Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Guess I’ve gotten in a rut or something.
Anyways, some of the stories I didn’t mention at CES was all the 3D excitement about new players and the PS3’s ability to have a firmware upgrade to support 3D. What does that all mean for us menu designers/encoders/authors? That’s a good question, one I don’t know the answer to.
However BluFocus will be hosting a 3D webinar explaining the workflow. Interestingly the software they will be using isn’t anything we use (CinemaCraft and Scenarist) so I’m very interested to see what their solution is. I haven’t heard a single thing from CinemaCraft or Sonic regarding 3D being implemented into their software, though I would guess it’s on the way. Maybe at NAB we’ll hear something. Of course 3D TVs and 3D Blu-ray players aren’t really even out yet, so we’ll see.
So if you are interested in learning how we are all going to have to do 3D at some point, sign up for the webinar. It’s on March 4th.
CinemaCraft and NetBlender have teamed up to provide a new software bundle known as CC-HDe/a. I’m guessing the “/a” stands for authoring. Anyways, it’s an interesting solution for people looking at getting some great encodes. We actually have an HDe and it’s a pretty impressive piece of software, though there are some things that just drive me crazy about it (i.e. no QuickTime reference files!)
They don’t really mention price but they say a comparable solution (which would of course be Scenarist + HDe) would cost over $100k, while there’s saves you 50%. So retail is probably around $50k. Sounds about right to me.
It’ll be interesting to see what this does for each company, but realistically I don’t see CinemaCraft selling many extra units because of this. NetBlender will probably get a few more sales because people who are already spending so much on an encoder can add an authoring tool for not much more, in addition to their Blu-print or Scenarist workstations.
I found this on LinkedIn, and it’s pretty cool if you have an iPhone. I’ve never been real good at bit budgets so this is a great tool to have handy. Best of all, it’s free! And it works for DVD or Blu-ray. Here’s what the creator, Andy Evans from The Pavement in London, had to say about it:
I wanted to share with you all our DVD & Blu-ray Bit Budget iPhone App that just went live on the Apps Store.
It’s the first version and therefore free to download.
The DVD bit is pretty straightforward, but those of you who have worked with Blu-ray know it’s not that easy to calculate your video data rates when the disc includes any of the Dolby or DTS lossless formats as the data size taken by them is determined by factors including what’s needed to represent what’s going on. For example, a drama based feature will probably need less data to reproduce it compared to a high energy rock concert. We have accounted for this in several ways in our calculator. Firstly, we have given two preset data rates named HD Audio – Feature and HD Audio Music that we have derived from working on quite a few music and film projects. We believe these will give you a pretty good estimation on the safe side. The other two ways are to either include the actual data size taken up by your already encoded Dolby or DTS lossless formats, or enter a custom data rate that you know.
I look forward to any feedback that you have as on how we can improve upon it.
This sounds interesting, I’ll probably be watching it if I’m not too busy Monday morning.
Learn the tips and tricks of authoring BDs with DoStudio in a Final Cut Pro and Adobe Creative Suite environment from expert video post production professional Steve Johnson of Duplitech.
Who: Sponsored by NetBlender and Duplitech
What: Complimentary Blu-ray Authoring Webinar
When: October 20, 2009 1:30 PM Eastern, 10:30 AM Pacific
Why: Because offering professional Blu-ray authoring services shouldn’t cost a fortune (or require a degree in Java programming)
Deal-of-the-day site woot.com has a Pioneer BDP-121 Blu-Ray Player for sale at $134.99 + $5 shipping. They tend to sell out quick so if you want one you better pull the trigger.
I’m not really sure how good of a deal this is, but it seems pretty reasonable to me and it’s a profile 2.0 player, so that’s nice.
Adobe has made an interesting announcement this week. While they will be offering Flash on several new devices with Flash 10.1, the iPhone is not supported. However in what seems to be their solution to this problem, they are going to allow Flash to iPhone apps directly from Flash CS5. This isn’t going to be a SWF inside a an IPA or something like that, it will be a natively compiled app. In fact it seems there are already several in the App Store already, and people didn’t even know it. This has brought me to my plead with Adobe to offer BD-J compiling with Flash in the same way.
Is this even possible? I don’t know, but I think it just might be after reading some of Adobe’s explanation that talks about Just In Time (JIT) compilation versus Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation and Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM). The LLVM is apparently converting the Action Script 3 code to the iPhone’s native ARM assembly. According to the LLVM site the compiler supports X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, PIC16 MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore processors. What I’m worried about is that it says it works with C and C++ and we all know that BD-J is Java, so I don’t know where that leaves us. I was trying to figure out what processors Blu-ray players use and that sort of thing, but it’s all a little beyond me. Does anyone else have any insight to this?
All I’m saying is this: How nice would it be to be able to use an existing tool, like Flash, that has been around forever to design and author all the BD-J code? I’m still not excited about On-Q and Sonic’s BD-J solutions are sloppy. If Adobe was serious about Blu-ray, they could add this in and integrate it with Encore (and hopefully Scenarist and Blu-print) and you may start seeing some actual BD-J games/applications that are worth using. I think it would also make Encore a serious competitor in the Blu-ray authoring world.
