DVDAfterEdit, and now BluStreak

Jess Bowers, Senior DVD Author at Laser Pacific, Inc., has authored over 400 "A" Titles. He discusses TFDVDEdit with Trai Forrester in an interview conducted December 11th, 2003.

First of all, thanks for taking the time for some questions, and especially for helping out with testing on the program. Here's the first question: What made you respond to my call on Tully's DVDList for top pro "DVD Spec" type authors to help out in TFDVDEdit 2's beta testing?

Gosh, I don't know...I'm always looking for the next big thing in DVD, but also there was something about both the product and your enthusiasm that intrigued me. The one thing that struck me off the bat was that this product was going to let anyone get at all the handles I've had access to for so long. Let everyone into the sandbox, so to speak. Most of the authoring platforms out there now are targeted at users without spec knowledge. They try to make it easy, which is great for 90% of authoring tasks. However, when you want to tackle something out of the box, often times you're stuck. TFDVDEdit opens that up.

Please tell us what things you've been doing with the program?

I've been mostly testing, experimenting, and finding new ways to incorporate it into my flow.

First off, I wanted to make sure that the application was producing DVD Specification compliant changes. So I spent a lot of time with the product, making changes to a very complicated project. I also combined VIDEO_TS directories from a couple of different projects, to see what kinds of effects that might have. After a full QC of the resulting disc, I put the project through one of our DVD Spec verification tools. To my chagrin, the project came out with no specification problems. TFDVDEdit had done amazing things and not broken a single rule. This is a great thing, so early in the testing cycle.

A situation came up when working on the FREDDY VS. JASON DVD release for Newline Home Entertainment. I was working on the second disc in this two disc set. Being the bonus disc, it's packed with extras, and there are hundreds of menus. I was under a tight deadline for getting this done, and the project was coming together almost in real time. It was about an half an hour before the client was set to arrive to test the disc on a remote emulator, and we found a bug. It was the kind of bug that's easy to fix, but would have required a new layout (build) to change.

I decided to use TFDVDEdit to fix the bug in the finished VIDEO_TS folder. I easily located the offending command, and transferred the changed files to the emulator. It all took less than 5 minutes.

Where do you see TFDVDEdit 2 fitting into professional DVD authoring and production?

The product's marketing says you can have a $20,000 authoring system for less --- well, I'm one of those people who has nine expensive systems (most more than $20K!!) -- so I'm not exactly looking to replace that. However, I am looking to augment my production flow with tools that give me either speed or more capability. TFDVDEdit does both.

TFDVDEdit provides a way to change things at another, downstream step in the process. When we're working at a fast pace, it's essential to have tools that let us fix things quickly. Using TFDVDEdit to make changes after the layout enables us to plug a hole more effectively.

What things do you like about the program?

I'm really in love with the ability to see the video content of the cells as you click on them. This is a great way to see where you're at in the disc. Most DVD Authoring software doesn't list PGC's in the order that you'll see them in the VIDEO_TS folder. This means that you've got to get re-oriented when looking at the project in TFDVDEdit. This preview is essential.

I also like that, as far as I can tell, it doesn't change things in the project other than the things I'm working on. I don't like tools that get in and work under the awareness of the user. These tools tend to make more headaches for me and do things unintentionally to break my design.

The coolest feature so far has to be the ability to blow away all of the pre/post commands in a project, then copy and paste your own in there. This happens project-wide, which can be very convenient.

What things need to be improved?

Sometimes I feel a little lost in the project, which isn't good because I'm used to working at the DVD Spec object level. There are some things that could be done to fix this -- one is adding the ability to label (other than number) PGC's and Titles. The other is adding an ability to see objects (PGC's, Titles) in commands by their title, instead of by their index number.

It would be nice to see TFDVDEdit use command language that's the same as the platform I'm on. I use Scenarist, and I've gotten to the point after 7 years where I just think in the Scenarist command language. Seeing the commands in another construct takes some interpretation. It would be ideal if you could select your style of commands as a preference. That way, users could set the command language to what they're used to.

Another thing that would help the debugging process would be a command interpreter. I know you're working on it, so this is more of a re-iteration and a vote. This will be an invaluable tool for the debugging process. You could make a change and test the result from within one environment.

In the case where users are using TFDVDEdit as their primary authoring environment, starting in DVD Studio Pro or something like it, there needs to be some way to save the TFDVDEdit environment and apply it to future iterations of the project. I'm not sure if this can be accomplished easily, but here's a trap: If the user has made many complicated changes in TFDVDEdit, then has to go back to DVDSP to make content changes. DVDSP writes a new VIDEO_TS directory, then the user has to make the TFDVDEdit changes all over again.

Would you say that TFDVDEdit 2's claim to having the entire DVD Navigation command set, is true?

Definitely. As far as I can tell, you can build all the same commands in TFDVDEdit as any other system, and more than many basic systems.

How has the program worked for you? Is it stable?

It's very stable. I've been using it for a few months now, and I would consider it stable enough to use on a daily basis in DVD Production.

What authoring systems do you currently employ?

Here at LaserPacific, we've been doing this for a while, and we have a wide assortment of tools. Our primary authoring platform is Sonic Scenarist, but we've augmented it with a number of in house and third party tools. It's been a lot of fun to write my own tools and to look for 3rd party tools that fit our production flow.

My primary authoring station contains:

2 SGI Octane's (one single 250mhz/R10000 one dual 250)

• Sonic Scenarist authoring software
• Authoring support software - special tools written by us
• 200GB SCSI Raid for high speed layouts
• 750GB IDE Raid for project storage
• ~2TB removable SCSI hard drive system in 9-32GB increments for project storage and encoding
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 2x DLT Drives
• ** remote access to 7 other Octane's with similar specs

1 Power Mac G4/Dual 1.25Ghz/Superdrive

• TFDVDEdit 2.0
• Adobe Photoshop
• iView Media Pro for graphics organization/viewing
• BBEdit - text based editing
• Interarchy - FTP client for moving files from SGI <- Mac
• Authoring support software - special tools written by us
• Microsoft Office
• Apple XCode development tools
• Metrowerks Codewarrior development tools
• BaseMaster for editing those nasty bit fields

plus a handful of other machines for support and various tasks like emulation, verification, making labels, etc.

Would you tell us about some of your verifications of TFDVDEdit 2's project output?

I ran several of the projects that I tested with through our DVD Spec verification system (The industry standard: MEI Verifier). I found no outstanding issues.

What would you say your confidence level is, after testing the program these last few months; in regards to trusting a professional DVD project with TFDVDEdit 2?

I have a high level of confidence.