So where are we, really, with high-def DVD authoring? This is a deep, complex question. First, we’ve got to acknowledge the continuing struggle between the competing Blu-ray and HD DVD formats (see sidebar, page 39, and chart, page 41). Blu-ray has been around longest and continues to offer what many, including its cadre of supporting companies, argue is the more robust recording and storage format. But HD DVD is gaining traction, thanks in part to some aggressive promotion by major Hollywood studios that claim the format, unlike Blu-ray, is pirate proof, and therefore perfect for distributing their content.
Although the HD DVD specification hasn’t yet been ratified in all of its forms, authoring tools that support it are either already out or nearing full commercial release. From what we’ve learned so far, the HD DVD spec will be quite wide and complex, offering not just the menus and interactive links found in SD DVD, but a completely programmable interface. So how can we have robust authoring tools before there’s even been agreement on what we’re going to be authoring? Well, due to quirks in the way the specification is taking shape, there is a preliminary solution.
Tools for Tomorrow—and Today
The burgeoning HD DVD specification is arriving in modules, with the simplest interactivity, the so-called "Type 1 Interactivity" echoing what we’ve become used to with SD DVD. It is this "modular" approach to the specification that has led to an interesting first solution from Apple: DVD Studio Pro 4, the icing on the cake in its new, affordable ( $1,299) Final Cut Studio suite. While the NAB demonstrations of this tool were mysteriously low-key (complicated, no doubt, by Apple’s recent pledge of support for Blu-ray drives in its future Macs), DVD Studio Pro 4 is, in fact, the first commercial HD DVD authoring tool released that will let you author true HD DVD Video Title Sets with simple SD-DVD type interactivity, not just DVD-ROM based HD experiences. Of course, at this point in time, there aren’t any HD DVD players on the market, though prototypes from Toshiba and Sanyo were shown at both CES and NAB. But Apple has created an interesting workaround by re-engineering the Apple DVD Player to provide true HD DVD playback. To unleash this, you’ll need Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), and QuickTime 7, which takes advantage of the H.264/AVC codec for spectacular HD encoding at data rates below those required for MPEG-2 HD. If you want to experiment now and get ahead of the curve, DVD Studio Pro 4 gives you access to some but not all of the HD DVD approved codecs (MPEG-2 and H.264), to author in HD with simple interactivity. It’s a great way to get your feet wet.
But there are many more interactive tools heading our way. Microsoft, which recently joined Warner Bros. and Disney in its support of HD DVD, has created with Disney the iHD spec, which pulls movie-synchronized content from both the disc and the Internet. As a preview of the possibilities in this new visual paradigm, the Microsoft Theater at NAB was showing an HD DVD prototype (using, of course, Microsoft’s Windows Media 9/VC-1 encoding format) built by Sonic Solutions’ InterActual team and using content from Warner Bros’. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. It featured drop-down navigation menus superimposed on top of the widescreen feature, which continued to play while interactive choices were being made in the menu. This kind of interactivity is nothing short of spectacular. The future of DVD is going to be mighty fertile ground for creative individuals, and I can barely wait. Microsoft and Warner Bros. have publicly announced that they’ll collaborate on these future super discs.
Other authoring tools will be in a transition state as the HD DVD spec continues to solidify and the tool manufacturers determine what the spec actually has to offer, and how to implement it. On the PC side of DVD things, Sonic Solutions demonstrated a pre-release versions of its separate Sonic Scenarist HD Creator and Sonic Blu-ray Creator tools at NAB, and showed, with a proof-of-concept demo featuring New Line’s Elf, what the advanced interactivity capabilities might let creative DVD producers and authors come up with using "Content Type 2" and "Content Type 3," a.k.a. "iHD" for HD DVD or "BD-J," the interactivity spec for Blu-ray disc. Says Rolf Hartley, general manager of Sonic Solutions’ professional products division, "The Hollywood studios feel that HD content alone will not drive consumers to go buy new players and titles. Consumers are going to need much more interactivity, far beyond what they are getting now. And therein lies the new territory that we’ve got to chart in next-generation authoring."
Though Sonic’s Blu-ray tool, for example, is the first of its kind on the Blu-ray side of the equation, Hartley points out that both Blu-ray Creator and Scenarist are designed to create standard-level content. Authoring tools for the advanced level interactivity will come in a version out later this summer. "The advanced interactive features for both formats adhere to the same set of use models," he says. "And they present major challenges in the authoring production flow that marry concepts from traditional DVD-Video authoring with traditional ROM authoring techniques. That means that a new workflow and authoring process needs to be identified and understood to meet the challenges of developing next generation titles within existing production timelines. With our years of InterActual experience of creating advanced ROM content for standard DVD Video, we already have a strong vision on what the next-generation professional authoring studio will require." Sonic says it will build both iHD and BDJ features into its advanced authoring tools.
Where Does WMV HD Fit In?
Back to Microsoft, there is another part of this picture that has added confusion to the HD DVD Video authoring picture. I’m speaking about the existing capability of authoring ROM-based high definition content that can only be played on PCs (as opposed to set top HD DVD players, which aren’t yet commercially available). The Windows-based HD video format, known as WMV HD, has existed for a while now, and since last year, Sonic has been offering its DVD Producer HD tool for creating these DVD ROM-based high-definition experiences. I say DVD-ROM-based, because the media files this application creates are exactly that: files that can only be played from a suitably equipped PC computer. This may be a great interim solution for users who have a need to deploy short-form HD content immediately (training, corporate events, etc.), but before there is a real HD DVD Video standard in existence, I’d caution that this isn’t a solution for making true HD DVD video discs.
