Thanks, I'll take a look at that program as in what it can do as far as scripting goes. However I have a feeling that what it might add in scripting it might lose in other departments.

Pinnacle Impression DVD-PRO does multi angle video streams, but it is a big pain in the rear to use in all other aspects from what I remember when I tried it a long time ago.

It is a shame that there is nothing on the market that would compare to Apple DVD Studio Pro 3. DVDA 2 is a decent application, but it falls short when it comes to advanced features. One can only hope that DVDA will be as good a DVD authoring application as Vegas performs in the NLE department. My guess is that I'll have to hold on until DVDA3 at least to get something worth mentioning.

Some of these kinds of features are only needed by a select few (I actually found a use for multi angles myslef), not only do they add to the cost of developement they also add to the complexity of use.
Also multiple camera angles, seamless branching and multiple languages all eat into the bit budget. Unless you've got very clean video and good encoders your video could end up looking pretty poor as a result.

Complexity of use? I think it would only add to that if you actually use the features. If not, it should be as simple as it always has been (one of the strong points of DVDA). I can only hope that Sony will have the time and money to add these features to their otherwise fine product by the next release.

I am aware of multi angle streams taking up valuable bits on the disc. It is not an issue, the lack of ability to create one is.

Out of hundreds of DVDs, I have only used two that had multi-angles, and only one of these (a driving instruction DVD) actually added value by using them. I bet 99.9% of all DVD users have never pushed the multi-angle button on their remote.

The only reason I post this is not to start a fight, but just to point out that there are dozens of features the DVDA2 lacks that I think most developers -- and ultimate consumers of DVDA-authored material -- would rather see first.

One of the features that would be nice to have is scripting. Scripting -- if we are talking about the same thing -- would provide all sorts of additional, complex navigation, and would be a big help. Also, I would also like to see FAR more automation of the menu creation and navigation process (I spend much of my time every day telling DVDA where to go, for each button, when the right, left, up, and down arrows are pushed.) Also, there is no way to capture the "look" of a DVD and re-use it, since templates cannot be saved (templates should work like style sheets in MS Word).

Thus, I think it would be very useful to have the ability to set the state registers in the DVD player so navigation could proceed differently depending on what portions of the DVD have already been played, but for me, multi-angle support is pretty much at the bottom of the list.

Perhaps Sony could start a poll, and list a dozen feature areas, and then have each user rank the importance (on a 1 to 5 scale).

John,

As you can see from the title of the topic scripting (YES, we are talking about the same thing) is before multi angle on my list too :-).

I just authored a DVD that had two dozen chapters and I wanted them to be organized in different play order for different selections. The only way to do it was to have 30+ different titles on my DVD with different start and end points and different end actions to link one to another. It was rather complicated and I much rather use scripting to accomplish the same and more complex menu and feature navigation.

As for the multi angle thing, I think you are right, it is more of a novelty than a useful feature, but I have some footage shot with several cameras and I would like to give the viewer the option to select the camera at will. I guess I'll just select it for them myself and be done with it :-).

If you want multi-angle and scripting on a PC, and don't want to fork out $20K for Scenarist, then I would look to see if a copy of Spruce's Maestro is for sale on Ebay. I've seen it offered for about $1950, which is a fraction of it's original cost, and allows you to do just about anything you like with authoring (including multi-angle, stories, scripting, etc).

I personally have migrated completely over to DVD Studio Pro 3. My wife has an iMac, and I just edit and encode my source files on my PC (I use Procoder for encoding, and Vegas or Premiere for editing) and transfer the video and audio streams via network. You don't need a high powered app to do authoring alone (you would want the more expensive G5's is you were doing a lot of encoding and speed was an issue). Since we already had an iMac, it only cost me $499 to give the app a whirl. You're example above would not have required scripting to accomplish in Maestro or DVD Studio Pro (which is Maestro reincarnated). There is a feature for story creation. Essentially what you do is set your chapter marks on a particular video asset, and you can create up to 98 stories using any of the chapters, any order or number. I use that feature more often than scripting, and with almost every dvd. DVD WorkShop from Ulead has a similar feature, but it is no where near as easy to use.

