AvidDVD (Sonic/Roxio DVDitPro HD) has been getting some attention in the Forums for being out of date and seemingly stagnated in development.

At the same time blu-ray seems to be taking off in the USA - at last.

So more and more newcomers to that field are starting to look for a good authoring programme.

Even though I have been around for quite some time in the Blu-Ray authoring arena, using DVDitProHD and then more recently AvidDVD I still am keeping my eyes open for new possibilities.

I am starting this thread to give anyone who has more experience with the other Authoring programmes to add their comments.

I am not looking at just adding blu-ray content to a disc and then getting it to play.
I am looking at actually using the tools in the programmes to produce menu structures, audio sub-tracks, subtitle tracks etc.

A few weeks ago I purchased TMPGenc Authoring Works 4.(referred to as TAW4)
Then, last week, after many years of hesitation I bought Adobe's latest Creative Suite Master Edition, and the included Encore CS4 (referred to as ENC)

After a few days of testing I can say that AvidDVD wins hands down!

Allowing for the fact that others may get other results depending on their computer systems here are a few points.

Total time from an MC time-line to a finished Blu-Ray disc in AvidDVD takes about 50% of the time needed in ENC and TAW4.

All programmes accept QT-reference files BUT both ENC and TAW4 have problems with them when they come to the transcoding stage. In fact, other than very short sequences, both ENC and TAW4 failed to complete transcoding during the build processes.

ENC played back with jittery pans and in general had a jerkiness in many scenes (I may need to tweak a setting to get rid of this)
TAW4 is not tested with this yet.
AvidDVD gave smooth motion throughout.

Subtitles in TAW4 and ENC were much easier to work with than AvidDVD.
But ENC had troubles with the subtitles on playback. In the test example I had 10 subtitles on a track. The ENC produced Blu-Ray did only showed 8 of the tracks. 2 it missed completely.

To round off with for this post, both TAW4 and ENC look fresh and seem to have many special functions not found in AvidDVD. But after burning it becomes apparent that it is not always WYSIWYG!!

I will continue testing the other programmes, but for now my actual Blu-Ray production will continue on AvidDVD.

It may be dated, but I find it reliable!

Regards,

Douglas

I will stand up a little for Encore.  I have been using it for several years and also just stepped up to CS4.  I have played around only for a few minutes with Avid DVD and got a little frustrated, but, this is just because I didn't take time to learn the work flow.  I encode everything in Squeeze prior to going to Encore.  The two interesting features that Encore only allows is pop-up Bluray menus and more importantly to me, the ability to insert closed captioning.  Also, the ability to kick a dvd out to Flash for online approvals is pretty cool too.  I am sure there are many other opinions, those are just mine.

mcabery:

I will stand up a little for Encore.  I have been using it for several years

Thank you, Mcabery.
This is the sort of posting I was hoping to see here.

As you can judge, my impressions, so far, are very much "First Impressions of the earliest kind".

I will be continuing to test ENC and TAW4 and will update with anything I find that can be of interest.

Regards,
Douglas

Hi Douglas, was you maybe hoping for me to pop in?

I think this sentence might summarize your first testings.

" All programmes accept QT-reference files BUT both ENC and TAW4 have problems with them when they come to the transcoding stage. In fact, other than very short sequences, both ENC and TAW4 failed to complete transcoding during the build processes."

For TAW4, I have seen the same things and I have reported that to the developer of the app, I guess that we are waiting and hoping for an update.

About the Adobe CS4 suite, probs have been reported ever since the first release about compability probs with the Avid DNxHD codec and CS4, Microsoft have the same prob with their Expression 2 encoder, version 3 works well.

I am doing very easy editing with my discs where I let the media talk for itself, I use animated buttons and a little tune in the background for my menus, no extra subtitles.

As I sometimes - rather often - it happens are redoing my discs after my first edit, might be something that I have missed even with good previewing, I have found that ready created files using the mediaencoder from CS3 works very well in my workflow, gives you 2 pass encoded files that runs well straight through these above named applications, redoing a disc image takes less that 10 minutes.

TAW4 gives me possibilities to use BD popup menus, works and looks nice.

My experience with Encore CS3 is limited, I have only created about 5 - 6 discs for some own know how testing, also an AVCHD bd disc for a test.

My way to the Adobe mediaencoder is to go through Soundbooth and select from " save As " lots of presets to choose between, gives you also possibilities to lay a last hand on your audio editing, I like the way Soundbooth removes mob phone beeps.

Not sure that this flow will work with CS4 of course due to the compability probs mentioned above, you might do a test and tell, I always want to extend my knowledge

I should add to my first post:

I am looking specifically at Blu-Ray authoring.

DVD authoring is a reasonably well documented area, but Blu-Ray is, to many people, a new area.

