Ulead DVD Workshop -- A Complete Piece of SH*T?

OMG, I can't believe what a complete piece of shit Ulead DVD Workshop
turned out to be for me.

I installed it last night, and no matter what I did, it wouldn't
render the RF signal from my ATI AIW card. Reads the Composite and
S-Video outputs OK, just wouldn't read anything off the RF tuner.
Mind you, all (all) the other video capture programs I've evaluated on
this machine had no problem finding the source, once I select the
proper input, including ATI Multimedia Center 7.x, which is known to
be very temperamental.

If that wasn't bad enough... The thing completely locked-up while
capturing from the composite leads, requiring an end-task and re-boot
to recover from. (all of a sudden the soundtrack had a life of its
own). In my experience, lock-up's are a trademark of Ulead software.

Over the years I've evaluated many Ulead and other multimedia software
products. No single vender has so consistently produced such unstable
software as Ulead. I can't believe it... I always want to think
they've gotten better, but they always disappoint.

YMMV, of course, but I'm giving up on this careless and sloppy
developer.

A_C

 

I've had similar experiences with Ulead software and no longer use any of
their products.

I have to admit, their products are very newbie friendly and do a lot of
hand-holding to get people up and creating DVD-Videos and DVD-Video "slide
shows". Newbies tend to love Ulead stuff while most power users I know
tend to require stuff that is a lot more stable and debugged.

 

Hey Nomen:

I'm still up & flying thanks to your & Will's tips on another thread.

Off topic here, although I've had a similar frustration w/ Roxio. Roxio
software (Photosuite) was provided w/ my Memorex dvd dual mode burner.
Photosuite, which I've used in the past when MGI owned it, seemed to be
pretty decent. But the one bundled w/ the DVD burner is junk. You
can't edit photos once you've captured them. Like Agent_C, I wasted a ton
of time trying to figure it out. After searching the newsgroups & the roxio
forum board, I've found the problem is quite common, w/ no apparent
solution. I suppose I should not have expected much from a freebee Roxio
program.

I have two other photo editing programs which are much superior to, and
easier to use, than photosuite anyway. Both Jasc products: After Shot
(which I believe now is called Photo Album, or something like that) and
Paint Shop Pro are excellent programs. I still have to figure out which
remaining bundled Roxio programs, if any, may be useful for DVD purposes.
In the meantime, I have Pinnacle Studio DV which seems to be fine. -
Similar to Agent_C, I'll never purchase a Roxio software program. Live &
learn...

 

So what software do power users use Nomen?

Regards Brian

 

I certainly can't speak for all power users, just a few friends and
acquaintances I know, so keep that in mind as I go on. Also, keep in mind
I am speaking about the creation of DVD-Video on PCs, not VCD, SVCD, etc.

First of all, nobody I know of who does a lot of desktop video work uses
Ulead products for serious stuff. I've known a few who have used stuff
like DVD Pictureshow to throw a simple slide show together to give to Mom,
Dad or some friends.

For the generation and editing of menus, power users use Adobe's Photshop
and not Ulead's PhotoImpact XL.

For audio editing, power users use Sony's Sound Forge, Steinberg's WaveLab
and Dart's Dart Pro, not Ulead's Media Studio Pro.

For audio encoding, power users use Sonic Foundry's Soft Encode, Sony's
Vegas+DVD or Surcode's Dolby Digital/DTS audio encoders not Ulead's DVD
Workshop AC-3.

For video editing, power users use Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony's Vegas v4.0 or
Avid's Xpress (DV) not Ulead's Media/Video Studio.

For video encoding, power users use Canopus' ProCoder or Cinemacraft's
Encoder, not the encoders included in Ulead products.

Most power users use ELEMENTARY streams for their DVD-Video creation and
NOT PROGRAM streams. Older Ulead products, such as DVD Workshop did not
work well with ELEMENTARY streams. I do not believe they supported
DVD-compliant half-D1 MPEG-2 video or Quarter SIF MPEG-1 video. In fact, I
am told, the first release of DVD Workshop did not even support Dolby
Digital (AC-3) audio. I think support came around v1.3, and even then
there were certain restrictions such as you had to import a MPEG-2
video/MP2-audio program stream, delete the audio stream and replace it with
the AC-3 stream or something like that.

For DVD-authoring, power users use Sonic's ReelDVD, Sonic's Scenarist or
SpruceUp's DVDMaestro not Ulead's DVD Workshop AC-3.

 

I've had good luck with their products, and no I do not think it is less
capable than other editing/DVD creating products.