Edius disc burning

[tom hardwick]

I like the ease with which Edius can burn a Blu-ray or DVD straight off the end of the timeline using the 'burn to disc' command, but the menu pages are a bit lifeless without some audio backing. Just wondered if any of you out there had found a way to add audio to the menu.

tom.

[col lamb]

Tom

Funny you should post on this topic as I saw this thread on the GV Edius forum only a couple of days ago.

http://forum.grassvalley.com/forum/show ... hp?t=25437

Not tried it myself

I'd go further than you with regard to Edius's disc burning capabilities and say that it is dire, a simple Menu system is all it can do.

[tom hardwick]

Thanks Col - just what I wanted to know. Sounds like I should upgrade to the latest 6.05 though if I want the improvements.

You call the Edius menu 'dire' but that's a bit harsh isn't it? It is indeed simple but I have a pretty page with 9 little 16:9 colour movies playing in it. I can have the page fade in and out, can have any frame from the timeline as a menu point, have the menu stay as long as I like, even have it not display at all unless the 'disc menu' key is hit on the disc player.

In reality it's all we really need for 99% of our movies. I stick a disc into my player for one reason only - to watch the film. I feel many menu pages are there to show how well authoring has been mastered, not to help me to navigate around the disc.

Different for instructional DVDs of course, and for estate agents and so on who may be showing off many different properties.

tom.

[tom hardwick]

Update time. Edius menu pages now have moving backgrounds with sweet music and have moving video chapter icons as well. It's looking a lot less dire Col, so thanks for the link.

[Michael Slowe]

You said it yourself Tom, all we want surely, is to insert the disc into the player and watch the film? Menus are a darn nuisance, another button to press. Unless of course it is an instructional disc or, as with you, a wedding, when the punters want to go to a particular scene.

[col lamb]

Tom
Edius's DVD creation is dire for anything other than a basic system.

Remember Edius's competition is Premiere (amongst others) and Premiere is bundled with Encore there Edius has to compete.

Vegas comes with DVD Architect.

Its time GV got their act together

That said for editing Edius is very good, its just that Premiere CS 5.5 is now better.

[tom hardwick]

I still think you're being a bit unfair on Edius, Col. If you take any shop selling CS5 and Edius 6, the price difference between the two is always in the region of £230. With CS5 you have to have Encore, like it or not. If Edius was sold with Encore I bet it would still leave change in your pocket.

Ergo: the 'dire' Edius authoring program is a freebie. You can choose to spend your £230 on any authoring program you like.

And as Michael put it, 'menus are a darn nuisance'. I hate them on commercial DVDs and it's the one (the only one) way in which VHS tape was better - you didn't have to wade through pages of menus to get where you wanted to be.

tom.

[col lamb]

Tom

If Edius did not have the disc creation plug in it would be poor value for money at least it will make a basic disc, but overall as I have said Premiere is now better. I switch between using them both and whilst Edius works Premiere does things so much faster.

That said the sooner we get off using discs for anything other than data transfer the better, movies are now better projected from solid state, that is the way forward.

Whilst off topic, with my commercial DVD's and Blu-ray's I rip them to my NAS then they are there without the menu's and without the masses of trailers that are now on the disc before you even get to the menu.

[tom hardwick]

I agree, solid state storage and retrieval has to be better than using the spinning, mechanical disc - especially for us lot. But for the general public? The DVD has proved to be such a success because it's been proved to be reliable, cheap (to buy as well as distribute), and can be played almost anywhere, by any old fool.

A 50gb DLBD is a lot cheaper (about £40 cheaper) than a 64gb SDHC card, and yet they cost the same to post. Of course the BD needs a special BD deck to play it back and the SDHC card needs a very new TV with a card slot, so BD seems to have the edge right now.

tom.

[Dave Watterson]

I really should have changed the heading of this thread which concentrates mainly on DVD/Blu-Ray disc authoring.

Granted the limitations of the Edius one, are there any third party authoring tools anyone can recommend?

Dave