Sonic MyDVD 3.0 Review

by Robin Liss
Published on Dec 5, 2002 12:00 AM



The latest trend in digital video is to author your own DVDs. You can't do it without the proper software. Sonic, one of the first providers of DVD-authoring software, has come out with the latest version of MyDVD 3.0, a DVD-authoring tool for consumers. The program is easy to use, but don't be mistaken -- this is a consumer tool and it is somewhat limiting in what you can do.

MyDVD has a capturing program built in, so you can take video from your camcorder or VCR and bring it in to your computer. The capture program encodes directly to MPEG2 (the format of DVDs). This is nice because it saves you time. The other DVD-authoring programs that we have worked with capture your file to AVI and then convert it to MPEG. The on-the-fly MPEG2 conversion is a great feature; however, it is more prone to error.

In addition to being able to add video to your DVDs, you can also add pictures. Once you have your video into the computer, MyDVD has tools to allow you to trim your clips and select the footage that you want to put on the DVD. You can also import clips that you already have captured to your computer. MyDVD will automatically convert them to the correct format for the DVD.

Once you have your video into the computer you have to author your DVD. A large part of DVD-authoring is creating a menu system. This is the best part of DVDs, because you can create interactive menus. Sonic MyDVD comes with preset styles that you can use for your menus. You can customize the text of each clip and the title text. The preset menus each have thumbnail pictures of the video files they link to.

The preset styles are nice and will work well for most people, but eventually, if you want to make really nice DVDs, you'll want to customize your menus. MyDVD gives you a nice number of customization options. You can add your own background, and select the button style for the thumbnails for each clip from 15 pre-made buttons. You can also select the main title font and the thumbnail title font. Once you've created your custom style you add your clips, MyDVD automatically places the buttons based on the number of clips. You can't move the buttons around, which would be nice. A good feature is that you can make a button go to another menu; some authoring programs don't allow this. It would be really great if you could add text elements that were totally independent of a clip; for example, you could add a text box explaining what your DVD is about. None of the consumer DVD-authoring tools currently allow you to do this (you can technically do it in Ulead MediaStudio, but you need Ulead PhotoImpact and it's not a supported feature, so it doesn't always work).

One thing that I didn't like about MyDVD is the forward, back and home buttons. They are automatically placed on your DVD and you can't customize them. It's too bad because it forces your DVD to be very linear. You also can't select which frame in your video you want to set as the thumbnail picture; it is always set to your first frame. If all your videos fade up from black, your thumbnails are all going to be black. Another weakness with the program is that you can't add an introduction file. An introduction file is a video that will play as soon as the DVD is put into the player, before any menu shows up.

MyDVD allows you to directly burn your DVD to a DVD disc (DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW are supported). Sonic also has a proprietary format called cDVD. cDVD is DVD content on a CD-R or CD-RW disk. cDVD is nice because it allows the consumer to burn DVD content with a CD burner, which is much less expensive than a DVD burner. You can only get 10-15 minutes of video on a cDVD, however. Another problem is that the cDVD disks are compatible with very few, if any, stand-alone DVD players. You can play them in a computer but not in your home DVD player. A nice feature that Sonic has included with MyDVD is WinDVD, a software DVD player. Whenever you burn a cDVD or a DVD, MyDVD includes a copy of WinDVD for you. This is nice because it ensures that the person you give your DVD or cDVD to can watch your video. Another problem with a cDVD is smooth playback. In our tests, most computer CD players can not handle bit rates (the amount of information contained in each second of video) as high as cDVD, so playback is choppy.

One output option that MyDVD doesn't have is S-VCD and VCD. S-VCD and VCD are older video CD formats. VCDs and S-VCDs are not as high quality as DVDs; however, both are better than VHS and can hold much more video than Sonic's cDVD. S-VCD can hold 32 minutes of video and VCD can hold around 70 minutes of video. Many of the current stand-alone DVD players, and almost all new stand-alone DVD players, can play S-VCD and VCD disks. Both are great formats because they allow you to get a lot of high-quality video, menus (with S-VCD and newer VCDs), and burn them on CDs which are cheap. The first version of VCD did not support menus, but there is a newer version (version 2.0) which does. Sonic is planing on supporting VCD 2.0 in version 3.1 of MyDVD. Unlike their cDVD format, which is supported by very few players (if any), the company reports that VCD 2.0 is supported by 70% of the players on the market.

MyDVD is one of the most versitile consumer programs for creating DVDs. The program is very easy to use, while at the same time giving you more customization options than any other consumer program. The conversion tools that ensure your videos are DVD-compatible are great. The only weakness of this tool is the lack of VCD creation. It's really too bad that they didn't include this. The only realistic way for someone without a DVD burner to make video on disc content is with VCDs. Unless you have a DVD burner -- which very few people have -- Sonic MyDVD is not going to be a useful tool. Sonic has said, however, that in the upcomming version 3.1 of MyDVD they will include VCD 2.0 creation. Once they include VCD creation, Sonic MyDVD will be a great product.

Sonic MyDVD
MSRP: $99.99
System Requirements:
Microsoft Windoes 98, SE, ME, 2000 or XP
Microsoft Windows Media Player 6.0 or later
550 MHz Intel Pentium CPU (1 GHz recomended)
128 MB RAM (256 recomended)
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
AGP video graphics adapter with at least 8MB of RAM
Minimum 16-Bit monitor with 800 x 600 resolution
Minimum 10 GB free hard disk space
DVD or CD recorder