Sonic DVDit 6

Sonic, it seems, is one of those companies that enjoys repositioning itself in the marketplace every so often. Whereas once people might have associated the brand with the easy-to-use MyDVD application that came bundled with their recordable DVD drive, the emphasis now is very much on professional authoring products.

Sonic has been in the business of developing authoring tools for decades and recently acquired Roxio’s software division. Indeed, it’s the Roxio products (Easy Media Creator and the like) that now make up the company’s home-user roster, while the Sonic name is reserved for applications such as DVDit, which are aimed at professionals such as wedding videographers or corporate video makers.

As such, DVDit is slightly less user friendly than many other video-editing packages. There are no cheery wizards to greet you upon launch, no step-by-step guides or one-click disc-creation gimmicks and fewer predefined templates, themes and menus.

Instead, the whole workflow has been designed for those who pretty much know what they’re doing already. Perhaps that’s why Sonic decided against including a printed manual in the box. That said, it has a very straightforward interface made up of a timeline and a preview window, along with tabbed palettes and media bins for video, images and menu items.

Templates can be dragged and dropped directly into the preview window and customised by clicking on each element. This means projects can be built up and tailored to suit fairly quickly.

Likewise, chapters can be added to each video clip simply by highlighting the relevant file, scrubbing through the timeline to the desired point and clicking on the Add Chapter button.

Because there aren’t many templates provided, most users will put together their own artwork for use in menus.

DVDit doesn’t have built-in tools for this kind of activity, although it does support multi-layered Photoshop psd files, which means professional-looking menu art can be created in Photoshop and imported wholesale into a project. It’s a useful feature that again points DVDit towards those who already own and are proficient at using Photoshop.

All the features you would expect from a DVD-authoring product are included. 16:9 widescreen support (although, curiously, menus can only be created in 4:3 aspect ratio), Dolby Digital soundtracks, variable bit-rate mpeg encoder, multi-disc format and dual-layer DVD compatibility are all available.

DVDit has a few useful extras. Photo slideshows, for example, are easy to create. Up to 999 images can be used, complete with accompanying music, as well as a range of simple but generally pleasing transitions.

A welcome aspect of DVDit is the inclusion of OpenDVD technology. This allows users to re-edit and make changes to a disc without returning to the original project files.

The result is that videographers don’t have to worry about keeping whole projects hanging around on their hard disk just in case a client wants to make a tweak or two at a later juncture.

DVDit 6 sits rather awkwardly between sub-£100 home packages and more advanced editors. As such, it has limited appeal. That said, if you don’t want to shell out over £500, but want more control over your video editing, DVDit 6 is worth considering. Also note that if you require multiple audio tracks and subtitle support, you’ll need to opt for DVDit 6 Pro, which costs an extra £70.

System requirements:

• Windows XP
• 800MHz Pentium III processor
• 128MB of Ram
• 10GB hard disk space

See also:

Macromedia Studio 8

Creating pages for the Internet has become even easier  17 Oct 2005

Roxio MyDVD and Slideshow

Create impressive DVDs in a flash without complications  18 May 2005

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