Why is authoring so varied?

[James Kiehl]

Folks,

General question here. Hope it can enlighten. I read recently that there are "about a million" different ways to author a DVD. Does this mean the way the files are processed? Or does it probably mean just many different software programs to do this?

Thanks,
Jim

[James Kiehl]

OK Folks,

There have been several views of the question, but no one has posted an answer. Any of the heavy hitters want to weigh in on this one?

J----

[echooff]

Different sofware and ways to go about it. Ranging from no menu to Motion, Picture in picture, Layered, ect.

[ammck55]

DVD Authoring is an important part in determining the look of your disc, yet this is an optional step. You can author DVD's without any menus, with chapters that play straight through, or with chapters that can loop continuously. (These are just a few of a multitude of options.) However, DVD's have the special feature of interactive menus, just like the internet.

Menus are helpful to the end user in deciding where they want to start viewing from and also the menu allows them to turn on and off other special features such as subtitles, multi angles and surround sound. Menus on DVD's allow interactivity between the user and your DVD.

The authoring process takes place after Mpeg2, wav, avi, mp3, bmp and other content of your disc has been created.

That's just a little starter info I culled from a Web page, I left out the part where they try to sell you something. :) You can make some interesting moves with Microsoft's Movie Maker (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker), the reason that I use this tool as an example is it is native to XP, so if you're using XP as your OS, you have it at your fingertips. Authoring software can be amazingly simple, or incredibly complex to learn, it pretty much depends on what you expect of your final product, and how much time you devote to ascending the learning curve.

ammck55

[James Kiehl]

Well, naturally I expect the final product to kick ass and I expect to spend zero time on the learning curve, of course...

[Trahald]

Originally posted by James Kiehl
Well, naturally I expect the final product to kick ass and I expect to spend zero time on the learning curve, of course...

ahh.. if only all of life were that way *sigh*

dvdlab is a good basic inexpensive dvd authoring app that has excellent documentation (and maybe as close as you can get to zero learning curve)