explain more fully what you mean when you talk about Encore's inbuilt burner? How can Encore affect the actual burning of the pits into the disc's surface and why is it that IMGBURN is better at this?

[col lamb]

Tom

When Encore burns a disc it does so from within a pop up Window (similar to Edius) and the burn process seems to be where the problem lays

It is all down to the programming code that is used, not only does it have to transcode the project files, menus, button operations etc it also has to check the disc and the actual burner and then to complete the burn process

It is a coding issue that Adobe seem to fail to rectify, in fact CS6 does seem to be worst than earlier versions, just why they cannot solve it is a mystery

From my own experience the more complex the menu system the more likelyhood of errors occuring, just recently my own burning have produced some coasters despite the project check routine giving no errors and also the fact that an ISO file was made OK

The problem is compounded by a free programme (IMGBURN) which can burn an ISO file to disc with no problems, the IMGBURN developers can get it right yet Adobe cannot

[Roy1]

I can recommend the method advocated by Col. I have used it without any problem. It was from one of Col,s postings that I learnt about INGBURN.. A remarkable free programme.

[Dave Watterson]

This is back to my original question. I want a program that can "author" a DVD - i,e, set up all the menus and options, subtitles etc and transcode the files. I like setting up discs so that different types of user can follow a different menu-stream .

The actual burning to disc is easily accomplished by tools like the excellent IMGBURN.

I battled with early version of Adob Encore which was great when it worked ... but I took to saving a project after every step of the menu making process so that I could revert to the last working version when the next step crashed it.

For simple menus Edius Neo works for me.
For simple menus the free DVD Styler works most of the time for me.
DVD Flick never seems to do quite what I want .

Despite my usual penny-pinching attitude I am willing to pay for a robust program that can be relied on to make complex menus / sub-menus and so on ...

[daveswan]

Not sure if it's still around, but my favorite has been DVDLab Pro. Not cheepo but not horrendous either and gives you full control over what goes where and does what. Faor a few dollers more you get Copy To DVD which is a very good burner.

My only reason for moving away (To AvidDVD by Sonic) was to burn Blu-Ray discs.

HTH

[Dave Watterson]

Thanks, Dave. That has set me off on a new line of research. The Pro version is $250 but perhaps one of the same team's simpler offerings will do what I need. When I am not rushing round on Christmas preparations I will look closely into it.
Dave