Blu-ray support

+if you go the route of only adding high res video to the DVD specs for your authoring program (as Adobe did with Encore) you, in the end, will have something pretty lame compared to a full featured Blu-ray authoring program.+

Yep but HDMV mode does allow for multi-page menus, pop-up menus, click sounds, continuous audio, browseable slidehsows etc before you have to declare BD-J mode. It would be great to see apple add advanced drag and drop behaviors (like Sony do with Blu-print?) like Adobe do with Director or something like configurable/codeable components in flash but HDMV mode features would be a good first step before jumping into J2ME 'AL' stuff IMO,

-Jake

j a k e ® wrote:
Blu-ray would be great but we wont hear anything till April (NAB) if we are extremely lucky but even that is unlikely IMO. I would have paid for a Spec Apple App at old Shake prices and would do the same for Blu-ray but Apple is unlikely to do that. They dropped Shake and it had a strong following in feature land...

1) Apple has pulled out of NAB 2008, so no go there.
2) Apple dropped development of Shake, but they are in the process of a new compositing software to take it's place.

Plenty of stuff goes on outside of the mainshow. I don't mind if they tell me in a hotel room 😉 or just update the site...

Haha I knew someone would mention the Shake Replacement but if they can drop and leave the high-end VFX market in the lurch for a fair amount of time then I'd say the chances of us getting a high-end tool for a market which is at best niche are pretty slim... I'd love to be wrong though.

-Jake

j a k e ® wrote:

I hope we get Blu-ray authoring added or a highend app, even if we have to use HDAfterEdit for some stuff but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Hopefully HDAFterEdit can get on board quickly, saw they have plans to get HDAfterEdit over. But I think holding one's breath is a bad idea at this time like you said. Sigh.

Sounds crazy, but what do you suppose the odds are of the next Shake being integrated into FCS?

Darren - o enlighten others who haven't trod the same path (yet!) will you go throkugh a bbrief description of your procedure with it . . . . ? Ta!

It's deja vue all over again. We went through this with DVD-Rs. The STUDIOS suffer from acute paranoia and after a short grace period (because they were having trouble getting their movies to play) have now pressured manufacturers to remove the ability of BluRay players to play BD-R disks. Duplicators have decided to hang back, as the investment is huge and the return has yet to become apparent. Therefore, even if you can author and burn a beautiful BluRay disk, how are you going to play it? Oh yes, there is the Sony PS3. One firmware upgrade removed the ability to play BD-R disks. Oddly, that ability has been restored with another firmware upgrade, but for how long? So there is no real reason for Apple to rush BluRay support into DVD Studio Pro. Actually, it makes more sense for Apple to wait till this shakes out a bit, then come out with a really killer product that will allow you to author beautiful BluRay DVDs that can actually be played.

By the way, I have used Adobe Encore and Premiere. I find them very inferior to Final Cut and DVD StudioPro. The only thing they offer is BluRay now.

If we were to start an office pool for when Blu-ray support will appear for DVDSP..., what month/day/year would you pick?

Can I get in on your pool and say never? 🙂

Sure, but you'll have to split the winnings with anyone else that claims the same.

It's beginning to look like a solid investment.

The latest word is that Apple canceled having a NAB presence in Las Vegas this year because they knew they wouldn't be ready to support Blu-ray.

I don't see that. BD support in DVDSP is such a minor issue compared to Apple's overall revenues. It makes financial sense not to pay to be at NAB - Apples presence at NAB will not sell more FCP suites. There's not much to announce this year so why attend.

Good news!! Sony has implemented full support for BD-R DVDs in their Sony BDP-S300/301 players with firmware updates. The latest being version 3.08. It is possible to author disks using BDMV on BD-R discs. I contacted them and they were very responsive. The link to the new firmware was posted and sent to me within an hour. The downside is you must make a disk image in windows to update the software. The +Panasonic DMP-BD30+ will play the same disks right out of the box. What you may ask does this have to do with DVD StudioPro? The answer is very simple. We now have 2 major manufacturers providing us with gear that our BD-Rs may be played on by anyone. This is one of the hurdles to making BluRay media that can be viewed by the general public. This brings us one step closer to making this a mainstream technology. Believe it or not there are those who still have dial-up internet, meaning downloading any form of long form media HD or SD for them is impractical. I spoke with a long-time manager of a national DVD-CD store and he said that although CD sales have plummeted, DVD and BluRay sales have filled the void. Logically,we must assume from this that DVD and BluRay productions will be the interim formats of choice for the time being. in time, downloaded or on demand may become the consumers' choice for getting their entertainment but not yet. And this does not address short run productions, those who do not exceed 500 units. Think weddings, school graduations and similar types of productions. There are many small producers that pay their bills this way. From the days of desktop publishing with Pagemaker and Macpluses, Apple has provided the "small guy" a way to make a living with their products. I've been using Macs since 1990 and the IIFX to produce video. So I am convinced that Apple will implement BluRay authoring support in the near future. The signs are there. With the major manufacturers implementing support for BD-R and BDMV we are one step closer.

That's great news, but really I think Apple is probably getting out of the DVD authoring business. It just isn't enough of a revenue stream for them. Look for them to open up the API for Final Cut Studio so other developers can build authoring applications for OSX.

Apple doesn't make a great deal of money from any component of Final Cut Studio but what FCS does do is sell Macs. And if they included a Blu-ray burner with the next Mac Pro refresh that was "mysteriously" incompatible with previous Mac Pros, who wouldn't buy one within 18 months? Companies are dropping Blu-ray disc and player prices across the board and it's only a matter of time before all of our clients are demanding it.