astarte's DVDirector - Software Review - Evaluation

Emedia Professional, Nov, 1999 by Jeff Sauer

DVD's success for home entertainment and Hollywood movies seems secure, but pricey DVD authoring systems--and expensive burners--still restrict corporate adoption of the format to specialized projects, largely done through service bureaus. Fortunately, authoring prices are falling and Astarte is leading the way with a robust DVD authoring package for about half the price of previous price leaders

Starting at $5,399, Astarte's Mac-based DVDirector is admittedly still no steal by common software standards, but it's far cheaper than the software portion of Sonic Solutions' DVDCreator for Mac or Windows-based packages from Minerva, Daikin, or Spruce Technologies [All four were reviewed in EMedia between February and May 1999. All reviews can be found at http://www.emedialive.com--Ed.].

Being the new kid on the DVD authoring block has given Astarte a chance to both borrow and divert from existing DVD interface conventions. Most notably, Astarte thankfully shields users from the arcane technical DVD spec details-like Video Objects, Color Mapping, and Sub-pictures--while still offering most of the features that make DVD a powerful interactive tool. But willie Astarte has succeeded marvelously in some areas, DVDirector still suffers from minor awkwardness and some potentially serious omissions that keep this version of the software from being a runaway hit. Nonetheless, given the significant price differential, Astarte is well worth a look.

While some users may shy away from the Macintosh, the huge major of digital video content is still produced on Mac-based systems. Direct QuickTime-to-MPEG-2 transcoding from Astarte's M. Pack gives DVDirector a solid link to nonlinear editing stations and that will only improve when Wired, Inc. releases its Mac DV-MPEG-2 real-time encoder board (due this fall for less than $399).

hardware not necessarily included

The basic $5,399 DVDirector package includes Astarte's M. Pack MPEG-2 encoding solution and Wired Inc.'s 4DVD MPEG-2 decoder card for preview. Astarte also offers a "Pro" bundle ($9,899), which adds Wired's component version MediaPress MPEG-2 encoder hardware and Astarte's own A. Pack AC-3 encoding software.

Since DVDirector works with any compliant MPEG files, and has no direct interaction with the MediaPress card beyond simply handling its files, our focus here is on the authoring software. MediaPress, also available separately, offers good quality and an excellent value for basic or industrial video; however, as a price leader, it doesn't rival the best quality in the industry and some users may want to look higher. Since encoding and authoring are two separate processes, DVDirector is still a viable choice for authoring regardless of your encoder choice [See Jan Ozer's MediaPress review, May 1999, p. 31-33--Ed.].

something old and something new

On the surface, DVDirector's interface bears a strong resemblance to other DVD authoring systems. You begin an authoring project by importing media clips and menu files into a generic asset bin. While this step is necessary for the application to register incoming assets, no authoring company, including Astarte, as yet offers media management assistance to a project with dozens of media files. Providing a more rich organizational structure within this bin--with sorting, searching, and offering information about the media within the file such as timecode, duration, reel/tape number, and user comments--would be a real asset.

DVDirector also features a Graphical View flowchart, like Daikin's and especially Sonic Solutions', offering an overview of links with arrows annotating navigation paths. Yet, while DVDirector's flowchart is visually similar to the others, it doesn't support dragging and dropping to create links. Instead, Astarte features an always-on-top Property Inspector window that shows all information and links to whatever asset in activated in the Graphical Window. Pull-down menus within the Property Inspector set available options and links and give an effective quick overview. Where pull-down menus aren't revealing enough, they can be opened as separate windows like standard Mac Finder folders.

For a big picture overview of an entire project, Astarte has added a Matrix view that, depending on viewing options, can show up to all assets, menus, buttons, and their links for a whole project. For organization buffs, this Matrix may offer the easiest check on whether all links are in place.

Note that while its far from essential for using DVDirector, power users will be happiest with the largest monitor possible, or a dual monitor configuration, to efficiently manage the variety of window options and helpful views.

one step at a time

DVDirector's Project Window, a Mac Finder-style list of folders, is where you group elementary stream media assets to form tracks. Track folders can contain video, audio, subtitles, and scripts and simply dragging and dropping assets into the same folder joins them together. If you've done your editing and MPEG encoding well, this approach is a very straightforward for pairing elementary audio and video streams.