Tsunami DVD Author Pro - New Version

[allaboutduncan]

As I was writing the guide on custom frames in TDA, I noticed that a new version is about to be released and it has many new (and long overdue) features.

http://www.tmpg-inc.com/press/05_0822.html

Improved DVD Menu Building Wizard
DVD AUTHOR PRO features a completely redesigned DVD menu wizard which takes DVD menu creation to a completely new level. Even though a wide range of new customizable features have been added to it, the DVD menu creation process has become more dynamic and simpler than before. DVD AUTHOR PRO also features a large number of brand new pre-designed templates, and in the near future we will provide a download service at our website which allows you to download new template designs.

Smart Rendering
DVD AUTHOR PRO supports frame level MPEG editing features. Frame level editing is the most precise method for MPEG editing because it operates with frame level precision. Until now, frame level editing has required complete re-encoding of output video which has resulted in degradation of output video quality as well as a slow DVD building process. DVD AUTHOR PRO provides a smart rendering feature that eliminates this problem. It automatically analyzes video clips and makes sure that only the smallest possible number of frames is re-encoded. In other words, the smart rendering feature dramatically improves the DVD building process in terms of speed while preserving the highest possible video output quality.

Transcoding capabilities with Intercom’s® Transcoding Engine
You may often experience that DVD-Videos projects become too large to fit onto writable DVD discs when you add more and more contents to them. DVD AUTHOR PRO contains a transcoding engine from Intercom that helps you solve this problem. Rather than completely re-encoding video contents, the transcoding engine dynamically and rapidly recompresses video data streams with a minimal reduction in quality so that they will fit exactly to the size of the writable DVD media (4.5GB/8.5GB).

Improved Audio Capabilities
For consumer DVD authoring software within its price range, DVD AUTHOR PRO is the first software package that supports high quality 24bit/96KHz (2 ch)* linear PCM input and output, and it is now also possible to add two simultaneous audio streams per video track. DVD AUTHOR PRO also supports Input and output of Dolby Digital® audio streams. * The highest possible sound quality within the DVD-Video standard.

Creating slideshows
DVD AUTHOR PRO enables you to turn your still pictures, for instance from you digital camera, into animated slideshows so that you can enjoy them on your DVD player together with family, friends or colleagues. It has a large number of built-in transition effects and among other settings it is possible to adjust the time between each still picture as well as to add background music to the slideshow..

Simulation (FINALLY!!)
DVD AUTHOR PRO comes with an integrated simulator that allows you to preview and tweak a DVD-Video project before burning it to disc. With the simulator you can verify the DVD menu layout, navigation, chapter settings, and playback of tracks as well as slideshows.

Other features

* Add a “first play” track, which automatically start playback when the disc is inserted into the DVD player

* Add background music to menus

* Design your own DVD menus and save them as templates

* Add audio configuration pages to your DVD menus

* Customize layout of menu items such as background images, thumbnails, buttons and text by applying various special effects (color shading, shadows, transparency, lighting, etc.)

* Apply audio correction filters (normalization, noise reduction, fade-in/fade-out, audio gap correction, etc.)

* Supports timecode corrected MPEG files

[Padre2]

Looks like a nice upgrade, I'm going to take the drive and upgrade. Thanks for the heads-up.

dang, it doesn't look like its available yet (no buy options on the site yet)

[lordsmurf]

Some of this stuff is just bad news....

Transcoder? Don't dare use it. If you didn't do your video right the first time, don't smush it with a harmful transcode. Re-do it properly. Intercom is a poor engine too, yuck.

Audio tools? I'd stick to more tried and true means, it's so so easy to muck up audio. TDA has an issue with keeping audio sync sometimes, when used as an editor (to remove commercials).

Frame-accurate editing? Again, audio sync issue in the past. I don't see any mention of bug fixes for this flaw.

Firstplay and BGM is long overdue.

If you use it ONLY for authoring (no encoding, no editing, no restoration), then it should work decently.

I cringe every time a new "do it all for you" tool comes out, as people want to use them (lazy and/or cheap), and they just really don't work that well and have sloppy error'ed output.

[allaboutduncan]

Yeah, some of the features are bad news (audio restore and transcode) but some will be nice. I'll evaluate it and see what it's like.

I found out the reason I had the audio error on Robot Chicken was TDA 1.5 and WinXP SP2 weren't liking each other. Upgrade to TDA 1.6 seemed to fix it. Checking the last few discs seems OK. IT here at work installed SP2 on all computers right before that, so that explains it.

[markatisu]

I downloaded the Tsunami one last week and I knew something was different but since I was just using it to make some easy test authors I did not realize it was a completely new version ha ha

[lordsmurf]

There was also that audio error in the SW bonus disc. The entire "creatures" specials was out of sync after the first commercial break. What happened is the first GOP after the cut glithces.

I really don't think it's related to SP2.

[allaboutduncan]

The Tsunami you can download now isn't the Pro version. The Pro version will be out at the end of Sept.

Ah, forgot about the SW disc. Now that I think about it, both errors were from JVC DVD-R sources. I still have the source for the SW one, so I'll do some experimenting to see what's up.

Been editing out commercials with Womble on all my Boomerang stuff now.