Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

Hi Pierre-Luc,

**Disclaimer** These are my personal views, and in no way represent the opinion of Rivergate Software **

I've tried DoStudio MX, and it shows a lot of promise. Yes, it is Advanced Content only. Currently it is by far the quickest way to author an AC HD DVD from the ground up, but it doesn't yet have a full feature-set. Using it is neither as complex as authoring via HDi, nor as simple as a true "drag & drop" interface.

It aims to be a wysiwyg Advanced Content authoring application, but falls short of that goal at the moment in several ways, I think. So for example it allows you to import layered Photoshop files and automatically create menus from them ( if you name the layers right ) and then animate those menus, all without writing any HDi code. However in order make the buttons on those menus then do what you want, you need to write or copy/paste lines of code - not HDi script, but a new "Abstraction Layer" type code that NetBlender have written ( "DoML" ). This script is an order of magnitude simpler than pure HDi script, but still is a bit intimidating for a newbie - I guess it's similar to having to learn scripting in DVDSP, but without drop-down command editors to help.

You can add audio, video & subtitles and then multiplex your project and test it in PowerDVD or WinDVD, however at the moment there is no way of formatting ( mastering ) the result. So, you can burn red-laser test copies using Nero, say, but if you want a manfacturing master at the moment you will still need Scenarist or the plant to do it for you. ( Of course soon you will be able to use HDAE for this. ) I think they have plans to add formatting in future, but I guess this will cost extra - they increased the subscription price from $99 per month to $249 when they addded multiplexing support.

There are however a great many advantages to using it - not least that in theory at least, a great deal of QC time is saved. Programming in HDi script, you are responsible not only for making everything work as you would like, but also for not crashing the player ! In theory if you are using DoStudio this won't ever happen, so it's just a case of making sure the menus work correctly.

So, to summarise:

• It works
• It is much safer and faster than pure HDi authoring ( Niran Heusing from NixBu estimates 20x ? )
• The interface is very "PC-ish" ( ie. clunky )
• There is no formatting capability yet
• It's quite pricey - $3000 a year
• They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you're interested, you could give it a try and see if you agree with my conclusions.

Bottom line - if I was asked to author an Advanced Content HD DVD for commercial release tomorrow and had never done it before, I would use DoStudio ( and HDAE ! ). If you only want to experiment and learn about the format, I would start messing about with the HDi tutorials linked to in the Beta Test section instead. You will gain a much deeper insight, and be well-prepared for the tools that HDAE will offer - but, you will also come to realise how much work is involved in authoring an HD DVD at this point in time.

Of course, as the new capabilities of HDAE are unlocked, all of this will change...

Ian