Nero OEM Suite and Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 SE
I recently bought an internal DVD writer—a Toshiba SD-R5372 (with 12x DVD-R write speed, before it was upgraded to 16x about a week after I bought ours)—for our computer so we could back up our personal files onto discs that actually have enough capacity to hold them all. The drive came with Nero OEM Suite. I then bought a PVR card—a Hauppage WinTV-PVR 150—and that came with Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 SE, among other things. Thus far, both Nero and DVD MovieFactory seem terrible; neither seems good enough to pay money for its retail counterpart.
The Nero suite’s “SmartStart” launcher seems cluttered while NeroVision Express 2—the suite’s DVD authoring package—has one of the worst interfaces I have ever seen in a computer application. Unlabeled icons abound. Common features such as “Open…” are not so easy to find because there is no menu bar while there does not seem to be any “Save As…” functionality at all. Error messages tend to be unhelpful (one that appeared after video transcoding failed gave me no indication as to why and one that appeared after a burn failure provided no useful information and suggested that I look through an error log file to diagnose the problem, but that was not helpful either). Thumbnail views do not always match larger views.
Chapter marking is easy enough, but there does not seem to be any way to convert edited segments into chapters and automatic chapter creation seems worthless (I did not want a chapter every few seconds, thank you). After surviving all of that torture, I found that Nero does provide a lot of menu layouts that are customizable through windowish areas that I apparently accidentally caused to disappear sometimes while I was using them. The menu layouts and imagery are somewhat customizable, but not nearly as much as I would like and the end result always seems to involve ugly blinking selection overlays instead of outlines.
As much as I dislike NeroVision Express 2, it seems mostly preferable to Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 SE. I have to wonder about a developer’s attention to detail when the splash screen for its DVD authoring application shows a woman holding a disc that is clearly marked “CD-R” and my concern proved warranted when MovieFactory generated chapter previews that used clips from the original timeline rather than the edited timeline. That flaw is a deal-killer without even considering the software’s other shortcomings.
Thus far, I am disappointed by the DVD authoring software I have (and frankly, by the video recording software, but I will not go into such things as WinTV2000’s recording problems and clunky, buggy menus now since that application does not pertain directly to DVD authoring). NeroVision Express 2 and Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 SE both make me wonder if there are any better options.
Who has some suggestions for me? What have you used, on what platform (e.g. Windows XP or Mac OS X), what do you like, what do you dislike, and why?
May 1st, 2005 at 11:49 am
Well, I have been looking for good DVD authoring software for private use myself, with little succes so far.
My PC came with an OEM version of Cyberlink products, including PowerProducer for DVD authoring and burning. The good thing about this is program that I can make it do what I want (except that I’ll have to purchase some extra menu templates to do it properly), but it has a very tedious user interface and some strange quirks. For example, it seems to insist on reencoding mpeg2 files when burning a DVD. I’m not a wizard on this stuff, but I suspect that this is bad practice. Also, PowerDirector (the accompanying video editing software) by default changed my TV recording from 720×576 to 640×480 when I edited out the commercials. Strange. I know how to fix it now, but it took some errors to get this far.
I don’t like PowerProducer much, so I shopped around for other products. I tried TsunamiMPEG DVDAuthor Trial, but it won’t read the files that PowerDirector produces. Besides, I can’t figure out how to make a proper menu with chapters using TMPEG. I couldn’t do that with PowerProducer at first, but I learned to do it, so I could probbly learn it with this program too given enough patience. Some people seem to like it. I just don’t understand why the user interface has to be so difficult to navigate. Rightclick popup menus are too far between.
I then tried InterVideo WinDVD Creator 2 with similar results. It can read the mpeg2 files I have, but I can’t figure out how to make a decent menu.
Finally, I tried Pinnacle Studio Version 9. That program has a free trial version, but it requires me to pay for an mpeg2 codec if I am to use mpeg2 files. That means I can’t load my own files (it doesn’t read DivX files either) and I can’t test a DVD burn, as the vob format is also mpeg2. It looks like the program has potential, though. Hard to be sure.
So, the only program I found that works reasonably well is PowerProducer. But I’m not at all satisfied with it. There are programs in the range USD 250 and upwards, though, but that’s a bit expensive for home use.