CyberLink DVD Suite 6 Ultra…Time to Enjoy Blue and More

With Toshiba finally leaving the next generation DVD battlefield and moving on to more profitable ventures such as solid state and hard drive storage, we can safely purchase a new computer with a blu-ray disc (BD) burner/player.

The challenge though comes in finding software that will provide superior BD high definition playback as well as the ability to produce video content people will want to watch on the new high capacity (25GB single sided) discs.

In our search of the internet we were able to find only one software package that would support both writing and playback of BD-Video – CyberLink’s DVD Suite 6 Ultra.

Simply finding a package that will let you take advantage of some of the new BD movie features such as the picture-in-picture and video commentaries is good. But being able to produce your own BD movies is a big plus since we can now do videos with our own interactive content.

But the software’s opening screen shows it is a lot more than simply a BD burning and playback package. It is actually 10 programs smoothly integrated into a complete all-in one solution:

• PowerDVD for movie playback
  
• PowerDirector for automatic video editing
  
• PowerProducer for authoring videos onto discs
  
• Power2Go for easy drag-and-drop burning of all types of media files
  
• PowerBackup for archiving application data and files to discs
• PowerDVD Copy duplicating non-protected DVDs and shrinking video content onto discs
  
• InstantBurn for using a Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD or DVD as a secondary hard disk-like storage device
  
• MediaShow for create photo slideshows
  
• Power2Go for ripping music and creating music discs
  
• LabelPrint for creating disc labels and cover inlays
  
• PowerStarter for accessing tasks and updating software
  

Our last two computers came with PowerDVD movie player so we were familiar with some of the software’s features and capabilities. But with the new version we were more certain we could take advantage of all of the new capabilities Hollywood was packing on the new high capacity discs.

DVD Suite 6 Ultra now supports all of the BD features including Picture-in-Picture movie mode, networking, interactive BD-J and iHD as well as bookmarking and some of the more advanced navigation capabilities so you can move smoothly in and around the movie. The software also gives you a better audio experience with your BD movies by supporting Dolby’s new Digital Plus and True HD technologies as well as the DTS-HD technology.

Since our new system came included with NVIDIA’s advanced PureVideo graphics card, the high definition movie content is spectacular. While high definition playback is fine, what we really bought the new system and software for was so we could create our own HD movies. The software makes it very easy to edit our personal and family videos and then enjoy them either on our notebook or large LCD HDTV set.

The software seems to have a sufficient library of special effects, transitions and titling scripts for casual home users such as myself. But since we aren’t a dedicated videographer we were more than happy to use the software’s magic editing tools that enabled us to very rapidly input, edit/author and output the content so the family could relive the experience.

With almost all of our data, photos and videos now in digital format we are a little concerned that the hard drive might crash, someone might accidentally delete a file or folder or the notebook computer might be stolen or damaged when we are on the road.

Most of the information on the drive can be reconstructed but that isn’t true of photos/videos which are one-time occurrences. As a result we want to move this material to media that can’t be modified. Fortunately DVD Suite 6 includes a burning and archiving capability so we can make a permanent copy of the content to a high capacity BD disc – 25GB single-sided, 50GB double-sided.

We liked some of the added tools that had been included in DVD Suite 6 that we normally wouldn’t think of in a video editing package such as the ability to rip MP3 files from CDs and create music discs. The software also includes an excellent photo module that allows us to edit and modify digital stills as well as put them into animated slide presentations with an audio track.

There are a lot of features and capabilities in DVD Suite 6 Ultra we haven’t fully tapped yet but the package almost makes us think of the package as the office suite for digital content. It’s a lot of power and capabilities for a package that sells for under $130.

For complete details check www.cyberlink.com