Budget DVD authoring in a nutshell.

July 17, 2006 7:41 AM

Looking for better DVD authoring software.

After a lengthy hiatus, I am resuming work on creating DVD's for home use. Most of the time, this means home videos to be distributed with friends and family, but sometimes it means archiving shows that are not yet (or ever) available on DVD (typically captured through a DVR).

In both endeavors, I seek to create engaging, well-styled menues and extras, and to be able to control the structure and flow as much as possible.

So far I have been using Nero Vision Express 3, with reasonable success. I am able to create basic menus for titles and chapters, position elements, and add labels. That's about it. I have little leeway to do anything more.

I want to create menu screens that display text, a "back" button, and nothing else. I want "play" and "scene selections" buttons together, rather than one or the other. I want a "play all" feature for multiple titles, but to be able to see each one individually so that it returns the menu after each. I want to be able to have no label text next to selections. I want to set the label as the link so I can get rid of the image as the selection button. I want to get more control over the siz of selection images and label text.

Oh, and I'm fairly poor. Free software is most preferred, but low-cost may be an option.

posted by mystyk to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Well, you're on Windows, and I don't think anyone's bothering to do free DVD authoring software there.

That said, the balance is between packages that do everything for you and have no knobs, and packages that are all knobs, and force you to learn everything to get anything acccomplished.

Over the last 3 years or so, those two camps have been marching towards one another, and a copy of Videomaker one or two months back had a shootout that you might want to look at; I think they compared 5 or 6 packages.

I've used Roxio Media Creator 6 fairly extensively, and it's got a couple bugs, and a few fewer knobs than I'd like, but 7 (and maybe even 8) have come out, and they're about $80 new, I think, so they may be worth looking into.
posted by baylink at 8:06 AM on July 17, 2006

I use DVDLab exclusively now. They have a 30 day trial version you can try out. It's got some of the best features I've seen. You can do everything you require and a lot more. You can even create animated buttons (those ones that play a clip of the movie) if you feel like it.
Only drawback to the standard (or Pro) edition is that if you have multiple files in a compilation, it sticks all of them in the same title set. If you want to have separate title sets, you need the Studio edition.
posted by Arthur Dent at 8:38 AM on July 17, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

You could give DVDStyler a try. The project still seems to be in its early stages, but as it's open source there are bound to be frequent revisions.

I've not actually used the software, so unfortunately can't offer any further advice on its use.
posted by monkeyforest at 8:53 AM on July 17, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Be damned. I was worng. Thanks for the pointer, monkey.
posted by baylink at 8:56 AM on July 17, 2006