I am planning to switch to Apple soon! I looked at the tech specs sheet for DVD Studio Pro 4 and did not find any new features. Did Apple add anything i might have overlooked?
Hal,
Sorry, the lecture was not meant to be pointed toward you. No offense was meant for you, but there seems to be those here who chime-in on everything, while hiding behind their anonymity. To me, it seems that most of their posts contain little or no substance. That is not the case with you or some of the others who post here. There is a lot of good information to be had here, I just wish there was a filter.
I am a semi-retired, small businessman who uses these products to make a few extra bucks, and when I need help, I come here and normally find quality answers from people who also use FCS to create a commercial product. Thus my reference to Jerry, who I have corresponded with almost from the inception of FCP. I see his name and I know it's a credible post.
So after all that, what do you think of the OlaHalder example? Does it pass the test?
The links to the OlaHalder examples are interesting, but don't form anything particularly unusual - it appears to be a well executed example of using custom made assets and scripting. For me, this is what authoring is about...(so 'yes' to your question). There are times when a template is a useful tool to get a job done very quickly, but I have yet to use one on any disc that's gone to replication without adjusting something (well... adjusting most of it, actually). Creating the menu backgrounds and so on is standard practice as far as I am concerned, and the old adage of 'just because you can, doesn't mean you should' applies as much to DVDSP as anything else. I use DVDSP, Photoshop, Illustrator, Compressor, BitVice, Canopus Procoder, Mediapress, Final Cut... whatever app I need to get the job done. It certainly doesn't all happen inside DVDSP for me... even if it is possible.
As for the scripting - there is absolutely no point in doing it unless it is helping to achieve something that can't be done natively in the app. I do a heck of a lot of scripting, and enjoy finding ways to do the slightly unusual things - user selected playlists, non repeating quizzes, anything involving bit shifting and so on. Simple navigation doesn't need to be scripted, generally, and discs work perfectly well with the application's own routing tables, although in some circumstances it isn't always swift, and in at least one instance isn't intuitive.
I don't see why the examples were scripted, but I don't know the exact project structure and if there are multiple menus accessing the same track then scripting will be necessary at some point.
But this thread was about new features, presumably following the announcement of the new FCS earlier in the week. There aren't any new features in the latest version... it has the same version number as before. As for BD... and whether DVDSP could be used to create BD discs, the answer is that DVDSP can be used to author high def and will give you the HD structures needed for a disc to be used in a HD player. It doesn't give you access to the bells and whistles of the Blu-Ray specifications (and indeed doesn't give you access to some of the DVD specification), and unless you simply want to put HD content onto a disc I wouldn't use DVDSP for BD authoring.
For example, there is no way in DVDSP to leverage some of the interactive command sequences, pop up menus, audio controls or anything else that adds to the richness of Blu-Ray. I'm sure that no other similarly priced application on any platform can do those things either, and worse, other apps on any platform are not as 'comfortable' to use as DVDSP (which I've been using since around 2001).
All in all DVDSP isn't the environment to create fully featured BD discs, and currently the only place where that is successfully done is where people like Eric P work. Tools like Encore and DVDSP can give some success to some people, but don't really scratch the surface. Features such as templates help speed up some aspects of production, but a lot of folk don't use them 'out of the box'. Additional software will be needed if you want to do a truly exceptional production, or use a professional work flow with DVDSP. FCS is a
very good set of apps, and has now been improved considerably, but at least one of them (DVDSP) has had no significant changes for a number of years now.
Haha! Funny thing you would be asking so much about my example. It just seemed to me you didn't understand the difference between AUTHORING and BURNING - that's why I posted this example.
It's nothing special about this project, except for the scripting for navigation. I can't stand the thought of having to manually set end jump or what the MENU button would do for each track, that's why I did the scripting, so it automatically goes to the correct menu from wherever the user is on the disc. Saves me a lot of time, and will let me add new tracks and stories without even thinking of adjusting these settings - just add a new line in a script and it will work for all of them.
For me, DVDSP is fine as it is. But I would cry of happiness if we could get an Apple branded BD authoring application.
I wouldn't debate anything you said here. I don't need, nor would use the "bells and whistles" for my client's productions. They ask me if I can give them a Blu-ray disk of their event. I honestly say yes and then deliver full 1920X1080 with menus and navigation links. And the check clears.....
Three years after commercial movies started to sell in blu-ray and still you'll have to pay 5 digit price for real authoring software.
There's a real reason why smaller economy areas and indies have not adopted BD.
Maybe this is what Sony wants, so the name "Blu-Ray" is assosiated only to biggest productions.
Does anybody know a production with less than 7 digit cost, that has been released to BD?
Pretty sad for small content producers when you compare to the time when dvd was new. And then Apple was in the first front to democratize production tools for everybody...
Then back to topic:
I haven't found anything from new FCS that I
must have.
Do you guys think this upgrade is significant enough?
Is there ever going to be seamless background renrering of the sequence in FCP?
Does the new prores codecs also work in FCS2?
Does FCP7 support user definable safe areas, so I could adjust then to EBU rec. or depending the output format? (Almost all apps has had this for a long time.)
Does new Color support 10/12-bit color rendering also with nVidia's GPU's?
Its just and authoring program so there's not a whole lot of new development to do.
DVDSP has been developed about as far as it, or any other authoring app can.
I don't author DVDs anymore but there are loads of features and workflow improvements they could do. Apple have had it easy, as far as pressure from users goes, on dvdsp and not updating it. I was up to over 4 or 5 pages of feature requests and improvements when I stopped. That was a long time ago 🙂
I clearly don't know what I am talking in this discussion, but since I am experimenting with the new little app in FCS3 called "Create Disc", and finding it useful to regular DVD burning using Share/DVD in FCP 7, I wonder what the significance is, if any, of the following to this discussion:
I think the point was that people were hoping for improvements to DVDSP, namely BD authoring support. DVDSP is a solid tool. The only change I see that would really be helpful is improvement in its pre-mastering capabilities (setting layer breaks and all). Funny since I haven't used DVDSP in years so maybe Im the wrong guy to comment. 🙂
The improvement in DVDSP I would most want to see is a User Manual that is decipherable -- it and the third party books written about DVDSP have more utility for reference, than for getting a sense of overview.
Btw, the DVDs I have burned with the little Create Disc app are the best DVDs I have ever produced (actual content not withstanding). Seems to waste absolutely no space on the media.
