BETWEEN HOBBYISTS AND HOLLYWOOD

DVD's mid-level users are demanding more - including higher-level functionality at lower-level prices.

DVD may have been conceived with the consumer market in mind, but its potential for corporate, institutional, and professional applications was recognized from the outset. Offering first-rate video and audio quality combined with user-directed navigation (interactivity), DVD has the right ingredients for presentations, kiosks, video portfolios, and training. And when combined with the Internet, the format's utility is extended by the ability to transcend the fixed nature of a physical medium.

Despite these capabilities, the development of a solid market for DVD production outside the home-video sector has been gradual. Corporate fascination with the Web has been one factor; another has been the installed base of CD-ROM drives on business computers and LaserDisc players in company AV departments. At the same time, early DVD tools were very expensive, and often intimidating for users who only needed to work with DVD once in a while. The drives for outputting projects to DVD-R have been very pricey as well. It also hasn't helped that inconsistencies between playback systems sometimes have resulted in compatibility problems for those attempting to take full advantage of what the specification theoretically has to offer. Overall, DVD has made some inroads in the corporate sector, but is still regarded by some as a tough sell rather than a slam dunk.

These hurdles have no doubt been frustrating for DVD advocates, but the move to embrace DVD seems to be gaining momentum. The installed base of computers with DVD-ROM drives is steadily growing, and industrial DVD-Video players have been available for a while now from such companies as Pioneer and Philips, offering the same kinds of professional features that made workhorses of industrial LaserDisc decks. That makes it possible to use DVD for kiosks and tradeshows while bypassing potential concerns about the complexity of DVD-ROM-equipped computers and their reliability in the field.

The DVD-R specification, meanwhile, has been revised to support not only existing "authoring" drives (635nm wavelength), but also "general" (650nm) drives that soon will be available for the same applications that made CD-R such a hit. The new drives use different recording blanks, but are supposed to be completely playback compatible: any DVD player or drive that can play a DVD-R now also will be able to play the new version. Expected to debut at less than $1,000, these new drives will bring inhouse DVD writing capabilities within reach of a much broader class of users.

The vendors of DVD authoring tools are acutely aware of these positive developments, and they obviously have a strong incentive to expand the pool of potential customers for whom DVD is a sensible solution. So, they've been working for quite some time to craft offerings that address the needs of users who are making something other than feature film titles for the home video market. By now, there are even consumer authoring products targeted toward enthusiasts with DV camcorders and consumer-oriented video editing tools on their computers. In between these hobbyists and Hollywood, it's the people in corporate AV departments, advertising agencies, video post houses, and independent videography companies who make up the mid-level market for DVD authoring.

A Growing Market"It wasn't long ago that corporate users were still just investigating what DVD was as a technology, much less how to author it," says Mark Johnson, technical manager at Daikin U.S. in Novato, CA. "But now the mid-level DVD authoring market continues to grow, as it is expected to do for quite some time."

Johnson says most of the demand at this point appears to be for tradeshow loops, kiosks, interactive training, and long-term video presentations, such as museum and corporate installations. "DVD is clearly making headway into areas formerly controlled by LaserDisc," he observes, "as well as beginning to venture into interactive areas previously occupied by CD-ROM and the Web."

To give even modest facilities an entry point into this market, Daikin introduced a Windows authoring tool early in 2000 that is based on the processing engine of its higher-end Scenarist NT line (ranging in price from $6,450 to $21,950), but without features that are of interest only for movie titles. By reducing the array of options, Daikin gave ReelDVD ($980) a more streamlined interface that is easier for users who are not immersed in DVD on a daily basis.

ReelDVD supports as many as 999 total menus and video tracks (NTSC or PAL), which may use as many as three audio and subtitle streams. The newly released version 2.0 features support for 16:9 video and includes a player application that self-installs on the computers of end-users to allow playback of content in the DVD-Video format from a CD-R.

Listing DVD's selling points for industrial applications, Johnson speaks of three primary factors: longevity, quality, and interactivity. "Longevity means long hours of use with no wear on the medium," he says. "The availability of industrial-grade players, such as Pioneer's 7200-7400 series, makes DVD an attractive choice for museums and corporate installations. And DVD is able to drive high-profile public displays without any question regarding the video and audio quality of the playback. Also, the built-in support for menu-based interactivity, and the availability of mouse, trackball, and touch-screen interfaces for players makes DVD ideal for kiosks and interactive training applications."

