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DVD Maestro |
Advanced DVD author tool that support all DVD Features. It is no longer updated or sold(you may find it on ebay).
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Payware ($5000)  Released:20000101 |
9.6 (9.1) 12 votes Guides Similar tools |
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12 comments (2614098 views) |
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Latest version: 2.915 (January 01, 2000) Author site: More information from authors site Windows
Sections/Browse similar tools: Authoring (DVD) Alert me! when this software has been updated. |
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I've used this great authoring program for the past few years, but now it's getting a bit long in the tooth. No one is updating it, and other products are catching up. For example, check out Mediachance's "DVD-LabPro." I strongly suspect that the developers must have reverse-engineered Maestro when they wrote it--it's very similar in many ways. Plus, DLP has a graphical Connections window, similar to ReelDVD. Much more intuitive (and fun!) than the table format in Maestro. Maestro is/was a great authoring program, but I will be using it less as time goes on.
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This the BEST and only tool I use to make my dvds. I bought DVDMaestro over Ebay and never regraded it. Now I know why it used to cost SO much $$$$ a professional tool. It's simple to use with CCE (CinemaCraft Encoder). Its a big shame it's no longer in production since DVDMaestro is simpler than Sonic Scenarist. if you are still looking for a copy, look occationally in ebay. Cheers
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Wow - it's amazing that this product is coming up on it's 7th birthday and is still the best DVD authoring app out there for under a 50,000 dollars. Sure, Scenarist gives you a little better access to the DVD SPEC, but Maestro can do all that you could possibly want on a professionally designed and authored Hollywood DVD. It never ceases to amaze me that no other company has come close to the functionality of Maestro 2.915, not Adobe, Pinnacle or even Apple with DVD SP 3 (sorry - they should make a WINDOWS version - until then it can't compete.) If you are lucky enough to come across Maestro on ebay - get it - it's worth every penny for the pro, that is until the new HD DVD specs come out.
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On the down side, the price is high and you need a manual or a few guides to get the hang of it. On the up side, it's a really professional package, which probably justifies the cost. I got into Maestro because I needed to make my own subtitles for my own video products. As I write this, there are four ways to do it - Sonic ReelDVD, Sonic Scenarist, IFOEdit, and Maestro. DDV Producer 2 (upcoming as I write this) from ULead apparently will do it as well, so I might switch to that if it's any good. Every Sonic product I've ever touched is either written for a three year old or written for professionals BY three year olds. Scenarist is a perfect example. It's method for approaching subtitles is so unintuitive and unfriendly that I just wanted to throw it out the window. It was also slow (on a P4-3000), crashed, and depending on how the wind was blowing, it would sometimes decide to import M2V assets and sometime not, without explanation. Stay away from Scenarist and Sonic products (their forums are always down, there is NO technical support). Not sure why people hold it up as the grail of professional authoring, especially considering it's written by Sonic. Anyway, getting your own custom written subtitles into IFOedit is even more painful and unintuitive. Not sure how ReelDVD is, but it's a Sonic product, so I'll pass. Maestro is good lookin', easy to use if you've already used a few other authoring packages, and has a boat load of features. For me it was great because it's ability to handle subtitles was easy as pie. Simply write them up in another package, like Subtitle Workshop, save to Scenarist Subtitle format (SST) and import in Maestro. Maestro allows you to change font types, size, and positions as easily as if you were doing page layout - the way it should be done - not the way dorky half-assed authoring packages like IFOedit and Scenarist have you doing it.
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Just wanted to clarify Spideys comment.....you are able to see only the text/image on a menu and not the whole box you define. I made this mistake many times myself until I really got into the program. The trick is to use to color palatte on the menu screen. You have to change to opacity level to zero.
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Very good authoring tool. Ease of use - 10 after you review the guides all over the net and depending on your encoding skils / understanding Functionality - 9.5 - See Sonic note below Value of Money - 10 - I would say 99.99 % of all who have it acquired it in some fashion Overall - 9 - an excellant authoring program to really begin sinking your teeth into professional authoring Also, I must say check out Sonic's DVD Producer. It can almost be classisfied as an "updated" version of Maestro. It also gets you a step closer to Scenarist, as it is only 1 product down from it in the Professional Family. See http://sonic.com for more details. One edge I'd give DVD Producer over Maestro is it does let you be more creative with your .psd overlay / button shapes. Whereas Maestro forces you to highlight block shapes of buttons, but aside from that both are virtually identical. Producer highlight blocks, but only the active component is active (ie text, shapes, etc..), wherreas Maestro's block highlight remains active in it's entirety. As stated above, an extremely robust and great authoring tool :)
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I'm not a good overall judge of this product. It didnt do the 2 things I was looking for. It wont import 352x250 and it wont import VOBS.
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Used this application for the first time on a friends PC and this is One TOP dvd Authoring package. You can pretty much control every aspect of Authoring. It makes all the others packages I've tried simply look like a toy. Really worth a look if you can get your hands on it.
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This is a great prog which unfortunately was aimed at proffesional companies when it was available (not the normal people like you and me) but seeing as it got released on the net by someone we can experiment for ourselves!! (why not? you can't buy it anymore!!!). The realtime preview can be done though without a hardware decoder (if you have a good pc) you just need 3 dll files from Cinemaster software dvd decoder installed in your windows/system32 folder (a measley 2.5mb of files gives you the preview function) Cinmhook.dll, Cinmst32.dll & Dvdpld32.dll and the preview works, it was a bit tricky working this out but i'm no computer wizard!!
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STUNNING !!!! Professioanly authored DVD's have never been so easy to do !! Scenarist is the ONLY ONE that rivals it, but is much more difficult to use; Maestro is so easy that I don't care anymore about DVDitPE, SpruceUp, etc, etc...although I have these all installed.
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Totally agree with the previous post. This is the best DVD Authoring software, if you haven't got it's big brother Scenarist. No more to said really, except get it if you can. 10 outof 10 across the board.
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Simply amazing. Professionally authored DVDs with little to no hassle. Lack of built in software real-time preview for me was no big problem. Haven't found anything this program is incapable of as far as authoring goes.
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