Unbelievable struggle

Question

I have never used such a user-hostile program, and I have software people writing software under me. It is insane that there is no manual or tutorial online to cover even the most basic operations such an importing. And no info on how it works either, does importing copy files filling your hard drive?
So here's my laundry list:
1.No manual (fire the product manager for that one, totally unacceptable in ANY business)
2.Download trial is limited AND keeps that huge banner across center of screen (anything else is acceptable but center of screen!)
3.Creation is painfully slow with no % complete or estimation of time (or date) of completion
4.No estimate of disk percent used, helps a lot in editing
5.No help menues
6.Almost juvinile menues for DVDs..What about business users? hearts and balloons don't hack it guys and ladies
7.chapters come up as scenes(accessible through a scene button), not selectable from front page
8.Looping menu selection audio can make you suicidal (cummon, not at all professional)
9.Name of disk came up on scene select page
10.scene selector is wierd random dots on scene, not hi-light box around scene
finally, do you guys read amazon product reviews? They TRASH this product, as compared with competition.
I am a seasoned CAD and VIDEO person, this is really painful software to use, intended for kids birthday parties and in no way for adult use creating business videos. I spent a whole day struggling to get things to work, crashed several times, and yes, I exceed the hardware requirements.
Bottom line, I came to Adobe because you are a class act....in TEXT file management, ie PDF files. I figured, for professional BUSINESS use, you would run circles around the competition. I was SO wrong.
I have never written a letter like this and only do it after spending about $300 of my time trying to run a sub $100 demo program.
Someone should be publicly flogged at Adobe for this one!
You give me no choice but to go to the competition.
I am sure you will point out my production errors for some of above, thats good but a manual would have prevented it.
I imagine this will not be posted, or immediately taken down for "bad form", I don't think it is. My time has real value and you should learn from this, fix these problems and BEG your customers to try FREE Beta packages until it works, or pull the product.

Answer 1

This is why the menu (perhaps resolved by the huge add-on download in-progress) is important. Must be classy. These discs are going to the legal departments of some very large corporations.
Hey, a few balloons might bring some levity to the attorneys in their ivory tower...
The Functional Content is a large file. There are the PSD's, the PNG's (the little display thumbnails in the Library), Video and Audio Assets, plus the Themes (called Instant Movies in some versions). I would also think that there might be more Transitions and Presets, though these are probably pretty small.
I hope that there is useful content for your application, in PrE's additional materials. Because of the perceived target market, I feel that the Menus are loaded towards the hobbyist, doing DVD's for the family. Still, there are some that are more business related.
Because of the nature of the semi-automatic authoring in PrE, creating true custom Menu Sets is not that easy a proposition. There are many pitfalls, even for a skilled Photoshop artist, who does Menus every day for Encore. For that functionality alone, I'd keep the PrPro Production Studio (name changes per version, but it contains PrPro, Encore, Photoshop, Illustrator and AfterEffects) in the back of my mind, after that first big sale. The ability to construct my DVD, or BD, exactly as I want, and with Assets that I can build from scratch, is a great feature of Encore. I'd recommend Sony's DVD Architect as a full-featured authoring application, but I have found that it does not accept the PSD Menu files, like Encore. I do not know what Functional Content comes with it, nor do I know how easy, or difficult, it might be to construct Menus from the ground up, with whatever their Menu format is.
Also, do check out some of the PrE Menu Sets on Muvipix. I do not recall the full array, but some of the "abstract" ones might work well in a situation, like yours. One can either buy them individually, or download and use them for "free," with a subscription. I have several other sources for Menus, but they are all designed to work in Encore, and to modify them for PrE would take some real work and some real care.
Last, remember that you can use the Generic One (think that name's the same in PrE 8), and provide your own graphic image, Audio and even Video, plus one can change out the Background in many, if not all, of the others, should their general structure suit your needs - just put in an abstract image of your invention, ghosted back a bit to allow for readability - no more balloons!
Most of all, good luck with your campaign - and think about PrPro & Encore for next year.
Hunt