Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

You might want to check out Thomsons's BD-Jive.

As far as interactivity on BD goes, do note that we're going to be limited by a) what can/cannot be done with BD-J and b) speed of the player - which may be the single most limiting factor. And since we don't know where our discs are going to be played, we will need to design against the median or possibly even worst-case scenario. Moreover, if we create and implement designs that outstrip the interactivity requirements of the major studios, we may find ourselves creating discs that don't play everywhere because the player vendor's will only work as hard as the studio's drive them.

Michael

P.S. Why not create an account for yourself or log in if you have an account already?

The days of HD are over for my clients audience, they feel an up converter does the job so they need interactivity on the disc's and with Sony, WB, and Disney releasing full BD-J titles for now on they'll ask me to do the same thing. I'm looking for interactivity such as persistent storage made simple, save the settings for all the titles I create once. Dynamic text to make menu creation easier and updated based on a XML feed from a website. So I can tell my clients their disc's can be sold in more countries over time. Especially the countries that don't have a lot of blu-ray now. these countries are perfect for BD Live features because the players released over there will have BD Live in them since not a single non BD Live player will be introduced after 08.

Basically I don't want to create the HD version of the same menu system as my DVD. Times are different then even one year ago and will continue to be very different as youtube and sites like nbcolympics.com add interactive features to content. If my clients need just the HD disc version of their DVD, I can use DVDitHD for that. So a tool that does what Flash can do for Video will be a hit. Not only for the small world of DVD Authors but for the large world of Flash developers. At the same time a tool that creates a layer of abstraction for BD-J but is too complex for the average DVD Author might end up loosing the contract or even his job to a Flash Developer who can easily add the interactivity using scripting.

The point is that if a tool doesn't do the interactivity easily for a DVD author it doesn't mean the work won't be done. It just might be done by someone with other skills. So a tool with interactivity that is designed in some way for a non technical person like me, because lets face it you can create a DVD with Scenarist and say oh wow thats tough but then ask to create a Flash menu with video, makes DVD authoring seem easy.

I want to use your tool to keep my job, keep clients happy and not be suck in a lost generation of old DVD authors I want to change with the times and your tool might be my best hope.

1.) command debugging & quicktime-preview
2.) HDMV authoring & BDCMF-generation
3.) Post-authoring (HDMV command & playlist editing)
4.) UDF 2.5-writing

I think it is most important to have a good-working preview+command debugging-function. There is NO playback-application for BDs for MAC and there are just a few PC-programms that have a preview-function in it.

point 2.)&3.) could be one priority together (one incl. the other).

point 4.) could be handled with toast9 for a moment, so it seems to be less important at the moment.

just my 2 cent

danny