I own and previously used DVD-A. I think version 2 made some big advances, but if you want to do more advanced authoring you are going to need a different app. I don't mean this as a 'dig' on DVD-A or anyone who uses it. If the majority of stuff is like 'driving to work', then why pay more for an expensive race car if you're never going to 'flex it's muscles'? In the end, you want to use an app that is as straight forward as possible and fits your particular needs.

Jim

I believe that the upcoming DVD-Lab Pro (a more advanced version of DVD-Lab) will also do scripting or something similar (they're calling it "playlists"). It'll go for about $200. The program looks pretty promising. The features that it has over DVDA aren't particularly important enough to me right now to buy another program, but maybe later on.

Rob

DVD-Lab Pro has scripting and playlists. Playlists are essentially the same thing as the story feature in Maestro and Studio Pro. I have used DVD-Lab, and have beta tested Pro. I personally haven't been as pleased with set top compatibility with the discs it creates (with the non 'Pro' version--I give the Pro version a bit of a pass since it is beta). It does offer a lot on paper, and it's hard to beat the price, but reliability wins out IMO over feature list and time will tell in this regards.

Jim

JSWTS said: I personally haven't been as pleased with set top compatibility with the discs it creates

Have you had any problems with set top compatibility when using DVDA 2? I had problems with a Pioneer DVD (DV-525) when using the chapter button to advance between different titlesets. This works fine with commercial DVDs and also with DVDs authored in Ulead MovieFactory, but not with DVDA.

I guess I am now a little off topic, sorry about that.

johnmeyer, check out "DVD player's Next button goes to the next title rather than chapter" in the Troubleshooting section of DVDA's online help.

SonySDB said: check out "DVD player's Next button goes to the next title rather than chapter" in the Troubleshooting section of DVDA's online help.

I checked out the help file, and this is what it says:

The Next button is normally used to navigate to the next chapter. On many players, the Next button either jumps to the end of the title or does nothing when viewing the last chapter. However, on some DVD players, this button jumps to the next title when viewing the last chapter.

It then goes on to describe how to prevent the "next" button from jumping to the next chapter.

I am well aware of this ability to defeat the use of the next button as a navigation tool to go between titles, and I suppose I could do this in order to mask the problem in DVDA. If I did this on my DVD created from many individual MPEG files (using the standard menu compilation), pressing the next chapter button on the remote would do nothing. The only way to get to the next title would be to fast forward to the end of the current title, or go through the menu system. The problem is that I actually WANT the next chapter button to go to the next title. And, most of the time this is exactly what happens. The problem, however, is that some of the time, pressing the next button takes you to a title that is completely unrelated to the title currently playing. I have seen it go back to the first title when playing the fourth title, and I have seen it skip ahead three titles. Once the DVD is created, the action is the same each time the disk is played. If the title is allowed to play to the end, the end action -- which determines which title plays next -- always works correctly.

I have created half a dozen DVDs from multiple MPEG files using DVDA2 and they all exhibit this behavior on my Pioneer DV-525 NTSC DVD player. Since I have never had this problem with commercial multi-title discs, or with multi-title discs I have authored in other programs (or which I created using DVDA1 and then patched with IFOEdit so that I could have end actions automatically move between titles) I strongly suspect that there is a flaw in the way DVDA creates the branching logic. I have written to tech support, but I wasn't able to get them excited about it.

Just out of curiousity, have you dropped these ideas in Sony's suggestion box?

Rob

DVD players that allow the next button to move between titles, advance to the next title in "title order". That is, when on the nth title, the next button will take you to the n+1th title.

DVDA automatically determines the order of titles when preparing the DVD. DVDA does not provide a way for the user to control the order of titles. So, when the project is changed the order of titles may also change.

Thanks for the link, I just did! I also added DVD-R9 support to the list :-).

P.S. I though you weren't going to look at my latest rant ;-).

DVDA automatically determines the order of titles when preparing the DVD. DVDA does not provide a way for the user to control the order of titles. So, when the project is changed the order of titles may also change.

Thanks for the information. I'll put a request in the suggestion box that this be user-settable.