Any DV editing and video DVD burning programs that AREN'T crap ?

[jtallon]

Part of this is just venting, and part of this is an honest question.

About 2 months ago I plunked down $500 for a HP 200i dvd burner. The hardware is flawless - I love it.

I've got a Canon DV camera and a lot of home movies that I want to burn to DVD. Seems like a reasonable thing to do, considering it's the main market the DVD burner manufacturers are going after.

I owned Pinnacle Studio DV 7.0 already, but it doesn't support 4+ gig files, so I can't keep my whole movie as one big file. So that $100 piece of software is worthless.

I recently purchased MGI VideoWave 5.0, because it supports NTFS 4+ gig files, and has built-in DVD editing software. But it doesn't support an opening intro on the DVD, multiple chapter buttons for your video on DVD, or my HP 200i for that matter - the last time the DVD burner compatability part was updated was November of last year.

I've tried Sonic 'MyDVD', but it doesn't seem to allow me to re-scale my .avi input (taken from VideoWave 5.0), so it thinks my 14+ gig DV format file won't fit on a DVD, even though it should be able to convert the format, much like VideoWave 5.0 would if it supported the HP 200i.

I've also tried Ulead DVD Movie Factory, but it only takes MPG inputs - no .avi.

So, that's my bitch. Now the honest question - IS THERE ANY GOOD SOFTWARE PACKAGE FOR DV EDITING AND VIDEO DVD BURNING ON A PC ? I've dropped almost $200 combined on the software mentioned above, and it's all a smoldering pile of crap. Poor interfaces, poor support, poor features...

I don't think it's too much to ask to want to edit DV video and burn it to a DVD with nice menus, background music, etc. Is there any easy way to do all of this ? Maybe I'm just missing the obvious...

Thanks !

 

[Jackhamr60504]

Are you sure you cant do menus and such in VideoWave 5? I swear that I have used that feature in their software before. Also according to their website, that feature is supported.

Roxio VideoWave 5 Features

Create personalized DVDs and Video CDs. Add interactive menus, buttons, background, audio, and text.

 

[ScottMac]

Sonic DVDit! will do pretty much everything except 16:9 video, their PE will do 16:9, convert to DD2.0 (accepts DD5.1 if you have an application that can generate it), all flavors allow creation of .BMP backgrounds and butons (or you can use their "canned" backgrounds, buttons, and text), and it'll render .AVI and QT files with a "Best Fit" option.

If you poke around the Mydvd site, there's some info on it. It's been doing OK by me.

Pinnacle Impression is OK too, but it's completely manual: you have to create the backgrounds & buttons (.bmps), and define the Titles, Chapters, etc, do the thumbnails...the whole shootin' match.

You may want to consider using something like TMPGEnc as an intermediate step. I believe the stand-alone encoders do a better job and offer more options for bit rate / quality. I'm using Vegas Video (mostly to get the MainConcept CODECs). It does a great job, is easy to use, and is pretty fast for an all-around program (edit/encode). With the file already in the right format, the authoring/burning portion goes pretty quick.


FWIW

Scott

 

[crazydave]

Ulead DVD Movie factory does support .avi--you just have to convert it to an .mpg beforehand (there's an encoder built in, it's under the capture section or something where you can convert it). Sonic MyDVD sucks--for me at least--it wouldn't take any .mpg I made in TMPEnc and when I finally did get it to work the output didn't work with any standalone player (I used an HP 100i to burn and that was the bundled program).

Hmm... you could also use Sonic Scenarist, it's what the Hollywood professionals use =) It's a bit more complicated and you'd also have to spend lot more than $200 for that....heh

 

[jtallon]

Thanks for all the info.

MGI VideoWave does limited menu's, but you can't choose the picture associated with your chapter stops, you can't choose background music or an 'intro' video to the DVD, and it's a pain in the ass to choose new background pictures for the menus - you can't just add them from .jpg or .bmp files.

Thanks crazydave for the info on converting in Ulead DVD Movie Factory - I did that last night, and now I have a mpg file that I managed to use DVD Movie Factory to burn. It did what I wanted, aside from some odd bug in the chapter selection process in Movie Factory, so that the what you see on the screen doesn't match up with the actual time of that scene in the mpg file - it lead to some imprecise chapter stops.

It looks like the 'best' combination that I've found so far is to do the movie editing in VideoWave 5, output as a .avi file, and then use DVD Movie Factory for the actual DVD producing...