Commercial Authoring Software

[Morph1]

Hey guys,

What would be the most flexible package I could buy to create nice flashy
menu graphics, with range of options as fading menus adding sound to buttons and maybe animating ?? , is there anything out there that could work some what like macromedia flash ??? of course for dvd authoring.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[admin]

There are lots of options, and I have written guides for some of them which you can have a look at to see what kind of authoring capabilities they have. Most of them will allow you to create custom animated menus, with background audio if needed, and there will be ready made templates available for you to use.

Nero Vision 4, it will always re-encode the video even if the video is already DVD compliant and cannot make 16:9 (anamorphic) DVDs:
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Nero_Vision_4_DVD_Authoring_Guide_page1.html

TMPGEnc DVD Author 3, doesn't have the problems that Nero Vision 4 has, but it's been dumbed down compared to past versions, with things like DTS audio missing:
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/TMPGEnc_DVD_Author_3_DVD_Authoring_Guide_page1.htm l

Cyberlink PowerProducer, probably the weakest of all 3, missing multiple audio track support, subtitle support and VOB importing without re-encoding:
http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Cyberlink_PowerProducer_DVD_Authoring_Guide_page1. html

All of the above have trial versions, so you can test them out yourself.

There are two that I don't have guides for, and they seem to be better but aimed at more advanced users: DVD-Lab (http://www.mediachance.com/) and Vegas+DVD (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/products/product.asp?pid=404). There are trial versions of DVD-Lab available.

[Morph1]

thanks man,

Will have a look at those reviews.

CHeers !

[blutach]

Sonic Scenarist is the standard IMHO - but you need $5,000 for a commercial license.

DVD Lab Pro is not bad and at $250 is not outa everyone's reach.

Regards