Quick guide for anyone burning DVDs, making backups, or editing home movies

Since people are constantly asking about software for making menus, burning DVDs, backing up external drives, and all that other junk, I figured I'd drop some quick tips based on my own experience.

Here’s what I’ve messed around with:

Adobe Premiere Pro (+ Adobe Premiere)
PowerDirector 5.0
DVD Creator
Cyberlink's Burn DVD
Convert XtoDVD

First off, the one thing all these programs have in common is—they're slow. It is honestly ridiculous how much time you waste waiting for a program to render, buffer, or whatever else it does just to handle a basic 600MB AVI file. It just goes on and on.

The absolute worst offender is Sony's Adobe Premiere (and yeah, I'm counting Adobe Premiere as the base for this too). Just to get a simple burned DVD, I had to convert an AVI to MPEG2 first (because apparently these programs don't recognize AVI files?!?!?), build a menu in Architect, and then wait three hours and five minutes of pure frustration—sorry for the language, but it's the only way to put it—only to end up with a disc that won't even recognize the menus once you put it in a player. Look, Adobe Premiere looks nice, it’s packed with options, and I guess it's meant for people who want to spend days tweaking their DVDs, but if I had to rate it from 1 to 5, I'd give it a 2. Why bother with a program where you can change every single little thing when all you need is a basic DVD to watch at home?

Cyberlink's Burn DVD is basically just a clone of Pinnacle (or maybe vice versa), it's painfully slow, and personally, I found it incredibly boring. Rating: 2.5.

DVD Creator — this is actually the best choice if you're dealing with DivX and have no clue how to burn it with subtitles. I spent ages struggling to find something like this (as you can probably tell from my old posts), but this one is the winner because it automatically handles the subtitles and everything else, so you don't have to sweat it. 5 stars for DivX with subtitles; for anything else, maybe a 3.5.

Convert XtoDVD — there are plenty of programs like this that are worth tossing in the trash, and this is one of them. The name says it all. I'm not even going to bother rating it. I'll just say that among those tiny utility programs, WinX Video Converter is the best—it's fast as hell and converts any file into whatever you need in just a few minutes.🙂

My top pick, hands down, is PowerDirector 5. Like everything else, yeah, it takes time to process and burn the actual DVD files, but it works incomparably faster than, say, Adobe Premiere. But listen, if you have footage of your kids on a camcorder, or you want to record something from TV, or pull stuff from photos—POWERDIRECTOR IS KING!!! If you want to make subtitles, transitions, add effects, or play around with snapshots—POWERDIRECTOR IS KING!!! It's so straightforward that at one point I realized maybe I wasn't actually that smart, it was just a smart program. Seriously, it's phenomenal. You don't have to dig through help files, manuals, or browse random websites and all that crap.

I still need to try out Ulead video studio and Magix Movie Edit Pro 10, but I highly doubt my ranking—especially for first place—is going to change.

I'm not trying to push one specific brand here; I just wanted to help amateurs like myself find the right tools more easily. My subjective opinion might not be the absolute truth, but I think I hit the nail on the head. I'd love it if you guys could add your favorites that I missed (or forgot), so we can build a single post where everyone gets the facts firsthand. I'm also curious to see what else is out there for video software.

Anyway, hope this helps.

When it comes to DVD authoring, you’re kind of mixing up apples and oranges here—really. Adobe Premiere and PowerDirector belong to two completely different worlds. If your main goal is top-tier quality and high-end DVD mastering, then you reach for a tool like Adobe Premiere. But if you just want some quick "click & go" DVDs? That’s what programs like PowerDirector or something from Ulead (like Video Studio or DVD workshop) are for—Magix sits right up there in that same category, too. It’s not all about how fast you can finish the job.

Also, just a heads-up: AVI is a compressed format. If you actually want to convert it to DV, you have to "unpack" it first—it's pretty much the same logic as needing to convert an MP3 into a WAV file before you start editing audio. If you're planning on taking footage straight from a camera and putting it on a DVD, honestly, you're better off capturing in the camera's native format rather than using AVI. From there, you can easily whip up an MPEG using TMPGEnc (which takes maybe 15 minutes for a full-size DVD).

Adobe Premiere definitely isn't some casual software for the average home user. Honestly, Vegas + Architect is a killer combo, mostly because of that excellent Sony's DV codec.

I’m on the same page regarding Adobe Premiere Pro when it comes to keyframing, editing, and effects. It’s straightforward, intuitive, and holds up well in terms of speed. That said, you really need a beefy rig to run the latest version smoothly, whereas an older mid-range machine handles the previous iteration just fine. One area where both versions fall a bit short is DVD authoring; in my experience, I usually have to jump over to Windows Movie Maker to get the job done right. 👍