A specific question to Mcabery:
Have you tried exporting a subcap track from MC and then importing it into ENC on a subtitle tracK?
The export formats offered are not compatible with AvidDVD import. It would be a plus if ENC could do that.

Regards,
Douglas

Sorry to take so long to get back to you.  I have not tried that yet, I am on my first project requiring closed captioning since upgrading to MC3.5 and since the client was paying for closed captioning to be done by another company I didn't need to look into that.  However, it is a great question and when I find out I will let you know.

I'll add a vote to the Encore workflow.  Menu creation is easy, Photoshop integration works well.  Good results with its own inbuilt encoder.  I export whole QTs, not reference files, (gives me a finished product backup to my backups that way!!) and then encode.  Was on Encore 2 but am trying a CS3 version with Bluray.  so far, results are great.  I too looked at Avid DVD but wasn't immediately "grabbed" by it so havent bothered to learn it.

Adobe is not without its issues - Encore 2 doesn't close cleanly for me when using QT files but is faultless with avi files.  Very little support, no patch for this known issue in 3 years - just new versions you have to buy, CS3 and now CS4.  The real pain is you now have to buy the whole suite to get just the Encore bit you want.

Back to your question drbgaijin, I tried exporting a subcap track to Encore but the format isn't exactly what Encore is looking for so it rejects it.  Encore is expecting something like this 1 00:05:34:14 00:05:39:21 This is my subtitle.  Whereas subcap kicks it out without the line number at the beginning and then puts the text on the next line after the timecode.  It would be possible to go through each line in wordpad and correct it, but that would be a bit of a pain.  If I find out anything else I will let you know. 

And, I too was a little perturbed to find that Ecnore was no longer available by itself, but since with this upgrade I finally went to the entire suite it didn't matter...

Thank you, Mcabery and Carl, for the additional information and comments.

Anyone else like to add some facts from their experiences with alternatives to AvidDVD?

Regards,
Douglas

I have used DVDit6, then the HD version for quite some time. DVDit has generally been very reliable. Most annoying is the rather obscure .gi image creation for BD. Also you must create seperate images for BD write-once and re-writable projects. The point of using RE disks is more or less, to validate the authoring / compile process.

I have used DVDLab, found it extremely flexible in terms of menu creation, but it requires an external transcoder and does not allow for preview, to me, an unforgivable. Also, there is currently no BD functionality.

Tmpge products, both Authoring Works 4 and its trancoding / encoding partner, Express 4 do not have all the refinements of many of the more costly alternatives, but they do the job at a very nice price point, and for me have been very stable. One drawback is that at the very beginning of a project you must state whether you are doing BD OR DVD. DVdit lets you do one project and chose BD or DVD at the output stage.

I do swich off between DVDit and AW4. I am a bit mystified as to the reason for Sonic/Roxio's apparent indifference as to developing and further refining DVDit. 

Avid DVD seems great to use with MC (especially with the quick "Send to" options) but it has this terrible bug of putting imported video upside down (as reported by other users).

I have seen DVDit (Avid DVD ) invert the picture imported with Canopus HQ codecs.

Unfortunately, the inversion keeps happening with encoded MPEG2 files from Sorenson.

Btw, Sorenson you can also use Sorenson for authoring, if you don't need menus. Choose Disk>DVD_xx_burn. It is supposed to multiplex to VOB and burn. I say "supposed" because I tried it once and it didn't work. Has anyone used this before?

catwoman:

but it has this terrible bug of putting imported video upside down

I have also read about this from time to time.
For my own part, in the past 7 or 8 years i have used DVDit, I have never had this happen to me.

I put it down to the fact that I avoid all use of intermediate encoding/transcoding as far as possible.

Every additional step in the process introduces more parameters and settings that you can get mixed up.

I know that, due to different starting resolutions, not everyone can use the workflows I advocate.
But a simple summary for DVDit or AvidDVD is:

From MC export a QT reference. Import that into AvidDVD, author and burn.
From Liquid fuse the timeline (I think it was to .m2v and .wav). Import into AvidDVD, author and burn.

Using either of those two workflows has always worked for me.
But as I said, this method is not always suitable for every resolution.

Regards,
Douglas

I just made my first Blu-Ray disc the other day, using Encore CS4. It's no different than making a DVD. Encore used to crash a lot but now it's stable. the integration with Photoshop is great. you can go back and forth - saving in PS instantly updates the menu in Encore.

I made the disc from two HDV projects. it was edited as HDV so I did a video mixdown (145) and exported a QT Ref. the latter imports directly into encore. only drawback is it doesn't play smoothly. wher you're ready to burn, it will automatically render the files and then burn the disc (or disc image) in one click (avoids sorenson as an intermediate step).

the only thing missing for me is a blu-ray player...            sasha