I appologize for posting in the MC software forum, but I'm sure I'm not the only one in need of some insight into this. 

I recently had a film air on PBS and they needed DVD's of the program for people to buy (Apparently no-one in their audience wants Blu-rays). I discovered that all the tools I used to use for DVD authoring are now effectively extinct. This includes the high-end MPEG2 encoders and the authoring software itself. We ended up outsourcing to a large duplication company, but had some issues getting the encode quality at the old professional standard (Cinemacraft encoder). Digging deeper, it seems many pieces of software can't legally exist because various licensing agreements are now defunct. 

So, the big question is - how does one make a professional level DVD/Bluray with menus in 2022?

Is there a mid-level authoring suite with the power of the retired Encore software or DVD studio pro? I'm sure there is still options in the high-end space and the consumer space has lots of Mickey Mouse "drag and burn" stuff. Just wondering if there is something for people who want better encoding quality and the ability to make more complex menus without the 50K price tag. 

Thoughts on TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6? DVD architect in Vegas Pro 15? Is there any mac software options?

Any suggestions would be helpful. 

Regards,

Robert

Is Toast by Roxio suitable? its what I use.

St.John

The issue with many of the lower cost products is they often don't have very efficient MPEG2 encoding and that leads to poor results.

The solution I use is to encode the Audio and Video seperately (and QC them to be sure the result is ok and DVD compliant) and then use these assets in a DVD authoring application. If the content is DVD compliant most software will just pass it along and not re-encode.

Hi Robert, and thank you for asking this.  I've been an editor of PBS documentaries for decades, and have gone through not only the disc authoring process, but also the VHS process that came before it.  

Back then it was called PBS Home Video, which eventually was rebranded as PBS-D.  There were many ways to deliver shows to them for meetig their home video offer requirements.  I remember plenty of times when I authored DVDs myself.  I also remember plenty of times when I was simply sending all of the elements to PBS directly and they were doing it. (Mine looked better, thank you very much.) 

The last one I did for them was around a year ago.  They wanted to discuss both ways of delivery with me - either my sending a hard drive with the master program on it, or my authoring of a DVD on my own. For that, I still have a MacPro 1;1 with DVD Studio Pro on it.  I am always able to dust off my authoring skills and do it that way... but in the end, it actually turned out to be a MUCH more stable and secure decision to simply send everything to one of the PBS-sanctioned post houses like Pillar-2-Post or Henninger, and have them make it.  Really top-notch people work at both, and they also completely understand every single new delivery item that PBS asks for - which seems to change constantly. 

Now, I know that doesn't really answer your original question.

I simply wanted to stress that PBS - and other public media entities like APT (etc) - have requirements that change so much, that all of the producers I've worked for have decided to spend the litle bit extra to simply "let them deal with it". Plus, there is the peace of mind in letting someone who makes discs constantly handle it, instead of me, who makes one every 6 months ;) 

Plus, ever since the original DVD authoring apps were EOL'd, I've personally seen the trustworthiness of "homemade" disc creation go down. One in ten discs simply don't work.  Some people say it's the quality of the discs themselves, but I disagree.  I spent years learning that DVD authoring always created glitches in the discs when I made the mistake of launching Premiere or Media Composer while Encore was in the middle of writing to the disc, because the simple act of system resources being flashed caused the physical glitches on the screen to happen.  So it's my guess that all of today's background apps like Dropbox etc are the issue.

All that being said, I have a few editing colleagues at other public media entities who indeed say that they've been impressed with the level of authoring theyre seeing from people using the DVD capabilities in Vegas. 

Side note -- DVD and BluRay authoring has devinitely become an issue over recent years.  In fact, it's almost taboo to speak about it, because one of the main reasons for all of the original authoring apps to have dropped their continued support for it had to do with a threatened lawsuit by one of the software companies that made components found in all of the DVD authoring apps out there. Hence the state we're all in.

DVD Architect Pro in Vegas is quite reliable.

TVJohn:

DVD Architect Pro in Vegas is quite reliable.

Vegas DVD Architect Pro is discontinued and not purchable anymore like lots of the other applications that we used in the past. Magix, a German company, has taken over Vegas Pro from Sony a while ago. In their very latest releases of the Vegas suites there is no DVD Architect included anymore.

Also, DVD Architect Pro was Windows only. Robert is looking for a Mac solution.

I'm not a specialist anymore on the Mac, but after some research it looks like Roxio Toast 20 Pro comes the closest to what optical disc authoring has been on the Mac platform.

For encoding you can use Shutter Encoder that is available for Mac and Windows.

CinéMatica:

Vegas DVD Architect Pro is discontinued and not purchable anymore

Shame on me for not knowing that. 

CinéMatica:

it looks like Roxio Toast 20 Pro comes the closest to what optical disc authoring has been on the Mac platform

Thanks for looking into that.

TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6

https://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/taw6.html

Another vote here for TMPGenc Authoring Works.  Not as easy to modify the menus as the old Adobe Encore -- but really the best game left in town as I see it.

EDIT:  YIKES!  This is the mac forum.  Windows only.  Apologies.

I was going to suggest DVD-lab Pro 2.5 as it is still available and still works here after a couple of Decades. However checking just now shows it is Windows only.

