Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

A recent project was meant to be HD on some flavor of the formats out there. Then watching how well Apple's TV version 2 worked we simply made it for download. Now of course it's not the gold standard but costs are amazingly low compared to what has been mentioned and product will follow cost

I wish you all the best and look forward to using your fine product for years to come. For those hoping to charge more history suggests you have only a short time to make the big bucks before software and hardware allows the clients nephew to knock one out. I sat out this format war as I didn't see HD DVD winning. Not when the PS3 had the Blue Ray player and the Xbox charged extra for HD. To my mind it was that simple. Add Apple's clear ambivalence to anything but downloads...

Still you guys really are on top of this. Sounds exciting to me. I can't wait to get my hands on the new software.

Good luck to all.

That's correct but I believe that the Scenarist BD-J tool can be used to develop xlets that can be subsequently integrated with A/V content mux'ed and output by some other authoring tool (e.g. Adobe Encore). This workflow presumes you know enough about the structure of BD to accomplish this plus have access to a few utilities necessary to "button up" everything together. In fact, the "button up" functionality could even be provided by...HDAE. ;->

Michael

P.S. the BDA really needs to re-think it's current licensing scheme for BD-J classes. It's *way* too expensive, though there are ways around this even now. ;->

FYI: you get one key for Scenarist Designer PS with either flavor of Scenarist BD. Also I think it is possible to buy only the BD-J version of the product though there may not be a formal SKU for it.

And don't forget a support contract. That will cost you too.

I suspect that if you purchase a "bundle" of products you can get a good discount.

Michael

P.S. I was wrong about the cost of an AACS key. These are $1500 each plus a $200 "convenience fee" if you want the keys delivered by email.

Hi Michael,

I understand your eagerness to see the next version of HDAE - I'm looking forward to it, too :-) As far as Scenarist goes - well, it's your budget ! ( How much is does that seat cost, at the moment, does anyone have a ballpark figure ? ) Certainly if you have several customers clamoring for BD right now, then nothing but Scenarist and BluPrint offer a full authoring solution, at this point, and the new Rivergate app is certainly a way off.

Eric, thanks for those figures, they help give me confidence that this will all work out eventually !

Ian

I've used the MC product before and found it to be good - though in the end I standardized on CCE-SP. I am also eager to see what comes out from Cinemacraft - hopefully soon. Either way one will also need an audio encoder and then there's also the matter of the MUX'er. As with DVD, that's often where the rubber meets the road.

I'll take a look at the Ensequence offering as well. I've already been asked to investigate this by another client. ;->

BTW: where is this replicator you found offering short-run BD?

Michael

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Ian. (Do you really want to spend all of that time at Tesco every day? ;->)

As to your assertion that "HDAE is just around the corner and soon a new authoring app" well...I'm (still) waiting and in the meantime looking very seriously at a seat of Scenarist BD and Cinevision (already well tested by the H'wood shops). ;->

Michael

Hi Michael,

I want your customers ! :-) Seriously though, thanks for the provocative post - yes, you've described the high-end scenario very well. Although, neglecting the per-disc costs, your total outlay is still only circa $10K. Scenarist is a huge whack on top of that, so a cheaper alternative would still be attractive to me, even in that scenario.

But here's another option:

Our customers use HDV, and they supply the source on their own standard USB2 hard-drive. We've had several films submitted this way, and they are quite small. ( Is it really HD ? Who knows ? It looks better than DV, anyway - and try telling my customers it isn't real HD unless it was shot on Red ! ) Compress in MPEG-2 using Procoder 3, which we already own, or even Compressor - is it as good as the best ? No way. Is it "good enough", considering the source ? Probably. Sure it takes all weekend, but that's what they're for...

Burner - yup, we'll need one. And a couple of players to test on - but I think I can get them for $1000. I'll do the rest of my testing in the local branch of Tesco to begin with ;-). You're right I'll need an HD display, but BD-J won't be necessary - in fact even HDMV may be overkill.

So my total outlay so far is only $3K at most - all the replication costs will be passed on to my customers, including an extra test disc, if necessary. That's about what we spent on our first Mac with DVDSP 1.5, a Medea 300GB array and sundry converters - many years down the line. So now the price of Scenarist looks really outlandish, and when I know HDAE is just around the corner ( and soon a new authoring app ! ), some kind of hacked together solution starts to look much more attractive.

I genuinely believe that most of our customers will be prepared to pay double at the absolute most for BD authoring - after all, they can't charge more than twice the price to sell their discs for. And the justification will have to be mainly the encoding, since otherwise, form their point - what's different ? Everything is higher res, otherwise it's business as usual.

Where we absolutely agree is that the problem will be finding those customers - not because they aren't already shooting on HD ( they are ) but because when you tell them what the cost of a run of a thousand discs is before we even start up our computers, they just laugh at us... and you're right, the situation trying to actually get something pressed at one of the few plants in Europe is just the icing on the cake.

Having said all of that, I certainly hope that the AACS issue will be dealt with in the near future, and we can all get on with just authoring discs again !

Cheers,

Ian