I’m going on vacation until the New Year, so if anyone emails me don’t expect any responses for a while.

Hope everyone has a great holiday and new year!

Eric Pautsch has a good article on the state of Blu-ray authoring called “Blu-ray Today and Beyond”. It’s a good read to get some updates on some of the new and current authoring solutions.

You can find it on Creative Cow or download the PDF directly here.

Sonic will be having a webinar on Wednesday, Dec 3 going over how to create a Blu-ray disc from start to finish. We already own Sonic software but I’m planning on watching it to see if there are any tricks I can pick up on. Sign up here.

Here’s an extensive list of what will be covered:

• Menu design using Adobe® Photoshop® and Scenarist® Designer
• Blu-ray Disc creation using the Scenarist BD Studio Workgroup
• Creating pop-up menus and advanced navigation using Scenarist BD
• Emulating your title with Scenarist QC
• Using Scenarist to enable an efficient template approach to BD production
• Delivering your Blu-ray Disc using both replication and duplication

I just stumbled across this on LinkedIn and it seems interesting. There will be a convention on Dec. 8th in LA featuring some good Blu-ray topics called Blu-con. Unfortunately you have to be either working for a sponsor company or be a member of the DEG to go. I don’t think my company is either, so I don’t think I’ll make it.

Is anyone planning on going to this?

More info to follow after the jump including speakers and the agenda for the day.

Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who missed out on the On-Q Seminar, I recorded it and uploaded it for your viewing pleasure.

There was a little issue with the audio the first couple minutes and then again at the end, but it’s better than nothing. They said in the chat they will try to upload a similar version at some point.

It’s pretty interesting if you’ve never seen a demo of it or anything. It’s a little over an hour long.

Read the rest of this entry »

I got around to playing with CS4 a little bit and did a quick test and am pleased to find out Sonic Designer seems to be working ok on OS X. I’m not sure about Windows yet. I ran through all the scripts I use and they all work. There are a couple things I noticed right off hand. 

First- They moved the slice tool under the crop tool. This took me a little while to find and I was afraid they might have moved it to Fireworks. But they didn’t, they just tried to hide it from me.

Second- The Export Comp to File script now supports 8-bit PNGs and 24-bit PNGs. This is pretty cool since I had to find a version of the script I liked better that added PNGs. However it still adds a bunch of numbers before the file name so that will have to be fixed. To fix it, change line 191 of Layer Comps To Files.jsx to:

fileNameBody = compRef.name; //fileNameBody += “_” + compRef.name;

Overall, I like the tabs so far. And when you hold down the space bar to get the hand tool to scroll around it “flings” kind of like an iPhone. 

Anyone have any luck with the Windows version?

I got an email from Sony about a 1 hour online seminar taking place October 9th. I plan on watching it. I’m sure Sony doesn’t mind me posting the email they sent out with links and everything, so here it is:

Dear Blu-print Customer,

As the Blu-ray market heats up, there is increasing demand for more Blu-ray Disc titles. These titles need to be authored quickly, include sophisticated interactivity and be compatible with a wide range of players. 

In May, Ensequence released on-Q Create Blu-ray Java specifically to meet these market demands. Since its release, numerous enhancements have been added, and online training materials are now available that will help new users come up to speed more quickly. Additionally, over 20 commercial titles authored with on-Q Create have been recently released, with more titles coming out every week.

Please join us for a free 1 hour online seminar on Wednesday, October 29 at 9am PST to find out how on-Q Create can help you bring more titles to market with sophisticated BD-J and BD-Live interactivity without needing to hire more Java programmers. 

RSVP to Attend the Seminar

For further information on on-Q Create for Blu-ray Java please visit our website.

Best Regards,

Sony Creative Software

I just got the email from Sonic that Scenarist 5 is released. Here is what is listed to be new from the emai:

What’s new in version 5?

