I bought a new DVD writer to put my home movies onto DVD but the DVD authoring software that came with it sucks. It came with Power Producer Gold. It seems that the dvd’s that I write with this software plays ok on the computer but when I put them into my dvd player, they skip somewhere in the middle. I would prefer something that is not horribly expensive and that is fairly easy to use. Opinions?
Well, that depends on your budget.
The best program for DVD authoring is Sonic Scenarist, but that sucker will set you back about $26,000! Sonic also makes scaled-down versions under different names (MyDVD Studio, ReelDVD, DVDit), ranging in price from $70 to $500.
My favorite authoring software, which combines ease-of-use with great flexibility, is DVD-lab. There are three versions of DVD-lab, ranging in price from $100-200.
A slightly more affordable option would be TMPGenc DVD Author. That one is $68 for the regular version, or $89 with an (excellent for the price, IMHO) AC3 audio encoder plug-in. TDA is definitely the easiest to use, but offers few options for getting creative with your menus.
Finally, if you don’t have a penny to spend and don’t mind a steep learning curve, IfoEdit is a freeware program with basic DVD authoring options.
Those are just the programs I’ve tried. Here is a list of many more, including a couple of other free programs.
I’ll second this. I’ve been using it for over three years and it couldn’t be easier. The stock menus suck, though.
I do mine on zero-budget; editing/mixing of the footage is done with Editstudio 2 that I got free on a magazine cover, encoding is done with BBMPG(AVI2MPG), authoring with DVDStyler and burning with DeepBurner.
I have a very wide range of other video, graphics and audio tools with which I create the menu backdrops and other components. It can be a bit of a nuisance doing it all piecemeal this way, but I do get ultimate control over the way the DVD actually works and how it looks; the low-end commercial all-in-one packages I tried couldn’t give me anything like the same flexibility.
I’ll second this. DVD-lab is a great program, and it comes with a 30 day free trial. The Pro version does just about everything you’d ever need to do with DVD authoring, including multiple VTSes (to mix 4:3 and 16:9 video on one disc), sequential and random playlists, subtitles, alternate audio, setup menus, etc… all without sacrificing ease of use for simple projects.
The one downside is it doesn’t include an MPEG-2 encoder (well, it does, but only for menu transitions), so you’ll need TMPGEnc or something similar if your source video isn’t already DVD compliant.