HistoryBuff1, on Jan 12 2007, 06:04 PM, said:
Your experience is the same as mine, only I bought a new Dell XPS 410 machine, 2 months ago. It is a duo core machine, 4 GB memory, with 512 MB Nvidea GeForce 7300 LE video card. The driver is most recent.
Frankly, I have gone throught Roxio 8, Roxio 9, and now a new PC, and I can't get their software to successfully burn a DVD, or CD for a simple slideshow. This past Saturday was the last straw; Created what appeared to be a nice DVD slideshow, and when showing it to friends, found out the first 60 or slides were included, and the last 10 were included, and the middle 80 or so were left out (even thoudh during the rendering process I could see ALL slides being included). I've had it with Roxio, and I am looking for replacement software.
Any one have any suggestions for a good replacement software?
Thanks
HistoryBuff1,
I upgraded to EMC9, because I thought it would give me what 7 or 8 other programs I run together in one neat little package. Boy was I wrong! My list of problems is at the end of this note.
Here's what I use, and have resorted to using again. These are the main ones.
PSP Software - Video 9 - fast and accepts most formats.
DVD Compile- DVDLab Pro - Does Burning as well - big learning curve though -Elementary Stream Processing! You'll learn lots about DVD compiling and structure in a graphical format.
DVD Creation - ARCSoft - Very quick and easy, accepts many formats and creates just as many. I don't use it to burn just create and output to MPG (DVD). Works very well and never crashes!
Media File Editing - VideoRedo -Quick, with several output formats.-Excellent support and automatic upgrades. Does MS files, MPG, VOB and others. Even removes commercials from TiVo or VOB files.
DVD Burning - DVDBurner/DVD Decryptor - both free and work very well. Check the link below for more files and tools
Audio Conversion - BeSweet/BeSweet Lite - does every format - I always convert my audio to AC3. ArcSoft makes MPA type audio, which is large.
DVDRebuilder Pro - Compression for large projects and does MP4 output.
I have several others as well, for 3GP conversion and general media type conversions but those are the main ones. None of the programs above required me to upgrade, turn off services, remove codecs or have any conflicts with each other. They just plain work well! All of them have a bit of a learning curve with them as they do quite a bit of tasks, so be prepared and ask questions. This is where Roxio suceeds getting new users out of the gate and producing movies quick.
Great help site
http://www.videohelp...?toolsearch=dvd with many tools for Video.
EMC 9 Experience
The main problem with EMC9 (and I'm not bashing it, really I wanted it to work since I spent $US100!) is the install/de-install issues and the general machine conflicts. I did finally get the application to work. The initial download took 4 hrs and I have a T1 connection, this should have been my first clue! Make sure you have good back ups - Norton Ghost is my favorite, thank God I had it. There are several posts about install/deinstall steps, so I won't detail them, they do work. Beleive me I did them several times, I'm a pro at install/de-instal! Although my favorite, someone suggested, turing off all services (using MSCONFIG) before making a DVD!....why on earth would a company sell software which cannot run with other applications and services is just beyond me.
Once I had EMC9 operational, the machine would just stop, reset and start again - this was rather annoying, but narrowed it down to a Graphics Card firmware update needed.
Issues
Video Quality was very poor compared to ArcSoft's encoding. Even at 9Mbs, ArcSoft is supperior at 6Mbs
PSP Conversion - never worked, couldn't get it to work no matter what I tried.
VOB importing - Should qualify this, EMC9 will import an entire movie (IFO Files), but it will not import individual VOB. I needed to import individual files. To me this is basic, it's only an MPEG file.
VideoWave - A nice program if you could get it to work. Mine kept trying to register, even though it's registered. Quality issues and format output problems.
Overall, I do like how Roxio tried to combine everything into one platform. I am a big advocate of this, I just think it needs more development time and some real world experience before selling it off to the general public.
I did a time comparison between my programs and EMC9. I created, mainuipulated and burned a single DVD. In terms of speed EMC9 won by about 5mins. The quality issue still remained, however EMC9 is very easy to create a DVD in a few simple clicks.
I tried and removed Cyberlinks Power Director, same issues quality and very buggy.
I run an HP Media Centre machine, dual core AMD processor, which is plenty of power for video processing. EMC9 used up all the resources and memory when making video's.
If EMC9 fixes up some issues and upgrades their software I'll be the first one back and promiting it. Till then, my machines are free of it.
Anyway good luck...cwh