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MillimeterIntegrate Review — Sonic DVDit! version 5
Aug 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Jeff Sauer
A redesigned user interface and professional-level tools bolster authoring capabilities.
If there's one DVD creation application that turned the tide of authoring from daunting to drag-and-drop simplicity, and from exclusivity to something everyone could do, it would have to be Sonic's original DVDit! Introduced some five years ago for a then-measly $500, DVDit! was a tenth of the price of the nearest competitor. More than that, it was an intuitive-to-use, dramatic departure from authoring's status quo. Apple's 2001 launch of iDVD was a tidal wave in the democratization of DVD, but it was a year and a half earlier when DVDit! first opened the DVD floodgates.
Five years later, DVDit! is in its fifth revision, but you'd hardly have known it unless you've been following very closely. Since its bold introduction, DVDit! has sloshed only in the shallow waters of the DVD pond, for the most part superceded by other products both the higher and the lower end. It has wallowed in a product line swelled by Sonic's acquisition and gasped for breath amidst falling DVD authoring prices and rising feature sets.
The Authoring area in Sonic DVDit! has been enhanced with some professional navigation features, such as setting a menu or a clip as a First Play.
No more. With the new release of DVDit! v5, Sonic is making another splash. With a street price of $299, Sonic is again positioning DVDit! below today's professional products — such as Apple's DVD Studio Pro and Adobe's Encore, which cost about $500 — and is finding fresh waters with a capable tool for DVD novices or impatient pros.
A new look
DVDit! version 5 is really a completely new interface, and that's a good thing for serious DVD creators. The old interface, while once considered revolutionary, would now be more on a par with consumer-oriented tools, such as Sonic's own MyDVD. DVDit! still has some of the straightforward drag-and-drop authoring, but now it's bolstered by tools found in more professional authoring applications, though it's not encumbered by a steep learning curve.
Like so many authoring applications now, DVDit! uses the tab-across-the-top metaphor for dividing the authoring process: Projects (a superfluous full-screen interface for opening or exiting projects); Edit (for trimming media clips); Author (for menu creation and linking); and Finish (for simulated preview, disc image building, and burning).
Edit and Author are the two tabs where most all of the work is done and the interfaces look similar. On the left side, each of those interfaces features the obligatory large Media Palette window into which you drag or import media clips, and on the right there's a large preview window for viewing media clips or building menus. Awkwardly, the Media Palette has no way to organize clips (for example, with folders) or views of clips (unnecessarily large icons are the only choice) by anything other than alphabetical order or by separating video and audio clips. That might be the norm for a consumer-oriented application destined for only small projects, but DVDit! has some professional features that otherwise ought to raise the bar. So lack of media management is an oversight here.
To use any of the media clips from the Palette in a project, to trim them or to link them to a menu, you'll need to drag them into a Movie List (or Menu/Titles List in the Author tab interface). It's a seemingly needless step, but this second list view does provide a helpful level of project overview, although one that again demands management or at least reorganization tools.
The timeline at the bottom of the Edit tab interface allows you to link audio and video clips, trim, and set chapter points, as well as add fade in and out effects to video and audio clips. The timeline cannot append or splice clips, and that puts it a step behind several more expensive applications, but that's a reasonable trade for the lower price. I'm much more disappointed Sonic did not add support for multiple audio tracks and languages. It could surely have also added subtitles. DVDit! does support audio offset synching, but by entering a number in a dialogue box rather than through the timeline.
Authoring it!
Where the Edit interface is lacking, DVDit! has nicely enhanced the Authoring area while still keeping things relatively simple. Authoring can be as easy as dragging graphics or movies onto menus for backgrounds, then dragging media on top to create links. In that way it stays consistent with the original DVDit! However, Sonic has made the new DVDit! much more powerful and thus more of an option for video professionals.
If you're familiar with the Properties Inspector of Adobe Encore (which, incidentally, licenses Sonic's DVD engine) or Sonic's DVD Producer, DVDit! adds similar functions to a programming area positioned below the menu authoring window. It's here that the new DVDit! is at its best, with some professional navigation features in a $299 product.
For example, you can set a menu or a clip as a First Play. You can also set a media clip to Loop or create an end action to jump to another clip or menu. Graphical elements can be manually linked to specific media clips, allowing for custom buttons and animated thumbnails. And you can build arrow key routing (for the player's remote) either automatically or manually. DVDit! now even supports sub-pictures. These are all great additions to an easy-to-use authoring tool.
DVDit! still has nice enough text tools, including drop shadow effects and positioning. Creating slideshows can be as easy as dragging and dropping an entire group of image files into a single window. You can add DVD-ROM information to a DVD-Video image to create a hybrid disc. DVDit! also retains the important ability to manually reposition buttons on a menu (it's the least expensive Windows tool to do so). There are no menu templates in DVDit!, although Sonic does include several stock graphics for backgrounds, buttons, and frames. That's a major distinction between DVDit! and virtually all consumer-oriented applications, as well as a few more expensive ones that don't offer that design flexibility. For graphically challenged video professionals, Sonic does smartly include alignment and snap-to-grid tools in lieu of those templates.
There are a few interface anomalies in DVDit! Media management is lacking. First Play is set in the List window rather than the programming area, where everything else is. Button graphics can be added to a menu directly from the Media Palette, but media can't. But none of these is a critical flaw. More importantly, the new authoring features borrowed from Sonic's higher-end products make the new DVDit! a smart tool for building relatively straightforward DVD titles quickly.
Ultimately, DVDit! will probably not be the main tool for many professional DVD authors, although many may find it more than enough for offloading smaller projects from their main authoring station. However, it may become the main tool for many video professionals trying to author.
Jeff Sauer is a freelance video producer and industry consultant. He directs the DTV Group Lab, an independent research and testing facility in Cambridge, Mass.
BOTTOM LINE
Company: Sonic Solutions Novato, Calif.; (415) 893-8000 www.sonic.com
Product: DVDit! version 5
Assets: New interface bolstered by professional tools; small learning curve.
Caveats: Clip management lacking; no support for multiple audio tracks and languages.
Demographic: Authoring novices and pros wanting to offload smaller projects from their main authoring stations.
Price: $299
