In the past, these files had to be created prior to any authoring.

For surround audio, there will be both a stereo track, as well as an AC-3 encoded audio file for the surround mix. When multiple languages are used, there will be more than one audio file for each video element. Each video segment has a compressed MPEG2-format video file (.m2v) and, if there is audio with the program, at least one audio file (.wav). Obviously, there is still room for the advanced products, but any of the sub-$1,000 software tools will do the trick for most producers.ĭVD program assets are made up of elementary stream files. Most of the popular authoring applications offer the main features, like motion menus, subtitles and multiple languages but, not all permit some of the more advanced features, including 24fps encoding, multiple camera angles and AC-3 Dolby surround audio tracks. This is especially true considering the significant drop in price from the early days of DVD tools. You are generally limited to 99 different assets – far less than the full DVD spec would actually allow, yet well within the requirements of most commercial and corporate DVDs. The full DVD spec deals with complex elements like program managers, title sets and so on, but these newer authoring tools have adopted a more streamlined approach – dividing your assets into tracks (for video and audio elements) and menus.

Newer, more user-friendly programs like Adobe Encore DVD, Apple DVD Studio Pro 2, Sonic’s own Reel DVD and Sony’s DVD Architect now offer enough of these same DVD authoring features to satisfy the requirements of over 90% of all the types of DVDs typically produced. Creating a disk with the full nuances of the DVD-Video spec has been addressed in such high-end applications as Sonic Solutions’ DVD Creator. This is one of the categories within the overall DVD format specification that includes other forms, such as DVD-ROM and DVD-Audio.

When you produce a video DVD, you are actually building a creative product that must conform to the DVD-Video spec. This has made something that started out as a very arcane, expensive and specialized task into something that is easy enough for any video professional to master. DVD authoring has become an extension of most nonlinear editing software. The DVD has become the de facto replacement for the VHS dub.

Dvd production software