Jimco Software Reviews - Sonic DVDit 5.2 (continued)
Finish
Once everything is configured just the way you want it, click the Finish button to burn your DVD. We told you that we'd offer you some insight into widescreen video in this review, so let's get right to it.
Most widescreen video created by editors today has an aspect ratio of 16:9. This is the perfect dimension for a widescreen television. When this video is played on a normal television set (which has an aspect ratio of 4:3), there are two ways it can be displayed. One way is letterboxed. In this format, black bars appear at the top and bottom of the screen as shown in figure 9.
Figure 9 - Letterboxed Widescreen Display
The second option for displaying widescreen video on a standard display is to use what is known as Pan and Scan. In Pan and Scan format, the video is cropped to take up the entire 4:3 display. The result of this is that you lose the left and right of the display. In figure 10, the red box represents what would be visible on a 4:3 display in Pan and Scan mode.
Figure 10 - Widescreen Video Displayed in Pan & Scan Mode
Most DVD authoring software chooses one or the other, letterbox or Pan & Scan. We personally prefer a letterboxed display when viewing 16:9 video on a 4:3 display, but we have spoken to plenty of people who prefer Pan & Scan. In other authoring software we've tested, we had to manually edit the IFO files that are created for the DVD in order to display our video as we wanted it. DVDit is the only software we've ever tested that burns DVDs so that the DVD player settings determine whether to letterbox or use P&S. After you burn your DVD with DVDit, you can use the menus in your DVD player to choose between letterbox and P&S. We were quite impressed by DVDit's ability to handle widescreen video.
DVDit will also allow you to create an ISO file or DVD folders so that you can back up your DVD or burn it at a later time.
Conclusion
We can highly recommend DVDit without trepidation. It's easy to use, extremely powerful, and provides great output. We've run over the major features in this review, but there are many features that we didn't cover such as an included application for creating DVD/CD labels. There are also plenty of niceties that you can really only appreciate by using the software. Sonic doesn't offer a downloadable demo (likely a by-product of illegal software cracking that is so rampant these days), but we can assure you that if you are in the market for a DVD authoring package, you won't go wrong in purchasing DVDit. We've used almost all of the tools on the market today, and we've found none better.
Very Highly Recommended
Sonic DVDit 5.2
 Web Site
|