I’m not sure if anyone from Adobe would ever read this (though I do have a few hits from San Jose over the last month, so maybe they do) but if you do, PLEASE consider this. I know there isn’t as much as a market for this, but I think you could easily include this as an extra bundle. Even if it was $10k, I think I could convince my company to invest in it if it was well done.
Personally I’ve never asked this question as I leave it to the authors and replicators to do their magic, but if you’ve ever wondered what the actual process is once you have your BDMCF image created, this article might be for you. The article is written by NetBlender, but it seems to be good information for all other authoring packages.
I got an email from NetBlender earlier this week that describes a new promo they are running that can save you a little money. Their description of the deal is:
Customers that license DoStudio Workflow Suite between now and November 20, 2009 will receive one complimentary Title Insertion for BD Touch Premium. BD Touch Premium lets consumers download bonus content from the BD to their iPhone and iPod Touch! Normally, there is a $1,500 per title insertion fee to activate BD Touch Premium. They will also receive a complimentary iPod Touch.
Sonic had a couple new minor releases, sounds like it’s mostly bug fixes. Here’s what’s new with Scenarist:
BD-J Object (BDJO) Sharing – Version 5.1.3 allows BD-J Objects to be shared by multiple titles on the disc.
Scenarist Safeguard Online Help Updates – The Online Help file for Scenarist Safeguard has been updated to provide more context-sensitive help functions.
And here’s what’s new with Designer:
Export Enhancement – Scenarist Designer PS 2.6.1 fixes an issue where the deletion of transparent graphics could leave empty Button Object Groups (BOGs) in the .scenarist.designer file, which would result in dummy slices being created in Scenarist BD.
Scenarist BD Studio Compatibility Improvements – An issue preventing Interactive Graphics (IG) and Presentation Graphics (PG) (exported in compatibility mode – version 2.5 format) from successfully importing into Scenarist BD Studio 4.5.2 has been resolved in version 2.6.1.
Activation Update – It’s now possible to activate Scenarist Designer PS on International systems with file paths containing double-byte characters. Windows users will need to ensure that they are running the latest dongle drivers – Sentinel Protection Driver 7.50 or later – for version 2.6.1 to activate successfully.
I think I actually found that first bug, so that makes me feel good.
Post Modern Group (also known as the place I do my Blu-ray menu work) has teamed up with some producers and created a new weekly online show they are calling OnAAiR. It stands for Advertising and Arts in Review, or something clever like that. It’s a way for us to not only show off ourselves, but also get some interesting information out to the advertising world. The first episode is an interview with Scott Dunlop who was the creator of the Real Housewives reality series that airs on Bravo.
If nothing else, the pilot episode has a nice little “tour” of Post Modern and gives you a pretty good idea of what our building looks like and what we do here beside Blu-ray. If you pause the video at about 2 seconds in you might even see me walking down the hall in a striped sweater. I think there are a couple other shots of me and my shaggy hair you might see if you watch carefully. I know, enough reason to watch it alone.
I also put my WordPress skills to the test and did most of the web work, so if you find anything you don’t like about it, you’ll know who to blame.
There is talk about a Blu-ray episode in the future, but I’m not sure who it will involve being interviewed. Probably not me.
You can watch the first episode here and the pilot episode here.
Apple released Final Cut Studio 3 today and added the ability to burn Blu-ray discs directly from the application, but I have a feeling you still wont be able to actually play it on your Mac. But, I welcome this change and love that if you are an editor you won’t have to go to some third party application or open source tool to output a disc. Here’s the description found from Apple’s site:
Blu-ray disc and DVD burning2
You can now easily burn a Blu-ray disc or a DVD directly from Compressor. Quickly add a menu to your disc by choosing one of the beautiful Apple-designed HD or SD templates included in Compressor. Because Compressor uses an open XML-based template format, you can import third-party or custom templates for a specific look.
It says in the tech specs you can also burn AVCHD discs to red laser DVDs to play back in Blu-ray players, another nice feature.
NetBlender is offering a demo of their software in New York City if anyone is interested. Here is a description of the event they sent me:
The cost and complexity of getting HD material from its source tape format to a Blu-ray compliant file can present a hurdle for many independent post production facilities.
NetBlender and DuArt are partnering to help post facilities in New York City with this challenge. With this partnership, you can “sneakernet” your tapes to DuArt for turnkey Blu-ray encoding and QC services and pick up your encoded assets with the confidence that the encodes are high quality and 100% Blu-ray compliant, ready for authoring in NetBlender’s DoStudio BD Authoring Edition (DSA)
NetBlender customers will receive a discount on DuArt’s Blu-ray capture and encode services.
Event takes place Tuesday, July 7 from 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm at DuArt’s Manhattan office (245 West 55th Street) – Box Lunch will be provided
I normally don’t do things like this, but a friend of mine is applying for a job at a winery called Murphy-Goode. It’s a social media position, so it involves Twittering, Facebooking, blogging, YouTubing, stuff like that. He has to get a bunch of votes on a short 1 minute video he made.
He played a big role in me getting into web design and video editing, so I kind of owe him one. So if you have a free minute, watch it and vote. Or watch it and don’t vote. Or don’t watch it and vote. Or don’t do anything.
