Sams Teach Yourself DVD Authoring in 24 Hours

Rating:
Summary: It taught me what I needed to know
Review: I am a college professor and independent computer trainer and for several years, I have been considering capturing my lessons on video. However, every time I investigated the cost and difficulties, they were always more than I considered acceptable. Therefore, when I encountered this book, I read it for the sole purpose of learning about capturing my lessons on DVD, how to do it and the cost.
After reading it, I now know all of the necessary facts concerning what it will take to capture the data, clean it, add any additional background and reproduce it on DVD. While I have not yet made a decision whether to capture the lessons, I am very confident in my factual background. Sengstack takes you through all of the steps. He starts with a list of the required gear, moves on to how to create your first DVD, then describes how to acquire and combine different forms of data into a project and continues with descriptions of several programs that can be used to create DVD projects. The CD included with the book contains time-limited versions of some of the DVD authoring programs.
Movies are an area where I readily admit my ignorance, so I approached this material from the perspective of a beginner. I found all of the explanations to be simple without being trivial, concise, yet complete. If you are interested in making DVD's, but don't know where to start, this can be your starting block.

Rating:
Summary: A cookbook for Sonic Solutions' DVD Authoring Products
Review: The rather complex nature of MPEG encoding and DVD-authoring means that this particular book suffers from being structured into a 24 one-hour lessons as DVD authoring as a topic, does not lend itself readily to this format of teaching. At best, the author or publisher (SAMS) should have seriously considered adding "Bonus Hours" for the more esoteric readers that cover salient features of MPEG2 and DVD specs as well as the bit-budgeting. It leaves the readers with the false sense of having grasped enough to be able to perform a good DVD-authoring. Crucial topics such as constant bit rate (CBS) and variable bit rate (VBR) must and should have been introduced and emphasized and the impact of maximum video data rate (9.8Mbps in the DVD-video specs), Subtitles (maximum allowed 32), up to eight audio tracks (in mono, stereo) as well as the major audio formats should have been well covered in early hours. However, the author has done well in containing each "hourly lesson" to within a hour or less, and in making it easy by showing the cookbook approach of providing the "Step-by-step" how-to to readers. One can actually complete the entire book in less than 24 hours.

Technically, this book ought to be titled aptly as "A Quickguide to DVD Authoring with Sonic Solutions' Products in 24 hours" so as not to mislead prospective readers and eager learners alike. Author Jeff Sengstack turns "product evangelist" in this 24-hour adventure, out of which a total of 12 hours (some 50% of the total time) are dedicated to Sonic Solutions's consumer-level products MyDVD (Hour 4-6), and their prosumer-level DVDit (Hour 17-20) as well as their Professional-level ReelDVD (Hour 23 and 24). Hour 22 also covers the generation of MyDVD templates with "Style Creator". Some useful concept of workflow is also introduced in the early hours of the book. However, many chapters suffer from the lack of colour plates that may be extremely useful in highlighting the "colour-buttons" of a software menu to readers.

The author spends what many may consider as an unnecessary Hour 16 "evaluating" (or "marketing campaign" depending on how you look at it) 5 entry-level DVD authoring products that include MyDVD5 (Sonic Solutions), DVD Complete (Dazzle), neoDVD Plus (Mediostream), Expression 2 (Pinnacle) and DVD MovieFactory (Ulead) and proclaims, not surprisingly that MyDVD5 as being the best there is. Four "Prosumer" DVD authoring products are also evaluated in this hour: DVDit! (Sonic), Impression DVD-Pro (Pinnacle), DVD Workshop 1.3 (Ulead) and Encore DVD 1.0 (Adobe). Again, the author makes no secret of his choice. Other commercial software video editors such as Pinnacle's Studio 8 (which is obsolete by now as Studio 9 has just been released in early 2004) and Ulead's VideoStudio are covered briefly covered in less than 3 hours with the free MS' Movie Maker is also introduced.

At best, this is only an "Introductory guide" as it misses out on key points as: (1.) no mention of MPEG standards and DVD-video specs even in summarized form that will bring to reader's attention the salient features of these standards and their impact on DVD authoring and burning; (2.) the author does not even bother to touch on bit budgeting which is an important issue to consider as few if any one who is interested in DVD authoring, will produce one with only an hour or less video content in it. Factors to consider such as video content, video data rate, encoding bit rate, audio content and the number of audio track, subtitles (for Prosumer grade product) as well as motion menus are important in the bit budgeting. This being that all these required elements must fit onto a 4.7GB media (1-layer, 1-side disc, that is!) as this is the most common DVD medium. This is the most serious omission from a book that purports to introduce DVD authoring to a newbie!! Finally, (3) Consider the sea of alphabets this complex topic of DVD and its authoring is concerned, there is NO GLOSSARY OF TERMS to help hold the hand of a newcomer. This book leaves you with the feeling of "where do I go from here?".

