Sony DVD Architect Studio review

DVD Architect Studio is a powerful DVD-authoring program that was previously available only as part of Sony Vegas Movie Studio +DVD.

For those who already have a preferred video editing application, DVD Architect Studio is now available separately, shaving around £20 off the price of the bundle. The software under review is an update to version 3 (which comes bundled with Vegas Movie Studio +DVD 6).

The only new feature in this latest release is Dolby Digital audio encoding. This doesn't improve quality over the standard uncompressed PCM audio format, but its lower bit rate frees up capacity for more video. You can also add six-channel surround Dolby Digital audio, although you'll have to encode it elsewhere.

Despite the scant improvements, DVD Architect remains without peers below £100. Casual users will find it straightforward and elegant, with everything arranged neatly into a single tabbed screen. When applying one of the menu templates, buttons and text are intelligently resized to fit the menu. It's easy to generate scene selection menus, and menu pages are linked together automatically.

The highlight is the tremendous scope for designing menus, buttons and disc navigation structures from scratch. You can make menu pages from any combination of graphics, although you'll have to create animations elsewhere and import them. Navigation options are comprehensive, and only the lack of multiple soundtrack, subtitle and encryption options separate it from authoring software that costs hundreds of pounds.

Audio compilations and slideshows are handled elegantly, with options to add images to audio compilations and music to slideshows. As such, there's not much difference between the two. However, for some reason slideshows are rendered as video files, which wastes disc capacity since the DVD Video format supports still images with musical accompaniment - as the audio compilation feature demonstrates.

Frustratingly, the software starts all projects in NTSC format until you change the default setting in the Properties dialog box, which could confuse new users. Otherwise, the rendering facilities are excellent, with high-quality conversion of non-compliant resolutions and frame rates, and an excellent smart render feature that reuses rendered files, avoiding the need to re-encode entire discs after making one or two changes.

With no capture facility, this isn't the right package for those who want a single application for archiving video cassettes to DVD. However, anyone working on home, business or creative video projects will find DVD Architect Studio unbeatable. Unless you need support for multiple soundtracks, subtitles or copy protection, it's the best DVD-authoring software at any price.