When Apple first announced the release of DVD Studio Pro, the software seemed poised to tilt the world of DVD authoring on its head in much the same manner that its complementary application, Final Cut Pro, erased the line between prosumer and professional nonlinear editor.
Where DVD authoring had required a considerable investment in software and hardware, Apple’s new program, combined with Pioneer’s newly released DVD-R Combo Drive, dropped the price floor substantially and promised easy-to-use functionality with professional features and sophistication.
But version one of the program was something of a letdown, at least in comparison to Apple’s other applications. Yes, the program did what it promised most of the time (unless you were trying to create a dual-layer DVD), but its clunky interface lacked the polish one had come to expect from Apple-branded products. In addition, its component applications failed to live up to the “professional” level of quality Apple had promised. The bundled QuickTime MPEG compressor did not allow for much flexibility and did not deliver the quality of other software compressors available on the PC, and the program’s subtitling application was highly frustrating to use. Even A.Pack, which handily converted audio files to Dolby Digital tracks, would occasionally and mysteriously pull up Type 1 OS errors when encoding files on dual-processor OS X machines.
DVD Studio Pro 2 costs half as much as version one and could easily be mistaken for an entirely different program. Indeed, it pretty much is a different program. DVDSP 1.0 was basically a slightly reworked version DVDirector, a program developed by Astarte before the company was purchased by Apple. Apple’s subsequent purchase of Spruce Technologies, which had an impressive line-up of high-end Windows-based DVD authoring solutions, raised hopes that the Spruce team would work their magic on the Mac. Not only have the cosmetic aspects of version two been updated and improved to better integrate with Apple’s other programs, the whole operating philosophy of the program has been overhauled to increase productivity and enhance the user experience.
At its core, DVDSP 1 was a rudimentary tool used to place existing elements on a DVD; all elements had to come from outside the program and any errors in sizing or compression had to be adjusted outside the program. DVDSP 2 is entirely different in this respect; it aims to keep you working in the program rather than constantly stepping outside it. Forget to resize your Photoshop artwork from 720×534 to 720×480? No problem. DVD Studio Pro 2 will automatically resize it for you. Want to bring in a DV clip but you haven’t used Compressor to make it an MPEG-2 file? That’s fine. DVDSP 2 will either compress it in the background while you are working or just before you build the project, depending on how you set your preferences. (However, if you plan to have Dolby Digital audio with that video, you will still need to feed it through A.Pack.)
Another major change is that the program now includes a well stocked gallery of menu design templates that can be used to create elegant menus quickly and easily. The templates are grouped thematically into families; for example, the style “Leader” has Cover, Detail, and Index menu elements. You can also pick and choose from any combination of button, text, drop zone, and layout templates to create a custom menu design. The amount of tweaking allowed is actually quite daunting, and the basic templates are nearly good looking enough to make such tweaking superfluous. Tabs are also provided for easy access to frequently used folders. Unlike assets that are imported into specific projects, the folders placed under the Audio, Stills and Video tabs remain accessible from all projects.
Another huge improvement over version one is the ability to inspect video assets. You examine video tracks in a timeline and all the markers in the track are displayed. You can click to go to any section of the timeline, and you can play back the video with audio. You can also view your video (and menus, for that matter) with title and safe action borders superimposed. Chapter stop markers can be easily added, removed and named. Further, you can capture TIFF images from the frame on which the marker is placed. This ability comes in handy when creating a scene selection menu, although the TIFF images are not deinterlaced and will have jaggies on a progressive-scan display. If you add a chapter stop to compressed video, you can only put it on an I-frame. In DVDSP2, you can choose whether the I-frame is the nearest forward or backward to where you have placed the chapter, or simply choose the I-frame directly.
DVDSP 2 comes bundled with Compressor, a standalone program that is a considerable upgrade over the bundled QuickTime MPEG compressor plug-in. Compressor allows multiple pass variable bit-rate encoding, along with another impressive array of project-specific presets. For example, you can either tell the program your desired target, maximum and minimum bit rates and whether you want a single or multiple pass, or you can simply choose the “120-minute, high-quality encode” preset. Compressor also recognizes chapter stop markers created in Final Cut Pro. Adding markers in FCP’s timeline is a bit easier than placing them in the DVDSP 2 timeline and adds the advantage of creating I-frames for each chapter stop during compression.
DVDSP 2’s ability to simulate a DVD project before it is built is also vastly improved. You can finally mouse over menu buttons to make a selection, and the video and audio playback is much smoother than before. There are so many subtle refinements to the program that it’s difficult to encapsulate them in a review, and you may not even notice them until you’ve been working in the program for some time. For example, the addition of “Open Recent” to the file drop-down menu is a rather minor enhancement, yet it saves so much time and frustration to be able to click on the last project you were working in rather that drill down through drives and folders and subfolders to find it.
My only complaint about DVDSP 2 is that sometimes the number of options seems truly overwhelming. When I first opened the program, it was so daunting that I ran back to version one to finish a DVD I needed right away. The program’s learning curve is steeper-DVDSP 2 supports hours of experimentation. But after taking the time to work with it and experience its myriad improvements, I can’t imagine going back to version one now. For $499, it’s an incredible value.
