Computers are wonderful things, as we
all know, they can not only help us to get work done, but to create
as well. DVDs and their burners have dropped drastically in price
over the years, to the point where pretty much everyone can afford
them. When it comes to creating a DVD though, you’ve got a plethora
of choices when looking to buy software to do it, everyone wants your
money. Just like anything though, not all software is created equal,
and many times it doesn’t quite work as it should, and other times
you’ll need to get separate pieces of software to get what you want
done. You could buy a suite of software, but oftentimes that can be
expensive, but it doesn’t have to be, there are many inexpensive
choices out there on the market today.
Today I’m looking at an inexpensive
suite of DVD creation software called WinX DVD Author. This software
will take you from beginning to end of the DVD creation process in a
few simple, easy steps. WinX DVD Author will allow you to quickly and
easily go from a regular video file to a ready to play DVD with menus
and everything, for a professional looking DVD presentation. So read
on to learn more…
Product
Name: WinX
DVD Author
Author: Kristofer Brozio
Sponsor: WinX
Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
– help
you author DVD in 3 simple steps
* Easy-to-use and
multi-function DVD authoring software
* Support almost all kinds of
popular video formats
* Best video image quality
after converting
* Less than 1 hour for a full
4.2 GB DVD.
* Authoring with DVD Menu &
Chapter Menu
* Support Dolby Digital AC-3
Audio
Price:
$22.90
Functions
& Features:
WinX DVD Author is well-known
as home DVD creation software which brings you perfect DVD authoring
experience with much easier manipulation. Creating a full 4.3G high
video quality DVD within one hour, easily edit video by clipping,
cropping or trimming. WinX DVD Author is the best DVD authoring
solution for pros and fresh.
Fast and powerful DVD converter
With high quality and fastest
decode & encode engine inside, batch conversion supported, WinX
DVD Author could convert AVI, MP4, WMV, DivX, Xvid and RM to DVD with
subtitle together.
Automatic DVD Menu maker
Automatically created DVD menu
& chapter menu, flexible and easy. Support background music and
picture selection, supply kinds of templates to colorize your design.
Versatile DVD Burner
With DVD video disc burner
inside, WinX DVD Author is the unique DVD software which supports two
kinds of burn modules. Full compatible with DVD+/-R, DVD+/- RW, DVD
DL+R, DVD DL+/-RW perfectly helps you backup your precious files.
Convert and burn.
1. Supports almost all video
formats converted to DVD.
2. High quality and super fast
speed(With high quality and fastest converting engine inside).
3. With DVD Video disc burner
inside and support most of DVD burn devices.
4. Support batch conversion.
Author DVD
1. Authoring with DVD Menu &
chapter Menu.
2. Support to add background
music & picture to DVD menu.
3. Support 16:9 widescreen and
4:3 standard TV, NTSC and PAL video.
4. Support adding subtitle
(srt*) to DVD.
5. Support Dolby Digital AC-3
Audio.
Other features:
1. Support all current hardware
interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA).
2. Support disc media: DVD+/-R,
DVD+/- RW, DVD DL+R, DVD DL+/-RW, etc.
3. Save as VOB Files on the
hard disk
4. Support multilingual:
English, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, etc.
References:
Input Video formats:
AVI, ASF, MPEG, MKV, MOV, RM,
RMVB, XIVD, DVIX ,H264, OGG, QT(quick time), FLV, etc.
Output: DVD
Platforms: Microsoft Windows
98, NT, 2000,2003, XP, Vista, Windows 7
A
Better Look at Things:
WinX DVD Author a download so
there is no box shots or anything like that.
Loading up the program you’re
greeted with the main menus where’ you’ll find four main choices,
Video DVD Author, Convert Video to VOB, Vob to DVD Compiler, and DVD
Disc Burner.
If you click the little Wrench on
the bottom, up will pop up a general settings menu with choices for
Subtitles and the Burner. Here is where you can change the basic
things about your DVD.
Clicking the Question Marks makes
the Help contents come up so you can get help with your project if
need be.
Installation,
Testing and Comparison:
The first option is to create your
DVD, starting that up, your’ greeted with a menu for adding a video
to your project and doing some basic editing of your video file.
Next up in the process is to
create your menus for your DVD, you can create titles, thumbnails,
and even add backgrounds or even background music to your project.
Finally it’s time to burn your
project to DVD. On this last menu you can adjust a few more settings,
before the final burn.
The VOB Converter part of WinX DVD
Author is easy to use, when it works. Just add your video file, edit
it if need be then continue on to the final conversions screen, where
you can choose the output quality from a drop down box. I had a bit
of a problem with this part of the program, it crashed three times
before it accepted my file to be converted, not sure what happened
there, no errors or anything, it just stopped working.
The last choice is to take an
existing Vob file and crate a DVD from it, it’s very similar to the
main program, where you’ll create the menus and then burn your disc.
Conversion and creation speeds
will vary greatly on your computer specs, and what kind of processor
you’ve got in there, be it quad, dual or single core and of course
the speed of it. It will also depend on how much ram you’ve got as
well, any DVD creation program will require a decent computer to get
things done quickly, and this is no different.
Summary
and Comments:
WinX DVD Author isn’t a bad
program, when works correctly. The main part of the program, creating
a DVD from a video file seems to work fine, but the conversion
program does have some problems as I mentioned.
For the price of $23 basically
it’s not a bad piece of software, though it does need a bit of work
apparently.
DragonSteelMods gives WinX DVD
Author a 4 out of 5 score.
Pros:
+Fairly easy to use
+Quick all-in-one solution for
creating a DVD
+Inexpensive for what it can do
Cons:
-Crashes for no reason sometimes
I
would like to thank WinX for the chance to review WinX
DVD Author and for their support of DSM.
review# 592