DVD MovieFactory 3.0 Disc Creator review:4 stars (Fast, Easy, and Reliable DVD Authoring -- Wow!) - I am ecstatic about this product. "DVD MovieFactory 3.0" works so much better than the "Click to DVD 1.3" software that came with my Sony Vaio. The user interface is not quite as intuitive as "Click to DVD", but I have a lot more flexibility to be creative with my menus, background images, and background music.
Most importantly, "DVD MovieFactory" is fast and reliable. "Click to DVD" crashes a lot. I wonder why I didn't buy "DVD MovieFactory" sooner. So, now that I have great DVD authoring software, I spend my time watching my videos instead of frustrating myself with trying to create them. Thanks, Ulead!
5 stars (READ THIS! Major Flaws FIXED) - This product should have never been released. Clearly Ulead is getting product to market to gain market share when it was obvious the product wasn't ready. The software had too many flaws such as long delays between menu screens and chapter title text input. It was flawed from a usability standpoint, slow menu creation performance, extremely slow DVD compilation but the results were great. It just required alot of patience.
Well it seems Ulead got their act together and that's the reason I'm writing this review. Hopefully everyone can benefit. Ulead has put out a couple of updates to this product that make it a pleasure to use. If you plan on purchasing this (and I recommend you do) you'll have to apply the updates to the product your purchasing. But its well worth it. Trust me. The updates can be found at http://www.ulead.com/tech/dmf/dmf_ftp.htm. First apply Part I then apply Part II.
Here's what has changed with the update. For a multiple menu screen DVD you can apply a common menu title (and font) across all the menu screens (this was manual before and slow). Changing chapter titles, menu titles, or moving between menus is very fast (less than a second as oppose to 20 to 30 seconds and i have a pretty fast machine). The act of moving through a file to set chapter points is faster. DVD compilation has been sped up tremendously to reasonable times (what took hours is now accomplished in under one hour).
This is now a great product that you can quickly produce quality DVD's of home videos. Menu creation is simple (and now fast), and you have the ability to burn directly to disc or output to your hard drive (to burn with your perferred package). I have had absolutely no audio sync issues. The DVD's come out perfect.
I looked at a bunch of packages before I settled on this (even with the initial flaws). The quality was great so I put up with the flaws. But one note on the menu creation. I had to weigh between products that allowed you to have absolute control over designing the menu (Adobe Encore, DVD Lab Pro) and a tool such as this that did not give absolute control but provided a variety of templates (you work within the templates sandbox). I tried both styles and found that for me the manual menu creation of Encore and DVD Lab Pro, while its great, it was more time than I was willing to put into the process. These are home videos not commercial videos for a business. MovieFactory allows you to choose from a variety of templates that define the number of chapters on a single menu screen and the location and size of the chapter windows. The same template has to be applied to all the menu screens in the DVD compilation. It allows you to set your own custom jpg background, motion menus (thats an Adobe Encore add-on product), and menu background music. I refused to consider any product that didn't produce great end results regardless of how great the product usability was. Of these products, the reason I chose MovieFactory was the motion menus (are really nice) and it takes me ten minutes to create a quality menu structure. Thats a trade-off you'll need to decide for yourself and your particular situation.
Highly recommended purchase. 3 stars (works okay after you download all the patches) - I previously gave this product 2 stars because the discs I burned would not play properly.
Tech support directed me to several patches to download and install, and after doing so, I was able to burn discs that actually played.
The software should have some more functionality, which is why I can't give it any more than 3 stars. |
