CDR-Zone review DVD+Audio

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Posted on Sunday 14th of March, 2004 at 14:53 by SirQUK
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A new software has been released by the pioneer of DVD transcoding - Erwin van den Berg (DVD2One author), and promises to give the user a fully compliant DVD+Audio format DVD in a few easy steps. CDR-Zone decided to take it for a test spin, and see if it was up to the high quality we have come to expect from DVD2One.

About DVD+Audio:

DVD+Audio is a DVD-Video compliant format, that delivers both high quality (up to PCM 96kHz/24bits) and high quantity (up to 45 hours MP2 at 192kbps) audio to any DVD player.

The heart of the program consists of:

Extremely precise sample rate convertor: Resamples 44.1kHz used on CD to 48kHz and 96kHz used on DVD.
Revolutionary resolution enhancement. Extends the 16 bit used on CD to 24 bits as possible on DVD.

This means that a DVD+Audio surpasses CD quality, resulting in better imaging, clearer detail, deeper and tighter bass. To obtain this result make sure that:

The input wavefiles must be grabbed directly from the original CD, not from a compressed source like MP3.
The output format must be PCM with at least 20 bits.

The following limitations are applied in the trial version:

A volume (disk) is limited to 2 albums.
An album is limited to 4 songs.
Trial period is limited to 14 days.

Setup and Install:

There is no setup for this software, just simply click on the DVD+AudioCreator icon and the software brings up a web style interface for usage.

Usage:

Once the software is started, the DVD+Audio web configuration screen is shown where either you may use the trial version or obtain a license to unlock the full features of the software.

Scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking on the next icon enables configuration of the project:

Video Mode : Select either PAL or NTSC depending on your TV setup
On Disk Insert : Here you can decide wether the created songs will be played automatically uon insertion or not.
Use Harware Acceleration : Decide wether or not to use HArdware acceleration depending on your hardware.
Volune name : The name that will appear when the created DVD is placed in a standalone DVD player.
Destination directory : Where on your computers hard drive the create files will be stored prior to recording.
Burn with CopyToDVD : The choose of wether or not to use VSO Softwares popular CopyToDVD software to record your created project to DVD.

Upon close inspection of the included help files, it was decided to use no hardware acceleration for the purposes of this test to make sure the least number of problems could be encountered.

After selecting all the desired parameters for the project, the next step was to choose the input files that would be used for the project.

To add files to the project, we clicked on the '+' icon on the right hand side and chose the CD Rom drive as input.Selecting an AudioCD placed in the CD Drive did not allow for selection of any songs at all and the only input accepted was wav files that where stored on the test harddrive.

Once finally some input files were able to be added, a new screen was presented where the output parameters where able to be configured:

Encoding Mode : Here you may choose what audio output format the project will consist of.
Sample Rate : Here you may choose between 48 and 96 KHZ for your sample rate.
Bits per sample : Here you can choose between 16, 20 and 24 bits per sample
Video Stream : Depending on the selected audio you have chosen, here you may select your preferred Video stream output type.
Decode Artist and Album Names : If you have chosen an Audio CD as input, here you have the option of wether how you would like your songs to be named, or if an hardrive source was selected you can choose to use the folders name to be used for naming of the songs.
Artist name : Here you may enter the Artist name
Album Name : Here you may enter the name of the Album

For this test, the ouput encoding mode was set to PCM, the sample rate chosen was 48 KHZ, Bits per sample was 24, Full stream was selected as the Video stream and From Dir was selected for the Decode artist as it was inmpossible to see any files songs stored on the inserted Audio CD.

The next page that appeared was the input files selection screen and the maximum number of files available under the trial version where selected. It was at this point that the setup becomes unclear an confusing, as after adding the input files for the project from the harddrive and selecting the nect icon, no visual prompt was shown to indicate as to what the next step was.After a lot of looking around and clicking of buttons, finaly a page appeared whee the selected project was able to be compiled.Again even the compile button was not very clear, and it was a case of clicking the button to see what would happen. Thankfully, the button pressed finally brought me to the procesing screen, where you are asked to close down your browser for the processing to begin.As CopyToDVD was not selected to record the project ( to check the project in powerdvd first ), no record screen was shown, but had CopyToDVD have been selected in the paremeters and was installed on your system, it would be at this point that recording would start

DVD Compatiability:

The Output directory chosen earlier during set up was chosen to be played in Power DVD and Windows media player, both which played the songs as a DVD, with no glitches to be heard in the songs and quality seemed very impressive.A DVDRW+ was then chosen to record the project using CopyToDVD, using the " Record video file form harddrive " mode. A Bush 2520 and Cyberhome 512 where chosen as the standalone DV players for testing the recorded DVD+Audio DVD, and both played them effortlessly ( even the Cyberhome which is a few years old ) and the sound was impressive to listen to.

Conclusion:

Unfortunaletly, the author refused our request for a full version of this software to review for our readers, so it is impossible to say whether or not a full DVD would work perfectly or not, but the trial version did provide a very high quality AudioDVD which played fine in various chosen software and standalone DVD players. The interface can only be described as 'Awkward and confusing', with simple things such as the names on the important buttons being left out, ( but the author is already updating his software to make it more user friendly ). It would be nice to know why the web style setup was chosen by the author, as surely a normal interface would be more appealing to most potential users.The software in my eyes has great potential, but the setup must be re-thought and the buttons and process made more clear to the user before the author can seriously expect anyone to hand over $49.99 euros ( exc VAT ) of their money for this software.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

Ability to use CopyToDVD for recording the outputted DVD+Audio project
Good audio output quality

Cons:

Does not work from CD source (The author states it doesnt, but it would be nice )
Very User Unfriendly Interface ( but being fixed )
Very hard to use, even with the User manual open
Novel but badly designed web style interface which is very hard to use
Although the author states it is not a recommended audio source, the ability to add MP3/OGG/WMA files would be of huge benefit to most potential users.

Buy Online | Download Trial | Website

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