My DVD Education
Posted on July 22, 2006
Well, first of all, I need to say a big thank you to all the commenters who commented on this post. I got an education, to say the least. I think this is the first time that I have posted something, looking for answers and actually gotten feedback. Usually, in this kind of situation, I get nothing, then when I post something pointless, everybody shows up with an opinion. 
Seriously, though, I love comments, so this was fun. I tried nearly every suggestion, downloaded trials etc. but nothing seemed to grab my attention.
Then J.C. commented and suggested DVD Shrink and that did the trick. He offered to give me some specific guidance on working with it, so I emailed him and told him I would take him up on his offer. He did what any self-respecting, geeky guy would do, he Skyped me. That was fun, he got me going on my DVD manipulations, then we discussed other church tech issues. Pretty fun stuff. That was my first real Skype phone call(his too), every other one I have done has been across the room to my wife. My mic started going out near the end of our conversation, but other than that, it was a clear call. The built in mic on J.C.’s laptop was clear through the entire conversation.
He also suggested Ulead Video Studio as a solution, that is more robust and costs less than $100. I’ll probably end up buying that soon just to have and to play around with.
This story has another twist to it, my buddy Brian at COR commented an hour and eighteen minutes before J.C. with similar advice, but I never saw it. When I was up there at the church last Monday doing some work, Brian said something about it and we did some research and found that his comment had been marked as spam. I found the comment and unspammed it and now it’s there. (now I know to make it a point to check the spam folder periodically for legitimate comments)
I very much appreciate the help of everyone, including J.C. and Brian, I finished copying the DVD’s very late last Saturday night. This is pretty fun stuff and it’s pretty easy, once you know what you are doing, although I’m a long way from knowing what I’m doing, I just know enough to be dangerous.
For a quick review, here’s my take on what I saw,
- Adobe Premiere Elements is good, but like everything else Adobe, it’s very bloated. (the setup file was about 1gb)Â I guess Adobe Premiere is the industry standard for non-Mac pros. (Elements is consumer grade.)
- Pinnacle is good too, I didn’t look too closely at this, but everything I’ve heard says it’s good, but not as good as Premiere.
- DVD Shrink - a good starter package and gets the job done, alghough not packed with features.
- Ulead Video Studio - I haven’t tried it yet, but it should be similar to DVD Shrink with more features, like menu support.
So, in the end, I put 5 or 6 videos on a DVD and most of the songs had an instructional video along with it, to teach the actions and we were able to pass the DVD’s out to many of the leaders last Sunday morning.
Thanks again, everyone!
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