Johnson's upbeat assessment is shared by Dan Leighton, vice president of marketing at Sonic Solutions, which is also based in Novato. "The market is growing stronger daily," he says. "To date, most growth has been with the post houses, who have been doing much of the corporate, institutional, and independent videographer DVD work for some time. But we are now seeing increasing strength in other segments, particularly with videographers and in larger corporations doing their own inhouse work. We expect that over the next year, falling DVD-R prices will stimulate the strongest demand in the videography community as they realize the benefits of DVD in the markets they serve."

Sonic has been developing the videography market through aggressive bundling of its DVDit! LE authoring program with videocards from a long list of vendors, including Sigma Designs and Matrox. The company recently announced that DVDit!'s various versions - as well as its new consumer-targeted sibling MyDVD ($99) - have shipped more than 250,000 units. Both products are for Windows platforms, with a Mac OS version of DVDit! due in early in 2001.

With support for just a single menu, the bundled (LE) version of DVDit! probably won't be much more than a teaser for those doing professional work. For the same ease-of-use but with expanded functionality, the $499 SE version increases the number of menus to 10, adds a chapter-point editor, integrates automatic transcoding to MPEG, and bundles DVD Player software for title playback from DVD, CD-R, or hard disk. Users requiring greater interactive potential will likely spring for the $999 PE version, which allows 99 menus and support for Dolby Digital audio. PE also allows output to DLT, the master format used to ship projects to DVD plants.

DVD-R's Price DeclineAt Spruce Technologies in San Jose, CA, executive vice president Kirk Paulsen also sees videography as promising, but descibes it as an area that has so far lagged behind its potential. "DVD authoring for event videographers has been delayed by the high cost of DVD-R writers and blank media," he says. "Fortunately, the prices on these items appear set to drop dramatically during mid-to-late 2001 as a number of manufacturers introduce their latest-generation drives. Still, it will be some time before DVD-R drives and media reach the current price-point of CD-R. That's why we've included the ability to output a DVD image to CD-R - a format we call DVDonCD - in SpruceUp, our $129 Personal DVD Authoring application. We expect it to do quite well with both event videographers and home video hobbyists."

As for segments that are further along in their adoption of DVD, Paulsen points to the corporate market. Spruce's best-received product in this area has been its DVDConductor line, which starts at $8,950. The authoring application includes support for unlimited menus (motion and still), and allows the full eight audio streams and 32 subpicture streams defined in the specification, as well as two-stream, multi-angle video (out of nine possible under the specifications). The system also includes hardware-based simulation/emulation. The addition of YUV component-based, real-time encoding (CBR and single-pass VBR) brings the price up to $12,950; you can upgrade to SDI-based encoding for an additional $10,000.

"Spruce has recently installed DVDConductor systems at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, 7-Eleven, Tandy, and Silicon Valley Bank," Paulsen says. "The most popular uses in the corporate space seem to be for kiosks and point-of-purchase displays. With the use of DVDonCD and the integration of WebDVD links to the Internet, we expect to see a large-scale adoption of DVD for direct-mail, and for magazine cover-mounts for product promotions. One of our clients in the UK recently authored a WebDVD title that was cover-mounted on 30,000 copies of PC Advisor magazine."

Paulsen adds that he has noticed "a dramatic increase in the number of educational institutions embracing DVD and adding it to their new-media design curriculum." He points to Seneca College, which has installed a total of 38 Spruce stations, including a number of Spruce's DVDVirtuoso software packages that are networked to DVDConductor workstations and high-end DVDMaestro systems. DVDVirtuoso ($1,495) includes software-based simulation/emulation, allows 10 still menus, and supports two audio and two subtitle streams.

As for post houses that would like to offer DVD capabilities (even for simple dubs that would otherwise be on VHS), Paulsen sees mid-range tools as an ideal way for them to try out professional DVD authoring without making a large upfront investment. "Well over 75% of our mid-range customers upgrade their systems to high-end status as the complexity of their clients' titles increase," he says.

The post market also is targeted by Sonic Solutions, which developed its DVD Fusion line (starting at $2,999) expressly to integrate with nonlinear video editing systems. Based on the same core authoring technology as the company's flagship DVD Creator system, DVD Fusion is optimized for a workflow based on direct transcoding to MPEG-2 of video files from Avid and Media 100 systems, as well as QuickTime-based NLEs.

