Wake up Corel!

[dpriest]

For those of you reading this thread, please don't get rid of your previous versions of VS for your sake. I came to the unfortunate realization that Corel has no good DVD authoring program with a good selection of menus. And the proposed solution by Corel is insulting. Please allow me to explain.....

No matter what company you use in this category and price range of video editing programs, there are always going to be bugs, crashes, or unexplained errors. Let's admit one thing....we are all using PCs to perform these tasks, and 3rd party software companies trying to write a program to work with not only Windows, but all of the hardware associated with multimedia is a difficult, if not impossible task to get right. If Windows was more stable and perhaps Microsoft allowed for an open architecture arrangement, this would be different. Nuff said about that. And no matter what program you use to render and produce your priceless videos, there are always going to be suggestions, or a "wish list" that will improve the user experience for the next version. This is normal.

What is not normal is to come out with a new and supposedly improved version of the program, charge money for it, and then not offer a satisfactory solution to the customers. DVD Factory 2010 is a disaster. It has been a disaster since the release of VSX3. I could not even stop the program from adding all my photos and music to the library, which caused mu system to lock up. Furthermore, I could not even navigate to the folder where my mpeg file that I created with VSX3 was stored, which means I could not successfully complete the task of creating a disc from the video I just rendered. So to summarize, I was able to render a nice mpeg clip with cool transitions and overlays, that by the way, rendered faster than previous versions, but I could not go further from there.

I then did what most of the other threads suggest, which is to use DVD MovieFactory 7. I bought and installed DVD MF 7 Pro. I then imported my mpeg clip, went to a choice of menu options to select from, and found a choice of 4 or 5. Four or five? That's it?! So I chose one and then went to burn the disc, and I came back to my computer about 30 minutes later with an error message that said "Failed to write to disc". Well I uninstalled the program as quickly as I installed it, will demand my money back, and installed VSX2 Pro. I opened my video clip, had a much greater selection of menu options to choose from, and had used VS X2 to successfully and burn a disc 30 minutes later.

I then sat for awhile in absolute disgust, trying to make sense of the whole experience and realized Corel really needs to be doing things better. How could a company release a program with such a disastrous authoring program such as DVD Factory. Obviously none of the developers or quality control managers bothered to try to render and burn a project from scratch. Then, to add insult to injury, Corel offers a free download to a feature poor program such as DVD MF7. So what??!! Who cares if it's free if it falls short of features. Please don't placate me with a program that is offering much less of creative options for menu choices. It's an insult.

I was happy with VS X2, but decided to pay for and upgrade to VS X3. Why? Because I want to support the company and show loyalty for the development of improved products, and for the list of improvements the program had to offer. There has to be some kind of reciprocation, however. For all of us who continue to believe in and support the development of future versions of VS, it's time Corel reciprocated and provided us with a tested product we can feel good about using and end up in such frustration that we take it out on the poor keyboard, by chucking it against the wall.

Corel, I hope you are listening to this and if you are, hopefully you will quickly do something about it. We deserve better than this!!!

[Ron P.]

4 or 5 menu templates only, with DMF 7 Pro?.. You must not have everything installed, as I count 22-smartscene, 16-text, 30-thumbnail menus.

[Black Lab]

And the SE version has 11 SmartScene, 8 Text, and 15 Thumbnail menus.

[dpriest]

I installed the application disc, and the other bonus discs had some other Corel programs I had no interest in. Funny how I did not see that. The program also did not successfully burn a disc, after 2 attempts.