Help on DV Software
 

I am considering buying DV editing/production software and would like some feedback on pros/cons of various available software. My application is to tape dance recitals with > 30 dances and put them on DVD. I want to be able to automatically scene detect and cut the scenes from the video. I want more freedom to edit the format of the links/video/images on the produced dvd. I am using a PC. I have several lower end applications like MovieStar, ShowBiz, and SonicMyDVD. I am producing dvds with this software with no problems (and the results are great) but I do not have a lot of design flexibility. Suggestions/comments? Links to software reviews/comparisons?

Vegas 4.0. I think it does it all.

I highly recommend Vegas 4 with DVD Architect, or even Vegas Video 3.0. Easy to use and very powerful applications. I have experimented with most of what I guess you could call the lower end stuff, and have spent more money on that than I would have if I had just gotten Vegas to start with.

My wife got all over me when I spent the money for Vegas 3.0, and then again when I upgraded to Vegas 4. . . until I showed here what we could do with the programs.

I would vote for Pinnacle Edition. Edition 5 will be released at the end of April and you can author a pro level DVD right from the editing timeline.

If DVD is your final delivery medium, after Edition 5 any app doing the time-consuming export/encode/import/author thing will be obsolete- it's just too handy having it built in.

go over to

www.videoguys.com

look at their reviews/testing of different NLE's .. they have not tested Vegas yet ...

here's review of V4

http://www.dvformat.com/2003/03_mar/reviews/cw_vegas4.htm

I have tried Premiere 6.5, trial of Edition and Vegas. As much as I wanted to stay Adobe since I use Photshop, Go Live and Live Motion, Vegas is a great and extremely stable product. I upgraded from 3.0 to 4.0 Vegas + DVD, but DVD Architect is rather weak, I will be sticking with DVD Workshop for Authoring until either DVD Architect gets better or until Adobe ships Encore. I do have a full version of Vegas 3.0 avialble for $100 is anyone is interested.