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Better transitions
If you design DVDs, a constant urge is to get a leg up on the competition via better graphics, such as snazzier moves from or into other menu sections. That's just what Apple says it delivers with DVD Studio Pro 3, its DVD-authoring app. The soft-ware's most notable innovation, Alpha Transitions, consists of 30 professionally designed QuickTime transitions; these can be blended seamlessly between menus, slides in slideshows, and stills in tracks with just a click of the mouse. Other new features include Graphical View to help visualize a project's entire flow and Compressor 1.2, a digital media encoding and compression tool that provides HD to MPEG-2 encoding.
Price: $499
Cupertino, Calif.; (800) 692-7753;
www.apple.com/dvdstudiopro
Print photos and CDs
If you're reading this, you probably work in video production or postproduction and produce graphics and stills for presentations. To get those images out, you need good-quality stills as well as CDs and DVDs to hold the video. Epson's R300 and R300M look like an ideal solution; these combo paper and CD/DVD label printers offer a resolution of up to 5,760×1,440 dpi while printing directly to inkjet-writable CD and DVD media. Support for Exif Print and PRINT Image Matching technology automatically prints the best possible photos, claims Epson, from PIM-enabled digital cameras. Four built-in card slots support most flash RAM types.
Price: $179 (R300);
$229 (R300M with LCD viewer)
Long Beach, Calif.;
(800) 873-7766;
www.epson.com
An architect for DVD
Could Sony Pictures Digital Networks do well with the Sonic Foundry apps it bought last year? Many wondered. But the results are in, and the software rocks. The new Vegas+DVD Production Suite adds significant capabilities, with the bundled DVD Architect 2, Dolby Digital AC-3 encoder, and of course, Vegas 5 NLE software. New features for the DVD Architect 2 software include programmable end actions, subtitle creation and multiple audio track support, enhanced disc-optimization tools, realtime external monitor playback via i.Link connector/IEEE-1394, Flash .swf import, support for 24p DVD encoding, and elementary stream import.
Price: Starting at $799
Culver City, Calif.;
(800) 577-6642;
www.sony.com/mediasoftware
Putting the squeeze on video
These days, anyone doing a lot of video work probably needs to create web videos for clients. Until the last year or so, this has been a daunting task. Individual tools existed for prepping and compressing various web formats, but only a few apps pulled all those compression standards together. Sorenson did with Squeeze 3. Now its product family includes Sorenson Squeeze 4 Compression Suite, Sorenson Squeeze 4 for Macromedia Flash MX, and Sorenson Squeeze 4 for MPEG-4 — all of which are available in Windows and Mac versions. New tricks include HD output and AVC (H.264) encoding, which creates more compact MPEG-4 files.
Price: $449 (Compression Suite);
$119 (Macromedia Flash MX);
$199 (MPEG-4); Salt Lake City;
(888) 767-3676;
www.sorenson.com
Burning up the tracks
A little criticism can go a long way. While reviewers praised the specs offered by Sony Electronics DRU-530A dual-format DVD burner, most felt that it didn't deliver the burning speed other comparable drives offered. Sony must have listened. Its new internal DRU-540A drive smokes; it can write to DVD+R discs at speeds up to 12X on certified 8X DVD+R media. That means a full write-once disc can be recorded in approximately six minutes. Flexibility is key in production, and the DRU-540A doesn't let you down there, as it also supports 8X DVD-R and 4X DVD±RW burning, as well as 40X CD-R and 24X CD-RW recording speeds. Bundled software from Nero covers DVD video authoring and DVD/CD burning.
Price: $180
Park Ridge, N.J.; (800) 352-7669;
www.sony.com/dvdburners
Take the fast lane
If you're involved in graphics creation or editing, you should thank the next gamer you meet. Why? It's their nonstop need for speed in ever more complex video games that pushes graphics card development, something multimedia creators benefit from. Take ATI Technologies Radeon X800. Although priced a bit higher than the average card — there are two versions — the X800 processes more than 8 billion pixels and almost 800 million vertices per second. While those numbers might be hard to visualize, just think of the card as delivering twice the speed of ATI's top AGP entry, the Radeon 9800 XT, one of the speediest cards available.
Price: $399 (X800 Pro);
$499 (X800XT Platinum)
Markham, Ontario;
(905) 882-2626;
www.ati.com
Works well with others
More and more, creating DVDs above the ordinary relies upon not only the authoring software, but also graphics programs for button designing, or maybe NLE apps to add motion to those buttons. Adobe helps make such cross-pollination work with Adobe Encore DVD. With the latest Encore version 1.5, those ties pull the other offerings even closer; Premiere Pro 1.5, Photoshop CS, and After Effects 6.5 can all be called upon by simple clicks to Encore's drop-down menu. There are too many new features to address here, but one basic tweak I like: Creating a custom workspace is easy, with many new ways to customize the GUI, helping you optimize the workflow along the way.
Price: $549 (Upgrade $99)
San Jose, Calif.;
(800) 833-6687;
www.adobe.com
Go on the road
Just a couple of years ago, suggesting that a laptop could take on heavy-duty graphics and editing chores didn't fly. But over the last year or so, that's changed, with more powerful rigs coming from HP, Dell, and others. Now, Boxx Technologies delivers a high-performance laptop that trounces most desktops. The GoBoxx features include 256MB of fast DDR video memory that works with the latest ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card, Pentium 4 processors performing at up to 3.6GHz, two RAID 0 or RAID 1 hard drives, and up to 2GB memory. Oh, and don't forget the 17in. WSXGA Ultrawide 1,680×1,050-resolution LCD display and 4X dual ±RW DVD burner. The list goes on, so check it out online.
Price: Starting at $3,187
Austin, Texas;
(877) 877-2699;
www.boxxtech.com
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