WinX DVD Author Review

Review Details

Product Company – FreeTime Soft
Version – 6.0
Operating System – Windows XP

Summary

WinX DVD Author is a basic application in the highly competitive DVD authoring tools software niche, offering the standard features of a DVD authoring tool with a reasonable price tag, WinX DVD Author is an average tool and nothing spectacular, it does its job efficiently however making it a walk in the park with its user-friendliness.

Software Aspects

Interface (9/10)
Ease of use (10/10)
Features (6/10)
Price (9/10)
Memory Usage (5/10)
Speed of Conversion (8/10)
Help and Support (9/10)
Other Notes

Interface (9/10)

The highlight of the application along with its ease of use, Winx DVD features a classic metallic look with a greyish silver combo, the various links to the parts of the program are presented with minimal clutter emphasizing the second point, the ease of use. It also consists of a multilingual interface supporting 9 languages.

Ease of use (10/10)

Using this application is quite straight forward. The application consists of 3 applets, namely ‘Convert Video to VOB’, ‘VOB to DVD compiler’ and ‘DVD Disc Burner’. Each applet consists of a two step process, firstly where all the required details are defined, and the second step consists of a mini window to monitor progress of the action. The buttons are supported with tooltip text however the icons are pretty much self explanatory.

Features (6/10)

This is the aspect (and the most important) which this application lacks. As mentioned in the summary, it consists of all the basic features of a DVD authoring tool however nothing more. Getting to the interesting features, WinX DVD Author supports virtually any video format which makes it more versatile. It provides single layer/dual layer conversion, wide screen/standard, supports batch conversion, etc.

However, it does not provide features like additional effects to the video with conversion, importing and exporting preference files (or project), menu effects, and only a few available menu backgrounds (while custom images maybe imported) Also conversion of a file cannot be paused during conversion, this feature is particularly necessary as it uses up a lot of CPU resources when converting (see below)

Price (9/10)

Relatively, WinX DVD Author is very reasonably priced, they have currently priced the application at a ‘limited time discount’ of $22.90, this price is low in comparison to others in the market, most DVD Authoring tools are usually above the $30 range.

Memory Usage (5/10)

In background usage WinX DVD consumes approximately 30MB of memory, very efficient and manageable, however while converting, memory usage increases to 50MB, still manageable, however drains the CPU off its resources (with the normal setting) making other tasks difficult to perform, this is another aspect that needs to be worked on.

Speed of Conversion (8/10)

Speed of converting files is pretty decent, it works on a 1:1 ratio with duration of video converted with time it takes to convert.

Help and Support (9/10)

The application comes bundled with a help file (*.chm) providing step by step details on how to perform the various function the software provides complete with screenshots as well. In addition they provide customer support as well.

Other Notes

By default the language is set to Chinese, and needs to be changed at first use. Also there is a tiny visual glitch, with the main window image and help file showing version 5.5 while the product is a version 6 (the About window shows it correctly).

Overall

While features and memory usage may need some work, the very competitive price, interface and ease of use of the application compensates for it making it a considerable option to use as a DVD Authoring tool.