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Before Apple's recent introduction of new DVD authoring software and hardware, the process of creating a DVD was time-consuming, expensive and very complex. The software was poorly designed and the only drives for creating the DVD-R media were in the $3500-$5000 price range. But Apple changed all that with the introduction of the PowerMac G4 733 with Superdrive. The Superdrive provides the industry leading ability to create DVDs playable on most home DVD players. It also comes bundled with iDVD, which allows anyone to take their DV movies or warehouses of digital pictures and put them in a format for others to see that actually treats them right. Total cost is $3499, and if you want the true power, customization and ease-of-use of a professional DVD Authoring environment, DVD Studio Pro can be added for only $999. These prices and the capabilities of these products offer up a new world of possibilities that almost no one outside of Hollywood truly understands yet. This is a huge step for Digital Video and DVD, in much the same way that the Macintosh and LaserWriter revolutionized desktop publishing in the mid 80s. This feature article isn't a review of iDVD or DVD Studio Pro. Instead it is an attempt to look at each of the products and determine what is the best solution for the job you want to accomplish by analyzing the features, advantages and disadvantages of each product. I will also draw a conclusion but you are welcome to disagree with me. :-) I welcome your feedback and your questions.
Interface
iDVD - iDVD's interface is a excellent example of simplicity. All that is initially displayed is the DVD Menu you are creating and three buttons on the bottom. One button is for themes, which offer some fairly extensive customization of the menu interface, one for slideshows, which allow you to add groups of photos to your DVD, and a new folder button, which allows you to nest DVD menus and work around the limitation of only six items on a menu. Very nicely hidden under the themes button are a significant number of background, fonts and button style changes that can be applied to the current DVD menu. All the menus support transparent drag and drop of movies to be added to a menu, or even your very own picture as the background image. And of course the interface can be removed completely for when the DVD is previewed, so as to show how exactly how it will look on the finished DVD.
DVD Studio Pro - DVD Studio Pro's interface begins as an open slate. It offers a sort of folder linking metaphor showing the direction of each action. As a folder, or asset as they are called in DVD Studio Pro, is selected the menus on the right change to reflect the options selected for that menu. Then following a double click of the asset, they change again when an item is selected to summarize all the options for that particular button or item. As was the case with iDVD, DVD Studio Pro also offers a previewing feature through the Apple DVD Player that gives a sanity check of how your DVD will look and perform on the majority of DVD players.
Encoding Speed
Both applications take advantage of a new codec in Quicktime that does MPEG2 Encode. With the utilization of the Velocity Engine in the G4 chip it can encode at up to 1.5-2x real time on a G4/733. Previously software codecs that did this took up to 25x real time, and although hardware solutions are available that deliver real time encoding, their quality is often less than the software codecs. The quality level of video (measured in bit-rate) can be adjusted for those movies being imported into DVD Studio Pro. IDVD does its own encoding of all the movies in a project just before the disc is to be burned and it uses the maximum bit-rate which limits the amount of video on a single-layer, single-side DVD to 60 minutes. (Note: if you run into a problem exporting video with the quicktime player into MPEG2 for DVD Studio Pro, make sure the memory allocation is at least 25 MBs.)
Media Price Before Apple announced the G4/733s with the Superdrive, media prices were typically on the order of $30-$45 each. At that price, DVD isn't very attractive, especially for home movies or demos to clients. But Apple also announced available through the Apple Store a 5-pack of DVD-R media for only $50. That is $10 a disk and that in of itself is a huge leap forward.
Advantages So what else separates the two programs. What are iDVD's greatest advantages? Consistency - When you utilize the themes provided in iDVD (and the likelihood that even more will be released), you automatically gain consistency with all the buttons and labels that you create. IDVD also insures that your placements of items is clear and visible on the TV, even if it is a little rigid in its placement. Background Picture - Any picture can be dragged onto the background of a menu to replace the default background for the theme. Slide Show - A slide show of all your great digital pictures is as simple as dragging in the pictures and setting the delay between them (user defined, or a set number of seconds). That is all there is to it and I think this is the best way to share and store your digital pictures for all to enjoy. And what are DVD Studio Pro's greatest advantages? Hardware - DVD Studio Pro can run on any PowerMac G4. The system does not need to have a DVD-R (or Superdrive as it is called by Apple). This is of tremendous benefit because the process of DVD Authoring with DVD Studio Pro can be very time consuming, so it is nice not to have to tie up the DVD-R capable systems the entire time. Empty Slate - Just about anything you can imagine and put together in Final Cut Pro or draw in Photoshop you can make into an interactive DVD menu with DVD Studio Pro. Slide Shows - Slide shows in DVD Studio Pro can contain Audio. Personally this is one of the pivotal features that I think is missing in iDVD DVD Studio Pro allows for tremendous flexibility in allowing you to place a large number of audio tracks keyed to events in a slide show. They can be keyed to change at certain times or at the display of a certain picture or even whatever other method you script in. Encoding Speed - Encoding Speed can be improved by about 20% by clicking the triangle to hide the preview image during encoding. Scripting - Scripting in DVD Studio Pro allows you to link multiple actions together. It maybe as simple as counting the number of seconds to sit idle on a button, to as complex as changing the interface based on the number of times something has been seen while playing the DVD, and still more. The language itself is fairly straightforward, and with a little time and some background in scripting shouldn't be to difficult for you to grasp the possibilities. Web Links - Exclusive to DVD Studio Pro is the ability to include web links in your DVD. This could be a great way for advertisers or other businesses to provide a tie to their Internet infrastructure they already have in place (such as contact info, or a company store). And although web links can be added directly to a button they can in effect achieve the same thing by being triggered by an action of clicking on a button. Graphic Suggestions - Here are some suggestions
from the DVD Studio Pro Users Guide to produce better DVDs.
Disadvantages Of course, with the advantages, follows the disadvantages. For iDVD: Hardware - iDVD can only be run on PowerMac G4 equipped with a DVD-R drive. Unfortunately it doesn't even offer the ability to run on a system without the drive like you can with DVD Studio Pro. Limited Menu Items - iDVD only allows 6 items in its interface and it doesn't allow for much of any real customization in their placement. If you have 6 items they have to be 2 rows of 3 items of each. Personally I think this is a limitation that should be changed to enable other six button layouts. Customization - With the exception of the adding
of a picture to the project to make it the background for a menu, there
really isn't much in the way of genuine customization in iDVD The themes
only offer differences in styles of buttons, fonts used and backgrounds.
These options although initially seeming quite varied, will be exhausted
before you realize it. Photoshop Layer Effects - Although it does support Photoshop files and can readily assign a layer to a particular asset in the project, DVD Studio Pro does not support Photoshop effect layers. Those layers must first be rendered and flattened for usage (not the whole image just the layer effects.) Audio Formats - Due to the limitations imposed by the DVD Standard all audio tracks attached to a motion menu or to a slide show must be of the same format. Startup Action - This one stumped me for a while. By default DVD studio Pro doesn't set a Startup action. This means if you don't choose one manually, when you play your DVD nothing will happen, and the preview mode in DVD Studio Pro will not work.
Conclusions Your choice of DVD authoring environments ultimately boils down to price and time. Although the initial price of DVD Studio Pro ($999) may seem a steep barrier of entry, the real key difference between the products is what kind of time you are willing to invest. If you have the high-quality source material (Audio and Video), and have the time to produce a unique journey into your DVD material than DVD Studio Pro is the way to go. Personally I consider the majority of my home videos will be well served by iDVD, but I do have my eye set on a really cool year in review DVD that goes out to all the friends and family. :-) References -
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