The recent rumblings that the divergent camps supporting Blu-ray (Sony et al.) and HD DVD (Toshiba, et al.) were perhaps trying to fashion a compromise, as they did with SD DVD years ago, was great news. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Despite many reported attempts to forge a single standard, it seems the differences between HD DVD and Blu-ray technology appear too great to provide a compromise path. One of the things that made the original DVD standard take off like a rocket, in addition to the release of great titles, was the unequivocal single standard in which all DVDs were originally created. As for HD DVD and Blu-ray DVD recording, I think it will take some time before we have robust HD set top recorders that mimic the functions of the current set of SD set top DVD recorders. There are still many issues yet to be resolved in terms of exactly how the HD and Blu-ray standards and codecs are used in more professional recording decks. Blu-ray recorders and players aimed at consumers, from manufacturers such as Sony, Philips, Pioneer and Sharp, have been in development for some time and began selling in Japan two years ago. They sell there today for about to 189,000 - 220,000 yen ($1,800 - $2,200).
One for All
My heartfelt plea would have been for one standard, please! The industry should know by now that competing formats do not make a fertile marketplace — on the contrary, confusion slows down the purchase of new technology by the masses, who are usually dazed and confused by too many formats. Should there be doubt about this fact, just rewind to the DVD-R/+R combat of recent history and notice that the battle subsided when both formats became equally available in affordable burners, and the public was no longer confused. Was there an object lesson there? Perhaps, but it seems to be one that was not powerful enough to overcome the technological hurdles that seem to exist between the two formats. Time will tell.
One thing is sure: The DVD format, whether SD or HD, is alive and well, thriving mightily, and steaming full speed ahead. I don’t envy the optical disc manufacturers, though. They just finished double-layer burners and now here come the HD standards! Until that day fully arrives, however, SD DVD duplicators continue to get bigger, faster and cheaper. Several integrators displayed units at NAB that included multi-burner tower systems without printers, and robotic units that included both burner and printers. Of course, as disc standards, burners, and media come of age for both Blu-ray and HD DVD, duplicators will have to quickly take on capabilities for the larger-sized disc media.
With DVD duplication and one-off recording becoming very much the given that it has become, we continue to see the prices of recordable, re-recordable, and yes, even double-layer media falling, and the prices of burners falling as well. It’s not unusual these days to find ads for burners that can do CD, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW and DVD+DL and DVD-DL for under $100. And the media’s even cheaper. Discs are so cheap these days that as an industry watcher, I wonder how anyone can make money selling them. With my DVD producer’s hat on, I’m mighty glad that the media has become so affordable that burning DVDs has now become as instinctive a reflex as burning CDs was years ago.
Yet despite the price drops, DVD production is still a massive ship sailing into the brave new (and mostly uncharted) waters of the high-definition standards, regardless of how many of those standards may eventually emerge. Both camps seem to be showing no signs of compromise, though I wish they would: Sony is already working on a prototype 8-layer disc that will hold about 200 GB of media, while HD DVD’s proponents continue to aggressively challenge Blu-ray’s gains and garner Hollywood studio support. And just to confuse matters even more, 300 GB holographic discs are lurking on the horizon (see Holographic Storage story, 07/05). Me? I’m still hoping that there will be only one standard and that I only need to rewrite my DVD book once this summer.
Laser Wars: The Battle So Far
If you haven’t been keeping score in the ongoing format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD, don’t worry: There is no clear winner yet. And, as the gap narrows between the two, it’s getting harder and harder to tell the two formats apart. Blu-ray (BD) and HD DVD both include the H.264/AVC codec and Microsoft’s VC-1 codec (as well as MPEG-2 and MPEG-4) in their specs, though Blu-ray can still store more (50 GB now, with 200 GB on the distant horizon, vs. 45 GB, which Toshiba just announced) and transfer data faster (54 Mbps vs. 36 Mbps). But some have argued, including John Dvorak in PC Magazine, that despite Blu-ray’s technological superiority, it may prove to be too much of a good thing for the majority of users seeking a practical, backward-compatible format for HDTV viewing. HD DVD, he adds, will be initially cheaper to make, often a deal maker in an increasingly outsourced world. All this is very appealing to Hollywood, which is why, as more studios lend HD DVD its muscle, we could be in for a surprising upset.
But as both a storage and a recording format, Blu-ray has more potential. Now that Apple, HP and Dell have joined the Blu-ray camp, it’s fair to assume that their developing plans for BD-ROM (read-only), BD-R (recordable) and BD-RE (rewritable) will influence next-generation Mac and PC drives, eventually replacing DVD±R, DVD±RW and DVD-RAM. Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation 3, of course, will use the Blu-ray format to drive its gaming applications. And, thanks to new hard-coating technology, Blu-ray has finally shed its original, restrictive cartridge, making it look more like a traditional DVD—and its HD DVD competitor. "Will they ever come together?" asks Sonic’s Rolf Hartley. "Right now it seems that neither camp is willing to give up their disc technology in favor of the other. Hopefully, the negotiations will continue and some kind of a compromise can be reached that will benefit the industry and consumers alike."
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