15-Minute Reviews :: Apollo DVD Creator v4.5.1

Hello all and welcome to today’s 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Apollo DVD Creator version 4.5.1 by Apollo Multimedia Software – An application to aid you in converting your video collection into DVDs.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Apollo DVD Creator is a simple DVD creator software package that can convert almost any video source to burn DVD didrectly without having to first store it on a hard drive. It has a gallery with many Hollywood-style DVD menus templates for users to choose or users can customize their own menu templates that will match your style and give your movie a polished look!. It will edit, author and burn all DVD formats, so that the end product is readily shareable in consumer players. With Apollo DVD Creator, you can run your creativity and personalize your DVDs easily!”

Quick Pros

• Very easy to use and interface looks pleasant
• 15 themes very pleasant – Limited customizability
• Process of creating DVD reasonably quick as well
• Resulting video is adequate – As to be expected

Quick Cons

• Very limited editing functionality – Limited to just trimming
• While application claims to burn directly to DVD, it does still store information
• Does not include the codecs itself
• Could use more options and functionality

Expansion

Upon launching the application for the first time, you are greeted by a very simple interface. The process of creating a DVD is very straightforward. Broken into three tabs: Add Media, Design and Produce. On the Add Media tab, you first add the files you wish to place on your DVD via the Add File or Add Folder buttons, and arrange their order using the up and down arrows. On this screen there is also the capability to trim the videos as well to the desired length as well – Unfortunately, this is the extent of the editing functionality (No cropping, coloring or other functions that might be common to this type of application). The second tab – Design – is straightforward as well; You can pick one of the 15 themes that are included (Some which are animated) for your DVD menu, and then proceed to change the text for the different chapters (or videos) as well as the menu title, if it is so possessed. You can also add a background audio track as well. Finally, on the Produce tab presents you with the settings for producing your DVD: NTSC or PAL; Aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9; Destination (To disc within the application ot to a folder for later burning); DVD label as well as a few other options. Something that must be noted; While the description does state that ‘to burn DVD (directly) without having to first store it on a hard drive.’ this is a bit confusing – Should state something to the effect that it burns to DVD without having to use another application. It does store temporary files (the converted video and produced menu) before recording – Clearly visible on the Product tab with the ‘Delete temporary files’ and ‘Temporary Folder’ option.

During my testing, I found that the application was surprisingly quick for what it was. The conversion of one set of videos took 1 minute and 49 seconds for 4 minutes and 48 minutes of video. The production of the DVD menu was also adequately quick. Overall, the resulting DVD produced from this application was decent quality, considering the quality of the input videos (You’re not going to get more than you put in, but I didn’t lose any quality either). For the most part, the application does well at what it is targeted for.

As mentioned above, this application seems to be short a few features one might come to expect from a video conversion application. For the video editing, I was surprised to see the only editing feature here was the trim; There is no color-correction, cropping, audio levels or otherwise. As well, while the 15 themes look great, they are limited in purpose, and overall sparse. There is no other themes available at the author’s website that I can see (Though I do wonder if there are more that come with the full retail version of the title due to the numbering system). Although there does not appear to be any tutorials on the process of creating a template, looking into the template folder, the configuration file is in XML and is very easy to understand, so it may be easy for someone to build their own template, so long as they don’t mind dabbling in XML.

Something else I noticed, is that while the list of files supported by this application is rather large, you will find quickly that you may need to download a separate codec pack to support the decoding of all the video formats – The application does not include these and the one they provide is another 17MB download.

Final Verdict

While the application is easy to use, does work well, it does feel very light on features overall. It is great for those looking to toss a few videos onto a DVD with a quick menu, but the lack of some of the more common functionality one might expect from a DVD authoring application may leave you wandering for more. For free, it might be a good tool for you to pick up and play with – Its menu authoring is a bit of a bonus in this title. As for paying $39.95 for this title, I would find it difficult to recommend for this price point for the reasons mentioned above. An alternative I use when I don’t need a DVD menu is Sothink Movie DVD Maker – It’s free and offers about the same functionality (sans menu) as Apollo DVD Creator.

Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, November 05, 2007