Sonic Solutions DVDit! SE - Software Review - Evaluation

Emedia Professional, May, 2000 by Jeff Sauer

With five-digit prices the norm, until recently, DVD authoring software has simply been too expensive to attract a wide audience. And while the early adopter phase has allowed service bureaus to establish good businesses with both Hollywood and forward-thinking corporations creating DVD titles, Sonic Solutions believes the consumer success of DVD players and DVD-ROM-equipped PCs marks the time to change that.

At $499, Sonic's DVDit! SE is about a tenth the price of almost any DVD authoring software currently available, and more than 20 times lower than most. Of course, it offers far fewer capabilities, but Sonic thinks that's a fair trade-off, calling DVDit! the simplest way to publish DVD titles. For simply putting high-quality video clips (encoder not included) with straightforward navigation into a compliant DVD disc image, DVDit! undoubtedly offers a well-needed option for bringing new users into the fold.

If you're thinking about testing the DVD waters, DVDit! is currently the best way to dip your toe. Corporations considering larger-scale DVD production might well spend the $500 for just a couple of intra-company trial titles before spending thousands on a full-featured system. Even professional service bureaus might off-load very basic projects from their professional authoring stations to DVDit!, probably paying for the software in just one job.

DVDit! is far from perfect, with annoyances and nonstandard Windows conventions that take some orientation. However, with the breadth of the tool so narrow, most users will be able to adjust without much difficulty. And it's hard to quibble with the basic product concept given the current DVD authoring market and competition. With DVDit!, Sonic Solutions hopes to alter the authoring landscape radically and make DVD creation available to almost anyone. DVDit! may be unsophisticated, but it begins to solve the exclusivity problem of DVD production.

a tool to grow with

DVDit! SE is one of three versions of the DVDit! product, all sharing the same general design. A light version, DVDit! LE, already exists but is only available through OEM bundles--thus far, in Matrox' DigiSuite DTV and RT2000 cards, Sigma Designs' DVR, and Margi Systems' DVD-To-Go PC card MPEG2 decoder--and is not planned for retail sales. A Professional Edition, DVDit! PE with added features, is planned for release much later this year, with a tentative price of around $3,000.

The most basic LE version limits you to just a single navigational menu from which you can link up to 36 video clips. It automates a DVD "First Play," enabling a disc to start automatically in a player. But that's it. It makes a DVD-Video disc image that will play in a consumer player for almost nothing compared to current alternatives.

The Standard Edition increases the possibilities to a "First Play" with ten menus, each linking to 36 clips or other menus. You won't find any advanced navigation, if/then logic, parental control, multi-language, or even chapter marks within clips. There's also no color mapping, since DVDit! does button highlighting automatically. You will, however, get helpful button and background templates along with text creation tools to make building a DVD project quick and easy.

With the Professional Edition still several months away, a complete feature list has yet to be finalized. However, it will likely add one or two subtitle tracks, additional audio tracks, additional navigation features, and some sort of project overview such as a timeline. Sonic sees DVDit! PE as a possible upgrade for those starting with, and ultimately outgrowing, the Standard Edition, implying that its features and timing may depend greatly on DVDit! SE's success, user feedback, and other market conditions. Yet, with both DVDit! and Sonic Solutions' own professional authoring system, DVDCreator [See Jan Ozer's review, May 1999, pp. 27-30--Ed.), to pull from, Sonic seems primed to grow as fast as the affordable DVD production market can go.

just DVDit!

DVDit!'s interface has just three areas. The first is the main viewer, which "plays" menus and video clips, and is where you drag and place buttons and clips onto menu backgrounds to create links. The second area, a menu placeholder bar, is where you drag graphic backgrounds to create your initial menu. That may sound redundant compared to dragging backgrounds directly to the main viewer; however, DVDit! uses this palette to "log-in" menus within a project, thus allowing them to accept links. The menu palette also acts in a limited way as DVDit!'s project overview, showing all menus in use and allowing renaming. Unfortunately, you can't reorder menus to storyboard your project, though Sonic is looking at this feature for a future version.

Beyond that, DVDit! has no project overview. There's no timeline, nor any graphical interface showing links. Checking links requires users to view each menu individually in the Viewer, right-clicking to "Show Links" or "Hide Links" exactly as in Minerva's Impression DVD authoring software. On the other hand, with a maximum of 10 possible menus, a QA check on each isn't too overwhelming.