Hi, at last we meet. As an American from the midwest (Wisconsin, Sony Vegas support's a local call) I have been aware of the differences between American speech and the British accent that we all know from movies etc. I must say that I've never "heard" such an accent in anybody's writing as much as I "hear" it in your's. I smile every post.

Just took a break from exploring DVDWS when I saw your post and thought I may try to help.

I got DVDWS before DVDArch. was available and I kind of like it Thera are 5 main work areas: START, where you set up new and open previous projects. CAPTURE, which I haven't used. Someone said that you may capture directly to MPEG but I haven't discovered how, haven't tried as I like Vegas and the Main Concept encoder.EDIT, where the real work takes place. It has an explore type area where you drop media into little windows below the preview screen. The first window is "First Play", whatever's in here will play immediately, then go to the next window which is an optional menu. You can add different clips one after another after the menu window, and have the option of choosing what's to happen after play, either play next, or return to main menu. If you select play next there is a slight delay before it plays. So if you have a clip that you want to play seamlessly, leave it in one piece. There's a tab in the upper left corner that allows you to Show/Hide Chapter list. If your clip starts as a fade from black you'll see nothing but click over there and you'll see a box. You can move the slider under the preview screen to parts of the clip and then right click in the box to get option of having that scene used as the thumbnail for that chapter. You can add more seamless chapter points by clicking Insert Chapter tab in area to left of screen. Each time you add a chapter a little box will appear in the chapter list area and you can pick a thumbnail as before. EDIT screen also allows you to select a replacement audio file, I've never done so.

MENU is the 4th area. You start by picking option of Standard menu blank or standard template, use their menu wizard, never tried it, or continue without menu creation. I always use standard blank. You can pick an image from their library or your own or also a moving video background (haven't tried it, that's what I was studying). Then you drag your chapter thumbnails from the chapter list area onto the menu screen. You can pick from a nice selection of frames, add shadows, text. You can pick menu background music. You can pick the menu play time option and you can have the chapter buttons as motion menus and select the length that they play, but they will play from the start of the chapter, not from where you selected a thumbnail. You can select text, images or buttons from their library and link to them to start play or go to other menus.

Last is FINISH, you can format your disc, save file as ISO or dvd VIDEO TS files, and have option to not convert (rerender) compliant files. It gives you various quality settings but I don't use this as I bring my file in from Vegas and it doesn't rerender. Shows required DVD disc space and hard drive space needed.

Last note. I sarted with DVDWS before they had AC-3 audio. They have since added it but I understand that it's 2 channel not 5.1. The work around is to render the video in Vegas as m2v, the audio as AC-3. You then remux in TMPEG and use in DVDWS. You won't hear the audio playback in the program preview but it's there and works great.

Hope this has helped.
Bill

Riredale & Bill - thanks for your feedback.

. . now I'm confused, not by your technical knowledge, but whether of not to go with the "discount" option.

Bill, your lenthy reply has done much to provide me with a Real World experience - always what I'm after . . . the AC3 stuff I've yet to fully understand. Understand the the 5.1 - 5 channels: 2 front; 2 back; 1 centre and the .1 being an underlying overall effects sound track - could be a rumble or whatever.

So I've yet to explore DVD and its options for Menus etc etc . . .

Of course, until the whole thing in DVD calms down a bit, I've still got MF.

Bill, I'll look to see the version that is being discounted - good point!

. . as to the "accent" Bill - nice one me ole Mucker!

" Cooo, me Plates are that sore I gotta get up 'em Apples and rest me Minces - if I'm up for it later, I may go for a Ruby! Anyways me Skin is on the Dog so TTFN!"

. . good 'nuf?

Grazie

Grazie,
just a little bit of info on ac3,it can be 2 channel or 5.1 depending on the softwares ability to mix and encode.(taking it one set of apples and pairs at a time) if you can encode even 2 channel stereo in ac3 it gives you better compression of audio, to fit more on a dvd.
so regarding your question after you check on the dvd ws software see if it has ac3 if not then you can buy the upgrade ,assuming you think its worth it or needed.Sort of depends on what kind of project your doing.

hope this helps a little bit anyway, I might be writting kinda poorly "seems I got a bit pissed drinkin pints last night,
cheers , epirb

Have you looked at DVDLab? It's very flexible and powerful, inexpensive, and is getting new features pretty regularly.

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/