Tailoring the ToolsAside from price, a big part of what makes a tool attractive for corporate and other non-Hollywood professionals is how well it reflects the orientation of its targeted user-base. "There is a clear shift in requirements from the earlier commercial Hollywood market," Leighton says. "Before, we focused on getting the most out of the DVD spec, looking for innovative ways to make unique and interactive DVDs. This new market is concerned with efficiency and ease-of-use, and a solution that can be used by multimedia and videography professionals, not trained full-time DVD authors."

"The number-one requirement for mid-level tools has been simplicity," Daikin's Johnson agrees. "Here you have a large group of people who already have a primary business to which they must dedicate their time and energy. For them, DVD is just an extension or added option to that business. We cannot expect them to want to learn a whole new complicated system. However, we do still need to provide a tool that is flexible and powerful enough to handle the diverse nature of the mid-level market."

One of the challenges in tailoring the tools to the new market is to avoid overly constraining the use of interactivity. "Mid-level tools need powerful DVD navigation functions with easy operation," says Yoshi Kanagaki, director of multimedia marketing for Intec America in Menlo Park, CA. "Corporate presentations, kiosks, and institutional projects may require much more flexibility and dynamic jump-navigation compared to movie DVDs."

Kanagaki says that including functionality to achieve complex navigation can make an authoring tool difficult to use, especially if operators are forced to deal with the specification's Pre and Post commands. So, one of the design goals of Intec's DVDAuthorQUICK program was to hide the complexity of these commands behind the user interface. The program is available in three versions: LE ($399) for small production houses, video enthusiasts, and OEMs; Desktop ($2,500) for prosumers and corporate applications, such as kiosks; and Pro ($7,900) for post-production facilities, the corporate presentation market, and karaoke authoring.

Kanagaki adds that sometimes potential mid-level customers initially expect a lot of high-end features at a low-end price. "That can usually be resolved after some education," he explains. "The most important requirements our mid-level customers express are multiple title-sets and menu pages, reliability, stability, and ease-of-use for flexible navigational jumps. They also want simulation/emulation before burning a DVD-R for quality assurance. Also, the authoring tool should be open to audio/video encoders of the user's choice."

Spruce's Paulsen points to transcoding support as one of the important features to consider. "Our mid-level customers make extensive use of video transcoding," he says, "to translate their AVI, QuickTime, and OMF files to DVD-compliant streams without having to first lay off to tape. That can be a tremendous timesaver. We've been bundling Heuris' MPEG Power Professional 2 transcoding application with DVDConductor for some time now, and it has proven immensely popular with corporate producers."

Another popular capability is the integration of DVD and the Internet. "The majority of these corporate clients have been even quicker to adopt Web DVD than our customers who produce titles for commercial release," Paulsen says. "The ability to synchronize video playback and onscreen menu selections to webpages is ideally suited for corporate communications."

Continuing ExplorationAs mid-level users continue to explore what they can do with DVD, there may be greater pressure on tool vendors to support high-level functionality at mid-level prices. For example, Johnson sees interactive scripting as an area in which more extensive capabilities might filter down to mid-level tools over the next year or so. "The ability to write more sophisticated scripts using DVD-Video's built-in memory and command support," he says, "will become particularly important for interactive training and kiosk developers who will need to be able to track the enduser's scores and progress through a title."

Paulsen, meanwhile, anticipates greater emphasis on DVD's multilingual capabilities. "As DVD grows as an international communications format, we expect to see expanded use of multiple audio and subtitle streams, which are quite common right now on commercial titles," he says. "Also, though it takes a bit longer to preproduce, we'll see corporate DVDs making more extensive use of motion menus and dramatic menu transitions, which also are common on commercial titles."

Leighton, however, does not expect to see commercial titles defining the future feature set for mid-level production. "Some high-end features will filter down," he says, "but we are finding that these new markets are more interested in features that address their diverse non-entertainment requirements - capabilities that are far more important to them than traditional high-end features, like parental control or support for multiple camera angles. For many users, DVD is becoming a means to integrate all of the multimedia assets associated with an event, a training, or a presentation, and to deliver them in a format that works equally well in the living room, the office, and the boardroom."

Daikin U.S.Novato, CA415-893-7800www.DaikinDVD.com

Intec AmericaMenlo Park, CA650-327-9402www.inteca.com

Sonic SolutionsNovato, CA888-766-4248www.sonic.com

Spruce TechnologiesSan Jose, CA408-861-2200www.spruce-tech.com