Looking for good dvd authoring software under £100

richardstringer · 17-05-2009, 9:18 PM

I been looking at the Ulead DVD Factory, Corel Video Studio Pro X2 and various others, but haven't got a clue which ones are good. My 1st inital though was Adobe Premiere Elements 7 but i've heard it crashes a lot just like the previous versions. Any ideas guys which ones are easy to use and also stable?

**senu** · 17-05-2009, 10:23 PM

Why not just get the trial versions, or older versions for peanuts ( or off a buddy..

)
I have all 3 you mention and they behave well on my systems Xp, Vista And Windows 7 RC) but your experience may be different and there really is no " best "
Strictly speaking though ohly MF is the only DVD authoring program in that lot
Another is Sony DVD Architect Studio

richardstringer · 18-05-2009, 8:56 AM

I dont have any friends that have any software. I used to have Adobe Premiere Elements 5 and it crashed constantly which meant i'd lose projects that i'd spent about an hour on. My pc hasan Intel Xeon 2.2 Quad Core processor with 4gb of ram, came with Vista but installed Windows XP (legit copy) and it still crashed. The Elements software is very unstable.

Do you know anything about Sony Vegas Platinum Edition? Its selling for £27 now on amazon.co.uk. I know a lot of people who post videos on youtube use it.

richardstringer · 18-05-2009, 3:08 PM

I downloaded Sony Vegas Platinum Edition to try and I have to say, its easy as hell to use. The only problem i'm getting, like I got before when I made videos with an old camcorder, is that the outputted video has nearly transparent lines through it when it pans downwards or upwards. Anybody know how to stop this problem?

**senu** · 18-05-2009, 8:09 PM

This relates to interlaced video playing via a computer screen
You should not see it in a TV ect
However some PC media players like VLC allow you to watch on a computer screen as deinterlaced for playback

richardstringer · 18-05-2009, 8:55 PM

I'm using my tv as a pc monitor and as a tv. I have to say its definately not as easy simply recording the footage on your camera, editing it, then burning to dvd. You get all sorts of frame rate problems, interlacing problems and stuttered video playback, and another what i'm getting, choppy audio that cuts out and back in again.

Its starting to make me think that its just not worth the hassle.

**senu** · 18-05-2009, 9:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richardstringer

I'm using my tv as a pc monitor and as a tv. I have to say its definately not as easy simply recording the footage on your camera, editing it, then burning to dvd. You get all sorts of frame rate problems, interlacing problems and stuttered video playback, and another what i'm getting, choppy audio that cuts out and back in again.

Its starting to make me think that its just not worth the hassle.

It is though , once you get the right software
Just persevere. Im sure something will float your boat.
Vegas is OK really and I do have APE7 which does not crash on my PC
I also have Avid Liquid & Roxio software and a host of others
I even run some on Windows 7 RC
I guess the question is what are you editing from and what are the specific problems?
Once you can identify and sort them they will hopefully be banished.. forever..

richardstringer · 19-05-2009, 9:06 AM

I like Sony Vegas Platinum Edition because its easy to use. I can fade in and out easily. Adobe Premiere Elements 7 is a bit harder because just a simple task like fading in and out is hard.. What I mean by that is, moving the little tiny minute square to adjust the fade in time is hard. And the line is yellw so its very difficult to see.

The main problems i'm getting are a degraded outputed image quality after rendering, even though i've saved it as the best quality avi file that I can. And secondly the outputted video has horizontal lines that are kind of transparent and definately do not look like interlacing lines which are very close together and kind of coloured. Interlacing lines look like they got a kind of red/green edge to them where the lines i'm getting are just about transparent, and only happen when the camera pans up and down.

nikonuser11 · 19-05-2009, 11:01 AM

uLead Movie factory was my fav years ago for ease of use and excellent results (mates wedding video authored and burnt perfectly) However Corel are better technically ...............so a mix would be good.....
Well, Corel just took over uLead and brought out Corel Moviefactory 7, easy as chips to use and good results plus it does HD stuff also.......

free trial here DVD MovieFactory 7 - DVD MovieFactory 7

richardstringer · 19-05-2009, 11:29 AM

I've tried that Corel DVD Movie Factory and didn't get on with it very good. I've managed to keep the output quality the same as the original video quality finally, but now I got another problem with knowing which frame rate to use because the output video is in slow motion. By the way, i'm using Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9.0. I managed to stop the horizontal lines though.