Recommendations on different Dvd Authoring Apps

[NoSmartz]

I posted a ? in Nero section about NVE and it's ease of use and was wondering what are some decent and "bug-free" Dvd Authoring apps?Good for menus,start screens and such.Hopefully some free ones.If not free that's ok,just some recommendations would help.

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[treemana]

I'm pretty happy with ULead MovieFactory2. It was bundled with my Pioneer A06 drive. One of the features I like about it is that it won't re-encode MPEG files that are already "DVD compliant". (720x480 2-8MHz, etc.) NVE always seems to want to re-encode (transcode) the MPEG files, which can make the authoring process take a lot longer.

The sub-menus are also easy to create. You can select specific spots, or just set them in even increments (every 5 minutes or so). If I record a TV show, I'll usually set chapter points at the end of each commercial break. This is less time consuming than editing them out, and works (almost) just as well.

[NoSmartz]

I think I'll give Ulead a try.Nobody has responded to my NVE post but I have heard that it has a few quirks in it,not bad just weird bugs and stuff.I hear good things about Ulead so I'll give it a whirl.
You mentioned you do TV shows,HOW?Capture card or Dish DVR?


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[treemana]

I have a Hauppauge Win-TV PVR-250 capture card. The best thing about it is that it has a hardware MPEG2 encoder. So it doesn't max-out your CPU when recording.

Yeah, I was not to happy with NVE. It's one of the reasons that I've haven't upgraded to Nero 6 yet. Since it always wanted it re-encode the video, it would take hours to author a DVD. Whereas the ULead product would have the DVD ready for burning in a couple of minutes. (Assuming the MPEG videos were "DVD compliant." Otherwise, it would also need to re-encode the video.)

I have a DirecTV/Tivo box. But, I haven't yet figured out how to extract the video files without re-recording them. (Via my analog capture card.)

It's on my "to do" list.

[NoSmartz]

That's funny about NVE takin hours.The only time I tried it it was going to take about 2 1/2 hours.Needless to say I click't "cancel".That was about 4 months ago.
Does that capture card have "almost" dvd quality(knowing that dvd is a different resolution)?

I have a DirecTV/Tivo box. But, I haven't yet figured out how to extract the video files without re-recording them. (Via my analog capture card.)

Me and a friend have been tryin' that for a few weeks(dish network DVR).Dish Network Resolution is weird and offbeat.
Try these sites for an attempt at it.
Here and here.

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[MonteLDS]

i was personal not satisfied by ULead MovieFactory2. Dispite that it is easy to use, it seems rather controling. I use Ulead Workshop. Really cool program and their is Workshop 2 out that I have yet to sample.

But when you become a big bad video Author start to use Adobe Encore. Now that is hard core auth control

but you have to be an adobe whore to know how to use it. or at least use it to high quailty outcome
http://www.adobe.com/products/encore/en ... r_qt1.html

[treemana]

Does that capture card have "almost" dvd quality(knowing that dvd is a different resolution)?

I usually store about 2 hrs of video on a 4.7GB DVD. I've been pleased with the quality. I would say that it is "almost" DVD quality. It definitely looks better then when I record to VCR.

Recording at 8 Mbps would give you closer to "true" DVD quality. But, then you'd only be able to store about 1 hour of video on a recordable DVD.

[aviationwiz]

I'm a fan of TMPGEnc DVD Author.

It does what I need it to do quite well, I may have used the Ulead at one point or another and I think it was good as well, can't remember honestly.

[NoSmartz]

treemana
You have me intrigued about that Hauppauge Win-TV PVR-250 capture card.I like the idea of doing tv/satellite/cable rip over takin apart a tivo or directTv to get to it's HD.Then extracting/reEncoding etc..Can you attach a cable line(cable tv)to the capture card and get cable channels?
MonteLDS
Is that Dvd Workshop the high end version of Dvd MovieFactory?
aviationwiz
I think I have a copy of Tmpgenc dvd author.I'll give it a whirl to see the how the process works.

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[tdbmi73]

I have MyDVD 4 that came with my DVD burner. It seems fairly limited. How does Ulead Movie Factory 2 compare? I would love to have a copy of Adobe Encore DVD but who could afford it.

I am just trying to find a good semi-flexible application that won't send me into bankruptcy.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[MonteLDS]

MonteLDS
Is that Dvd Workshop the high end version of Dvd MovieFactory?
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For the most part yes. It allows you to do a little more, to make it a tad more customized.

[MonteLDS]

I have MyDVD 4 that came with my DVD burner. It seems fairly limited. How does Ulead Movie Factory 2 compare? I would love to have a copy of Adobe Encore DVD but who could afford it.

I am just trying to find a good semi-flexible application that won't send me into bankruptcy.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Movie Factory is better then MyDVD but very very close to the same thing. Workshop 2 is the best priced item, and it has a trail version too.

Encore is HARD to use. It is super advance. Mainly you have to know all adobe products in and out to use it

[treemana]

Can you attach a cable line(cable tv)to the capture card and get cable channels?

Yes, it has a 125 channel tuner. Although, it doesn't do me much good since I have DirecTV.

I have MyDVD 4 that came with my DVD burner. It seems fairly limited. How does Ulead Movie Factory 2 compare?

They're both good. MovieFactory2 allows you to add chapter points easier than MyDVD. (I have MyDVD 4, version 5 might have fixed this shortcoming.)

[NoSmartz]

treemana
can't you just take the cable output from the sattelite reciever and instead of going to the input of the TV go to the input of your tuner card and capture shows that way?

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[tdbmi73]

What about Nero 6? How do the DVD Authoring tools compare to MyDVD and Movie Factory 2? Nero 6 looks like a fairly impressive overall package. I have a copy of Easy CD Creator 5 that I currently use for CD burning. Could I just use Nero 6 exclusively and not need to use any other CD burning or DVD authoring software?

Sorry for all the questions, just very new to this whole thing. I just want to spend my money wisely and find the most versitile and reliable package of DVD software to go with my new hardware.
BTW, I have a new 8X Pacific Digital Lite-On 811S rebadge writer.

Thanks for the replys so far.

[NoSmartz]

I've tried a few apps posted in this topic and I found that NVE works good.I've read about bugs that Nero's NVE has but I authored 3 dvd's last night on DVD+RW and had absolutely no probs whatsoever.You can d'load templates for backgrounds and such.Add background music.Lots of things you can do with it.Tried TMPGenc and it work't but I kept gettin' an error message saying that bitrate was to high.I ignored it and the disc came out fine(although the disc started with the movie and not the menu at startup but the menu did work).TMPG has a very user friendly interface.

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[treemana]

treemana
can't you just take the cable output from the sattelite reciever and instead of going to the input of the TV go to the input of your tuner card and capture shows that way?

That is how I do it. The downside is that my capture card can't change the channel on my DirecTV receiver. So I kind of have to be there to manually start my recordings.

The DirecTV/Tivo box is great for unattended recordings (dual tuner). But, if I want to keep something permanently, it's a two-step process. First record the show with Tivo, then record (capture) it again with my analog capture card. If I could somehow grab the video files directly from Tivo, I wouldn't need to perform an analog capture an a file that is already in digital format.

[NoSmartz]

I assume then that all capture cards have analog tuners right?
If going from digital then back through an analog source,is the digital quality taken away(does it look better or worse)?

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