I have played around with some demo's of a few. Encore dvd is very good I am sure, but a tad complicated for my time. Uleads movie factory is good, but it doesn't seem to have enough menu's and extra special effect options. Maybe it's because it's a demo ver. What are your guy's/gals opinions on the best software for ease of use and most functionality?
DVD-Lab Pro has more bells and whistles than you can shake a stick at, and once you've done the reading, it really is quite a versatile and powerful authoring tool. Check it out here: http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dvdlabpro.html
I dont know about bells and whistles but DVDsanta is the simplest one ive used so far, and the results are pretty amazing. Another pro is it doesnt take that much time to convert from .avi or .wmv or anyother format to DVD and burn total process about one and a half hour. It cuts the middle man of having to turn into MPG or MPEG then to DVD.
well like i said i wasnt refering to the "Bells and whistles" but to simplicity. I prefer to keep things simple.
I have been using dvd-lab pro for about 2 weeks now and i absolutly love it. Like kokomo said, the program is very versitile and i agree with him. ive tried ulead and dvd-lab pro puts it to shame. but when i first got dvd-lab i was overwelmed with all the options, i didnt know where to start, i almost gave up on it. then i found for beginners using dvd-lab pro and that helped me get started and now im on my own and still have lots more to learn, but overall, i am pretty comfortable with it now. here is the site for beginners using dvd lab pro: http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=220092
haven't got a chance to try DVDLab Pro yet, but I love Encore 1.0 on first try. Took me sometime to discover its features, but it was worth my time. Got some useful features for me: - Its integration with Photoshop CS/CS2 is definately the best. - Button Routing feature is very customizable. - AC3 encoding - CSS protection - Check Links The only annoying thing so far with this version is that it can do only 1 set of Video + Audio files on the Timeline. It said something like video files should be edited in video editors like Premiere before proceed to Encore, sux. Since I mainly transfer camcorder tapes into DVD, I prefer to have the capture software splits my detected scenes into seperate files, then it's easier to make chapters later. So I thought it would be a lot more useful to drag & drop the splitted files into the Timeline where I can point the chapter marks at, but then it only allows to work with 1 file, so gotta scroll back and forth in one long track to find where I want the chapters to be. Don't know if the newer version 1.5 fix this or not. I guess DVDLab Pro doesn't have this restriction, right? Can anybody tell if DVDLab Pro has most of Encore's features & some other cool ones?
Thanks for all the info guys. I just got a copy of dvdlab pro 1.5. What encoding software would you guys recommend to go with it?
WinAVI allows standard conversion between most popular formats. Mainconcept is as fast and more powerful Canopus Procoder is superior to the previous, although not that fast In my humble opinion, Mainconcept manages most of formats and its speed is interesting....
Thanks! I wrote that Combine DLP with Mainconcept, and you've got speed and versatility. Add a good AC3 encoder, and you're done.
Some people ran the comparision tests of popular encoders & posted the results at videohelp.com, check it out: MPEG2 Encoder test(DV source), CCE vs Procoder vs TMPGEnc vs MC vs Vegas http://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=743#743 MPEG2 Encoder test(XviD source), CCE vs TMPGEnc vs Procoder vs MC vs QuEnc http://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=742#742 I like TMPGEnc since it gives very good video quality & it's cheap compare to Procoder, but its AC3 plug-in only works for 2-channel. Newer versions of Procoder & MainConcepts seem to have lower quality than the old ones, check the tests in the links above. I thought some people said that MainConcepts is good at PAL but terrible at NTSC, or vice versa.
Those comparisons are not much use. If everyone had exactly the same source file, then one could objectively say one encoder is better than another, on THAT type of file. Tmpgenc is tediously slow, even on faster settings. Well supported, cheap. Mainconcept is fast, good to excellent quality (depending on source). Decent support, good price. Canopus is excellent quality, but also slower, good for DV-AVI and PAL/NTSC conversions. Expensive! CCE is good at everything, providing you want to learn scripting to use avisynth. Way overpriced, considering it's miserable GUI.
Hi all DVDLab is very thourough. Kind of expensive though. Is there any simpler software on the market that can CUT COMMERCIALS out of tv shows? I dont need to program everything. -John C
jcvmf214 You don't need an authoring tool to cut commercials out from the tv show, you need another tool which allows video managing such as Adobe Premiere for instance. I think that VirtualDub allows to do exactly what you say and for free! Rebootjim has just explained in another thread this week how to do so. Check this thread to find out how... http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/199766 About DVDLab Pro being expensive... well I think that for the capabilities it has it's cheap, but then it's my humble opinion!
I have recently migrated from DVD-Lab to Adobe's new Encore 1.5. It's not particularly polished yet, but this application ties extremely nicely into Adobe Photoshop CS2 and is VERY powerful. Prepare for fairly hard work (wizards are non-existient) but the results look very professional. I grew tired of DVD Lab's sloppy highlighting and pretty non-standard shortcuts and general workflow. I have to say it is cheap in comparison to Adobe (who stung me for $349 for the priviledge
I just tried Sonic My dvd deluxe. It does not have the features I want and I must return it. I am suprised the company actually sent me a return shipping lable in case I got the "wrong" product. I need software that will cut commercials out of an hour long TV show. This stinks. -JOhn Ci
Ok. I downloaded it like you said to try it. It looks promising once I get this program to recognize the file I just created from my Tivo unit. Any ideas? -John C
