It isn't a suite, DVDA is no longer a separate product that can be bought by itself.
As such I cannot see how SCS could justify spending money on developing it further. It is adequate for most Vegas users, for those who want something more capable they can buy something else Take a look at what Avid has in the way of DVD authoring, almost nothing and their sales don't suffer because of it..
For DVDA to compete it'd have to be as good as if not better than the competition and that'd take some serious expenditure and I just don't see how SCS would recover those costs.

Bob.

If you look around at the reviews of Vegas over the last few years Bob, most of them view Vegas Pro as a 'Suite'. Sony themselves now call it "The Vegas™ Pro 11 collection". Either way you look at it, DVDA is woefully behind the times now. A bit like only working your right arm at the gym. Only reason I stick with DVDA is the throughput of chapter markers....and the thought of another learning curve. :-(

I'll plead ignorant here. What is missing in DVDA? I've not used other authoring programs, but find that at the end of the day its about navigating a menu and pushing a button. What would could be introduced to justify version 6?

- Chad

What is missing in DVDA?

Feature wise, I agree. It makes DVD's, does fancy menu's, all that good stuff. Anything else would be icing imho. There's only so much you can do with a DVD as a video delivery medium. They COULD do more with BD but everything that I hate about BD is all that's left to be done. :D

Encore CS5 has these features that I like/use:
- Authoring to FLASH
- Buttons as Weblinks

"- Authoring to FLASH"

Surely that would be 'Flash Architect' = FA ?


geoff

DVDA is basically a basic DVD authoring program for DVD and Blu-ray. That's kind of the story. You can create a DVD, nothing too sophisticated, and I have some issues with the interface, but at least it's pretty stable. It's also very easy to create a project for a Blu-ray, make a few small changes, and now have the DVD too.

What's missing? The big one: real Blu-ray features. Your Blu-ray project will look pretty much like a DVD project in HD. When was the last time you bought a commercial BD that looked anything like a DVD?

I'd also vote for some evolution of the interface... it's just kind of klunky.

hazydave - as someone who has not yet had to dip his toes into the world of Blu-ray, I'd be interested to hear about some of the features you refer to - ones that make BDs look different to DVDs. Thanks.

When was the last time you bought a commercial BD that looked anything like a DVD?

You mean "when was the last time I put a commercial BD in my player and it loaded up as fast as a DVD?" :)

I *STILL* tell my wife to buy me any movies for Christmas/birthday/anniversary/whatever on DVD. Just because putting it in means I want to watch it NOW, not after it's finished loading.

On a menu-side, I haven't seen anything in a commercial BD that makes me say "Man, I'd love to spend an extra couple hundred on a DVDA upgrade for that!". I've found most features new to BD pretty useless as a viewer. Seems like more work to enjoy my movie to me (IE seems on most BD movies you can't just hit the subtitle button to switch between subtitles, you must go to a menu... Same with different audio tracks. *sigh*)

I wouldn't be against them, I'm just saying that I wouldn't give that a reason for me to upgrade.

I like the current DVDA interface though. i've been consistent since it came out, I like that. :)

EDIT: dave, C64's rule. 8) Best PC EVER!

"What would could be introduced to justify version 6?"

The DVD specification allows for scripts which can read and write to two different classes of registers in the player. Using them you can do some quite neat tricks form simplistic games to very sophisticated interactive menu driven systems.
Most here only see the horrors that get bolted onto movies but I've seen some very clever training aides and interactive manuals built using this.

As DVDA stands you can include scripts however you're very much on your own writing the code by hand and debugging it by yourself. Some of the more advanced authoring tools offer higher level assistance via tools such such as flow charts.


Bob.

"What's missing? The big one: real Blu-ray features. Your Blu-ray project will look pretty much like a DVD project in HD. When was the last time you bought a commercial BD that looked anything like a DVD?

I'd also vote for some evolution of the interface... it's just kind of klunky."

That's it in a nutshell. When I author a DVD and a Blu-ray of the same project, it'd be nice if the BR version looked better as soon as the menu pops up instead of the 'same' as the DVD. "Klunky" is definitely the word to describe the interface!