Nero burning ROM and Platinum suites are still available for both Mac and PC and could be worth a look. I have only used it for encoding and decoding as I have existing well established workflows with DVD -lab PRO.   

I've been asked several times why I encode my DVDs the way I do and if there are any downsides to encoding Video and Audio separately. The quick answer is that it allows for perfect quality control of each stream.

I had a client last year want an authored DVD and 300 copies, so I dusted off the old software and hardware. I still have Avid DVD and it works with Win 10, also DVD Architect Pro. Both are still good for DVD and HD Blu Ray, with strengths in one or the other (Adobe Encore was good too if I recall but that is hard to come by now). Both can still be used for both replication and duplication, without the need for those old tape drives. I dusted off the old Primera Disc publisher and with a little grease and new ink, it did a sterling job for this client. The only part I farmed out was the DVD case inserts, which are cheap to get printed and the client provided the professionall artwork. All media was reasonable too.

But I also started looking into UHD Blu Ray, since there still is a market for services there and specialist feature release reissue/restoration, interests me greatly. This is much harder and the professional software doesn't really justify the investment now but I did come across one solution, that can produce simple yet professional authored discs:

https://dvd-logic.com/bd_wizard

It's 500 euros but you can get a 1 yr licence for 99 euros and given the amount of work of this kind needed now, that could make sense. I have only dabbled with TMPGEnc Authoring Works a little but for me it had some limitations for professional replication output. All other solutions around the net are strictly amateur, with silly menu templates etc. and severly limited disc funtionality. As someone mentioned since the good solutions became EOL, the standard has gone down.

Thank you for all the solutions. It sounds like I need to boot up my PC and wait a week for it to update. 

Back in 2005, I actually worked for Ascent Media (now owned by ByDeluxe) as DVD/Bluray Production Manager coordinating the DVD/Bluray creation for films/TV compilations. My main clients were a mouse and a water tower. We had a football field's worth of bleeding edge equipment for restoration, digital intermediates, foreign language conform, frame-rate conversion and encoding. In fact, on some projects they would bring in special compressionists that would literally go frame by frame and tweak the bitrate/encode settings to achieve the highest picture quality per bit. I learned why A-list feature films looked amazing while my homemade DVD's always looked a bit soft even at the highest settings. Obviously source quality also played a big part.

DVDs were run through expensive hardware encoders and authored on Scenarist (50k per seat). This allowed the authorers to write lower level code to increase compatibility and make very sophisticated interactive games. 

These discs would be QC tested on the top 40 DVD players purchased in the country. We all waited eagerly to know whether it played correctly on the pink Disney Princess player - the most important DVD player ever made. I ended up transitioning into editing special features but was lucky to be there as the first generation of Blu-rays were being authored. I learned a ton. I also gained a lot of respect for the QC operator who had to watch Full House Season 6 all the way through every time a bug was logged. 

So it's a little sad to see that whole industry fade into the past. The same thing happened to CD-roms (remember Macromedia Director?). Anyhow, I hope there is a new 4K/8K digital format that can be interactive yet accessible to regular video pros and not just software programmers who work for the streaming companies. It looks like the Bluray of the future is an app. 

Thanks again,

Robert

Chris,

I am kicking myself for not creating a virtual machine of Windows XP with Encore and Procoder. I had the pleasure of working with Henninger for network QC and agree that they are top notch. In the end, we were able to get our discs done through a third party, but not without some back and forth to get the encoding right. I think the default was to use some easy consumer software, but they dusted off the older better stuff when I pushed the issue. We kept it very basic and hit our deadline. 

I figured there was some legal reason all of these apps have disappeared. Hopefully, the next format will be based around Open standards.

-Robert

Robert Bowlus:

So it's a little sad to see that whole industry fade into the past. The same thing happened to CD-roms (remember Macromedia Director?). Anyhow, I hope there is a new 4K/8K digital format that can be interactive yet accessible to regular video pros and not just software programmers who work for the streaming companies. It looks like the Bluray of the future is an app. 

Very interesting Robert, great experience. Although we live in an age of Spotify and Netflix, there is still is a small but reliable market for physical media. I love physical media, I love the packaging, the presentation and just simply being able to own it. UHD Blu Ray, is still very much current and although a relatively small market, it offers simply the best quality of any home cinema experience, for now. For example, My Fair Lady, in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, is absolutely stellar - the very best of Netflix or Disney+ is not even close to some of these hi quality releases. And the same care and production pertains, at the top level that you refer to from the DVD/HD Blu Ray days.

I believe they still use the latest, very expensive Scenarist, for those but the company I linked to, a European one, have some very sophisticated, enterprise software solutions for complex UHD Blu Ray authoring too - it's just not worth the investment for 'regular video pros'. The encoding is not a problem anymore (I used to use Sorenson Squeeze, still have it, still works on Win 10 and used it again for the job I referred to and the results were stiil very good) and infact Mainconcept have developed a very creditable plugin for Resolve that includes Blu Ray encoding. But high level authoring of UHD Blu Ray can be much more involved than even the process you knew, since the discs are capable of much more interactivity with Java especially. However for a straight professional simple release, with perhaps some extras, BD Wizard is hard to beat and perhaps the only solution at this price level.