All in all, this book is useful only to someone who has just purchased a Sonic Solutions' entry-level MyDVD or the Prosumer-level DVDit! Product, or who has purchased a DVD-Writer with such authoring product bundled with it and who wishes to have a quick start up guide to author their DVD. If you plan to use a prosumer product like Encore DVD (which is very good with tight integration with photoshop.. but not perfect), this book is definitely not for you!

Rating:
Summary: A cookbook for Sonic Solutions' DVD Authoring Products
Review: The rather complex nature of MPEG encoding and DVD-authoring means that this particular book suffers from being structured into a 24-hour lessons and DVD authoring as a topic does not lend itself readily to this format of teaching. At best, the author or publisher (SAMS) should have seriously considered adding "Bonus Hours" for the more esoteric readers that cover salient features of MPEG2 and DVD specs as well as the bit-budgeting. It leaves the readers with the false sense of having grasped enough to be able to perform a good DVD-authoring. Crucial topics such as constant bit rate (CBS) and variable bit rate (VBR) must and should have been introduced and emphasized and the impact of maximum video data rate (9.8Mbps in the DVD-video specs), Subtitles (maximum allowed 32), up to eight audio tracks (in mono, stereo) as well as the major audio formats should have been well covered in early hours. However, the author has done well in containing each "hourly lesson" to within a hour or less, and in making it easy by showing the cookbook approach of providing the "Step-by-step" how-to to readers.

This book ought to be titled aptly as "A Quickguide to DVD Authoring with Sonic Solutions' Products in 24 hours" in order not to mislead prospective readers and eager learners alike. Author Jeff Sengstack turns "product evangelist" in this 24-hour adventure, out of which a total of 11 hours (some 46% of the total time) are dedicated to Sonic Solutions's consumer-level products MyDVD (Hour 4-6), and their prosumer-level DVDit (Hour 17-20) as well as their Professional-level ReelDVD (Hour 23 and 24). Hour 22 also covers the generation of MyDVD templates with "Style Creator". Some useful concept of workflow is also introduced in the early hours of the book. However, some chapters suffer from the lack of colour plates that may be extremely useful in highlighting the "colour-buttons" of a software menu to readers.

The author spends what many may consider as an unnecessary Hour 16 "evaluating" (or "marketing campaign, depending on how you look at it) 5 entry-level DVD authoring products that include MyDVD5 (Sonic Solutions), DVD Complete (Dazzle), neoDVD Plus (Mediostream), Expression 2 (Pinnacle) and DVD MovieFactory (Ulead) and proclaims, not surprisingly that MyDVD5 as being the best there is. Four "Prosumer" DVD authoring products are also evaluated in this hour: DVDit! (Sonic), Impression DVD-Pro (Pinnacle), DVD Workshop 1.3 (Ulead) and Encore DVD 1.0 (Adobe). Again, the author makes no secret of his choice. Other commercial software video editors such as Pinnacle's Studio 8 (which is obsolete by now as Studio 9 has just been released in early 2004) and Ulead's VideoStudio are covered briefly covered in less than 3 hours with the free MS' Movie Maker is also introduced.

At best, this is only an "Introductory guide" as it suffers from the followings: (a.) no mention of MPEG standards and DVD-video specs even in summarized form that will bring to reader's attention the salient features of these standards and their impact on DVD authoring and burning; (b.) the author does not even bother to touch on bit budgeting which is an important issue to consider as few if any one who is interested in DVD authoring, will produce one with only an hour or less video content in it. Factors to consider such as video content, video data rate, encoding bit rate, audio content and the number of audio track, subtitles (for Prosumer grade product) as well as motion menus are important in the bit budgeting. All the required elements must fit onto a 4.7GB media (1-layer, 1-side disc, that is!) as this is the most common DVD medium. This is the most serious omission from a book that purports to introduce DVD authoring to a newbie!! (c)) Consider the sea of alphabets this complex topic of DVD and its authoring is concerned, there is NO GLOSSARY OF TERMS to help hold the hand of a newcomer and (d) it leaves you with the feeling of "where do I go from here?".

All in all, this book is useful only to someone who has just purchased a Sonic Solutions' entry-level MyDVD or the Prosumer-level DVDit! Product, or who has purchased a DVD-Writer with such authoring product bundled with it and who wishes to have a quick start up guide to author their DVD. If you plan to use a prosumer product like Encore DVD (which is good but not perfect), this book is definitely not for you!