Scenarist Exclusive: BD-Live Project Management Support - Scenarist 5 has a new project management architecture designed to more efficiently enable BD-Live title development. With Scenarist 5 you can create projects that contain multiple sub-projects which enable content to be released on-disc or as Virtual File System (VFS) updates to manage BD-Live content post-release. Scenarist 5’s new project management architecture can also be used to create multiple versions of HDMV titles within a single project to significantly accelerate production for episodic, catalog, or box-set edition titles. Scenarist Exclusive: Project Archive Enhancements - Scenarist 5 features selective archiving of the assets included in a project template or archive. For example, elementary streams can be included in an archive or simply referenced by the project to reduce the size of the archive/template file. This new functionality enables the creation of streamlined project archives and templates that fully leverage Scenarist BD’s efficient template-based architecture. Scenarist Exclusive: Virtual File System (VFS) Creation Improvements - Scenarist 5 features a refined VFS creation workflow that allows the creation of multiple VFS update packages for the same project that specify whether the assets are new or replacing existing on-disc or on-line content. Scenarist Exclusive: Scenarist QC™ Professional Included - Scenarist 5 includes Sonic’s new emulation solution - Scenarist QC - which features title proofing, BD-J debugging, extensive parameter and event logging with filtering controls, as well as support for non-AACS playback. Scenarist Exclusive: Java Source File Creation - Scenarist 5 enables Java class file export identifying all ID’s for BD-J accessible objects in a project. The Java class file allows BD-J developers to reference objects by name and enables far easier collaboration between BD authors and BD-J developers. Scenarist Exclusive: Online Certificate Support - Scenarist Safeguard™ has been updated to include full support for management of online certificates required by the BD Specification. Enhanced Partial Mux Control - It’s now possible to specify exactly which files are multiplexed when carrying out a partial Mux. Built-in BDCMF Version 1.0.2 Support - Scenarist 5 now supports BDCMF 1.0.2 and integrates the BDCMF Editor. Picture-in-Picture EDL Import/Export Support - Scenarist 5 now supports import and export of PiP edits in tab-delimited EDL file format. Ensequence On-Q Support - Scenarist 5 features streamlined import/export support for on-Q Studio projects and includes a new version of Scenarist Bridge which seamlessly converts your Scenarist 5 projects to the on-Q interchange file format.

For those that don’t follow the Apple announcements as closely as I do, during yesterday’s Macbook keynote Steve Jobs was asked why Blu-ray isn’t in any of their computers. His response was:

“Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.” 

Blu-ray must really be a mess if Apple is willing to ditch DVI for Mini-DisplayPort connections for their new notebooks (a technology that we will probably only see in a few products besides Apple stuff) but not be willing to put Blu-ray players in their notebooks yet.

If you are like me you ditched your HD-DVD player and sold your movies on eBay back in February. But maybe you are starting to regret it just a little. Well sellout.woot.com has a HD-DVD player with 2 movies for $50 if you feel like ditching the Blu and getting back with the red.

Not that I’m going to or anything.

This probably deserves it’s own post but it’s too late and I need to go to bed, but Sonic released Scenarist 4.5.3 which fixed some audio bug I’d never heard of. I’m also a little mad at Sony for making such a crazy standard so I’m refusing to give it it’s own post. It’s been a long 2 days.

I promise, that’s the last time you’ll hear me mention HD-DVD.

Dave Zatz from zatznotfunny.com has a post about a Sony S300 player that is on sale for $200 at Amazon. I think it’s today only, so if you want it you better move. It’s not a bad price if you need some more QC players.

I updated the Blu-ray HDMV Flash Viewer to version .15. Mostly I added some options in the control panel thing to make it easier to send menus to clients. Here’s the changelog from the help file(which needs some updating in sections):

Version .15 - Added options into the control panel so you don’t have to mess around with parameters in the URL
- Added a close button and information button that opens/closes the control panel
- Added a show control panel option so you can have it start with it hidden if you want to
- Added a fullscreen button next to the information button
- Added a “Generate URL and Copy to Clipboard” button. What this does is once you get all your settings right you can click it, then paste a url into an email or back into a browser that will remember all your settings. 

You can see a sample of it here. Make sure you click the fullscreen button, it’s my favorite part.

Netflix sends me these free one month trial things every now and then and I don’t really know anyone who wants them. So if you want to try it out for a month, here are the codes:

M206361290975
M216321290245
M206341290225 
M236311290235

Just go to netflix.com/tellafriend to redeem it. They expire October 31, 2008.

You can also get Blu-ray discs from them if you pay an extra fee. ($1?)

Just leave a comment below if you use one of the codes so people know not to use them.

I mentioned a press release a few days ago where Sonic mentioned some new EDGe products. Well, I somehow missed several other press releases announing other new things. They can be found here:

Sonic Powers BD-Live With New Scenarist

Sonic Debuts Scenarist BD Studio Workgroup

Sonic EDGe Debuts Key BD Revisioning Solution with BD Reauthor

Sonic Dramatically Streamlines BD-J Production

There are all sorts of comments about Scenarist BD 5, Scenarist Studio, CiniVision Studio and Scenarist BD Workgroup.

So now I guess we play the waiting to see when we start seeing releases. Hopefully in the next couple weeks.

Was anyone at IBC and get to see all these new products?

I added 3 new current titles. They are Live from Abbey Road (which is a great product, probably my favorite Blu-ray disc we’ve done), Paris Je T’Aime, and Kitaro.