neil wilkes
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Documentation (user guides, etc) about Sonic's products is in exceedingly difficult to find (when Sonic went away the information went away too it seems) - most of the links that come up are to bogus/questionable download sites. I finally did find a draft copy of the DVD-Audio Creator user guide (incomplete with sections "Under construction" or with gibberish text). From what I can see Creator isn't a single/integrated program but rather a set of near-commandline type of programs that assemble pre-made assets. Thus you don't need Sonic Studio HD or One Click DVD at all - if you can create the audio files using the compressors/editors of your choice that's fine, ditto for the menus, etc. The problem is a lot of the "heavy lifting" for navigation and the like needs to be done using Scenarist scripting and documentation for that is as hard or harder to find as for DVD-Audio Creator.
If the folks at Mediachance.com (who make DVDLab Pro) did a DVD-A tool it'd probably be a couple hundred dollars and be a heck of a lot easier to use than Sonic's software :howl Maybe I'll make that suggestion to them - can't hurt to try
Sonic documentation is indeed very difficult to find.
It also doesn't help matters that the, hem "educational version" available is a very old one (3.0.5) and moreover is quite different in usage compared to the build I use (3.0 (11) and 3.0 (12) ) that any documentation from my installation will not help. My version uses a combined "COMMAND EDIT" applet (DVD-Audio Creator is actually a series of 6 or 7 different tools, depending on your version) whereas the "other" version uses separate COMMAND EDIT & AUTHOR tools - one is what you use to map the disc content, the other to actually set all the commands in buttons & on menu pre-post areas. Mine does all this in one go.
You are correct in what you say - that version is indeed near command line but with a small GUI element. You do need to know the way the format is structured to be able to build a disc, but once you get to grips with it it is actually faster than DiscWelder to create a very basic no frills disc in Sonic DAC. You also must know the DVD-A heirarchy if making a complex title in Chrome, otherwise certain things on menus will be impossible and you will not understand why.
All this said, the hardest part to create is actually the Video_TS you will need as you cannot use an Abstraction Layer tool to do this or you will get a spec fail on import to DAC. AL tools always make extensive use of dummy configurations to make their discs, and this will not work with DVD-A use as there are some pretty heavy restrictions on VTS titles to import them legally.
Best tools? DVD Creator on the Mac, OS9. Unavailable for years though. Ditto Spruce Maestro (this did create spec compliant Video_TS, but when Apple bought it & turned it into DVDSP they killed all that).
DVD-Lab Pro is probably the best tool to make these as long as you know how to use it without the AL as it is one very flexible tool indeed. It also has full scripting support, and you can write all as VM commands manually instead of having to use the abstraction layer generated code via drag & drop. Also invaluable is the PDF series "The Unofficial DVD Specifications" as it details all the VM commands & explains their usage & syntax.
The hard yards are all in the asset preparation & understanding the limitations of the format - and the workarounds.
It will be a crying shame if DVD-A/V dies, as done right it is still THE most cost effective way to release surround. Blu-ray allows more content but at a hefty price point.