?'s about makeing a VCD/DVD?

[sloppyp]

I just wanted to ask what program would be best for creating a VCD/DVD. I want to take pictures and music and put them on a CD/DVD to share with family. What is the best program to use? Thanks!!!

[reboot]

There's not really ONE program that can do it all. Some claim they can, but the results are severly dissapointing.
Google for some "slideshow" apps. You'll probably find a few hundred, all promising to do amazing things. Most costing a fair amount of money too.
If you have Nero, just download the Nerovision Express suite. It will do what you want, but the results are questionable.
If you want professional results, get DVDLab (free 30 day demo from www.mediachance.com ).

[Kov-Ice]

If you're paying money for a product, think twice before getting Pinnacle's Studio (I have version 8). It will do the trick, but it's one buggy piece of software.

[reboot]

Pinnacle 9 isn't much better...

[Hi Ho]

Pinnacle 9 isn't much better...
Really? I was really hoping it would be. The review I read at Tom's said it was much more stable and they liked it a lot. Have you had any personal experience with Studio 9? I have been considering purchasing it but I won't if it's still buggy.

[reboot]

I would say slightly more stable, not significantly. I have no idea what Tom's is talking about, at least on the 3 systems here, it's a "bit" better.
It seems to enjoy eating Intel cpu cycles much better than AMD, and regularily chokes on AMD/nforce combinations. :)
Had less trouble on AMD/Via, with the latest 4in1's, but insisted on a DX9b upgrade.
I really really like the program, I just don't like some of the "necessities".
If you're considering running it on your system in your sig, I would stay with 8 until you can do a CPU upgrade. It's a serious CPU hog, and cooks my XP2500+ nicely :D

[Hi Ho]

I don't have Studio 8 because of the stability problem. Thanks or the info.

[ScurrilousPrune]

Nero 5 works fine for me.

[Kov-Ice]

I've worked on several projects over the past year using Studio 8. Some of them were rather large, including a couple of high school soccer and basketball highlight films and a 2 hr. long wedding video.

I can't begin to describe the amount of frustration I experienced in the many long hours of dealing with functions not working properly (like menus), simple tasks not being performed (such as rendering to DVD with sound and video properly aligned), and freezes and crashes negating my work.

I curse the day I met Pinnacle 8. Maybe not really, but I have got to buck up and get Adobe Premiere so that I can be more worry free and not constantly have to be finding work-arounds for stuff.

[Preston]

I would have to agree, my experience with Pinnacle was HORRIBLE! Very buggy, very unfriendly to use. I have been using Sonic (it came with my DVD Burner) and I am really happy with it.

[Kov-Ice]

I have an OEM copy of Sonic that came with one of my burners as well. I haven't looked at it closely. It did appear to be pretty plain. Does it have many features?

[Preston]

I think it came with a fair amount of features. You can create DVD's, VCD's, SVCD's, Audio CD's, DATA CD's, ect.

I'm sure there are programs ($$$) out there with more features, but as far as creating video discs (DVD, SVCD, VCD), I was very happy with it. My OEM version of Sonic came with Showbiz video editor which I thought was a snap to use. In no time we were editing video, adding music, creating all kinds of different scenes.

I transferred a lot of VHS to DVD (wedding videos, old home movies, ect.) and I thought Sonic/Showbiz was great.

The only thing I found somewhat lacking is that you are kind of limited in your choice of menu and button styles...but I still was able to make some pretty professional looking DVD's.

I haven't used Nero for any video work, but I have heard good things about it too...

[reboot]

No, it didn't come with any features. Sonic is about as basic as you can get in an authoring program. Even TMPGEnc DVD Author has more options, but nothing like DVDLab.
Arcsoft Showbiz is good, once you get used to it.
Nero (Nerovision Express), to be blunt, sucks! Great interface, nice wizard, click here, click there, and viola! NOT Nero will re-encode the video, guarantee the audio will be out of sync, half the motion menus won't work, ad infinitum...

[Kov-Ice]

Originally posted by reboot
Nero will re-encode the video, guarantee the audio will be out of sync, half the motion menus won't work, ad infinitum...
That's what Pinnacle Studio has done to me the last few projects. The audio gets out of sync more and more as the video goes on. It happens in the rendering/compiling stage. So I have to output my entire project as an .avi, then put the menu and links on afterwards to work around that. What a waste of time.

[sloppyp]

Somebody said that they transfered VHS to DVD'd. How do you go about doing that?

[reboot]

Kov-Ice, the full Pinnacle 8 and 9 seem to do that. It just can't figure out that the audio should be the exact same length as the video, and seems to timewarp, leading to a progressive sync problem. The "dumbed-down" version of Pinnacle that comes with the Dazzle products, doesn't have that problem, and I have no idea why.
I've worked around that, by actually resampling the audio to slightly higher or lower than 48khz (depending if audio is behind or before), then during compiling, it seems to work, but YES, it's a PITA!

VHS to DVD is not that complex, if you have the right tools.
You need a video capture device, either a video card, or addon. You need the software to capture the stream to the computer. You need software to encode (if the capture software doesn't do it), and you need software to author, and yet more to burn.
I use Mainconcept to capture directly to mpeg2. Edit in Adobe Premiere, author in DVDLab, and burn in Nero.
If you don't need to edit, just copying full length videos, it's even simpler.

[Preston]

Originally posted by sloppyp
Somebody said that they transfered VHS to DVD'd. How do you go about doing that?

I transferred all my old VHS to DVD using an ATI AIW card and the Sonic software that came with my DVD burner. First captured all the video, then used Sonic to organize and burn it. No problems with the audio sync...

[Kov-Ice]

Well, I won't bother with the Studio 9 upgrade then. My work-around has been to work in small chunks, then render to .avi. When I put all the .avi chapters together, I then have to render to a giant .avi. After that, I put the menu on and output to disc. PITA is right.

Is Adobe about as pain-free as one could expect? As I said earlier, I think I just need to bite the bullet and get it for my sanity's sake.

edit: oops, Jim I just saw your post in the DVD Menu (http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=708657) thread re: Adobe. Thx.